What are potential customers? How to increase your leads

“The customer is king”. It is no exaggeration: in every line of business, customers are the core. To survive and grow over the long term, improving product quality matters, and identifying potential customers matters just as much and needs to be done well to sell your products.

To build an effective business strategy, you need the basics: what is a potential customer? How do you increase the number of potential customers? Only then can a business sell its products and grow revenue quickly. In this article, Mona Media will help you dig deeper into what potential customers are and how to grow their number effectively.

What is a potential customer?

A potential customer is someone who needs or wants to own your product now or in the future. Unlike people who have already bought or used the product, potential customers are those who are not yet ready to accept it, or who need more time to learn about the product or customer care services from the business before making a buying decision.

Not everyone who shows interest in a product or service counts as a potential customer. Based on the marketing funnel model they can fall into these groups:

• People who do not yet know about your product, service or business
• People who are looking for a solution or researching topics related to your product or service
• People who are comparing your product or service with a competitor’s in the same field
• People who have already bought or used a competitor’s product or service.

Because there are different groups of potential customers, you need a specific strategy to turn them into target customers.

See more: 7 factors that influence a customer’s buying decision

How to increase your potential customers effectively

For any business, growing the number of potential customers is always a top priority. To help you understand better, here are a few ways to attract more potential customers quickly and effectively.

Use social media

Social media is a great channel that anyone can use to find customers effectively. Here are a few quick suggestions you can apply on your own Facebook.

• Complete your personal profile with your name, avatar, cover photo and more, to build credibility
• Set up a second account related to the product or service you sell, in case some customers remember only your name and product but not your account
• Connect with as many people as you can. The more connections you have, the wider your reach to potential customers. Interacting often with friends and with people who have many followers also helps you promote your image and products and get closer to customers.
• Update regularly with information, photos and products, and share in-depth articles, for example. Do not forget to reshare reviews from customers who bought from you.

See more: How to drive traffic from Instagram

Ask current customers to refer new ones

Build a close relationship with your current customers, thank them for choosing your product or service, and tactfully ask them to refer your brand to any friends who are interested, so you gain more potential customers.

Referrals from past customers work quite well, but there are reasons why they are not easy to get. So you can try the steps below:

• Get in touch and thank customers for trusting and choosing your brand. At the same time, check whether they are fully satisfied with the service. Is there anything else you can help them with?
• Ask customers whether they have friends or companies they think might be interested in your product or service
• Save the referred person’s phone number and email, along with a detail that lets new customers know they came through a past customer.
• If you can, send the customer a card or a small gift, such as a T-shirt, a pen or a decorative item, to thank them for the referral. A small gesture of care can go a long way.

From personal relationships

Personal relationships are easy to forget, even though they are among the easiest to tap, especially when you are just starting your own business. Today, classmates, colleagues, partners, neighbors and others, or their friends, may well need your product or service.

The key to this approach is fairly simple. When you talk about business, speak with the authority of a product expert and share it with the people you know. Identify your customer groups by age, region, income and so on, then send them personalized emails, or ask them to pass your message along to build connections.

Mixing the personal with the professional demands care and respect for your relationships. But if you can pull it off, it is a great way to widen your reach and grow your list of potential customers.

Google is a great place to search

Try using the wealth of information online to learn more about buyers and potential customers. Searching for potential customer groups is very different from searching for products. To get good results, a sales team can pair it with free lead-scanning tools such as Google Alerts. This helps narrow down the audiences that match your business strategy.

Using terms such as forum or community will also help you find websites where your potential customers gather to share and chat

Join networking events

Taking an active part in community events, industry events, product training or leadership courses should be part of your routine, because it is an effective way to build your personal influence and your business relationships.

Here are a few basics to keep in mind before attending networking events:

• The main goal of an event is to help people get to know each other, connect, and find more relationships and chances to work together. Do not take it too heavily, feel pressured or set a quota for how many potential customers you must find.
• A mindset of “always ready to help” will set you apart.
• Bring business cards to swap with the new contacts and companies you meet.
• Offer to connect on Facebook, Viber or whichever social network you use while you are standing next to someone. Say hello politely, and if they are open to it, exchange phone numbers.

Research your competitors and your industry

One way to get a deeper understanding of buyers is to research your competitors . Look through their case studies to quickly get a feel for potential customers and see why they chose your competitors in the past.

Besides watching competitors, follow industry blogs and analyst reports too. This helps you find your strengths, shape a business strategy that fits, and make sure every potential customer can find information about your products or services.

Review why past deals did not close

Some customers may have watched a product demo or contacted your business to learn more, but did not need to buy at that moment.

Follow up with these leads every 2 months and ask how their needs and wishes have changed, and whether they still have the problem they described earlier.

Put your marketing budget into this group, because they convert at a higher rate than completely new customers. Add them to your email marketing with relevant content and send related blog posts to keep the relationship personal. The first few times may not be the right moment, but by the fifth contact they will remember your brand, and when the need arises you will be the first they call.

Focus on email marketing

Decide how you will approach potential customers, and get creative with email templates email marketing that are smart enough to catch their attention. To send a successful email sequence, set a clear purpose for each customer group, for example:

1. Spell out the problems your customers are facing
2. Offer a valuable message that helps customers solve the problem
3. Share a story from a well-known big client
4. Update your message with quality solutions
5. Add more product information
6. One last follow-up

Run a complete, purposeful email sequence, check how well each email performs, and adjust it for each customer group.

See also:

• How to do email marketing well for your business
• How to write professional email marketing subject lines

Write blog posts

If you do not blog regularly, start with a topic you know inside out, as an expert would. It could be marketing, or an in-depth introduction to your products and services. Start writing and share it on your company blog or website or your personal social page, polishing the wording before it goes to customers.

What matters is building your image as an expert in the field, showing strong expertise while giving potential customers useful information, so that when they have a need they remember you right away.

Beyond the methods above, businesses have many other ways and sources to find potential customers. Try the tactics shared in this article and get creative in how you generate more leads for your business. We hope the information above gives you the direction and strategy to find and reach customers, fix weak points and grow your leads effectively, while building a list of loyal customers.

See more:

• The market analysis process you need to know
• How to identify your target market
• Analyzing customer psychology with Maslow's hierarchy of needs