Now while there are other reasons businesses fail, the major reason businesses fail is due to the lack of "Adequate Cash Flow".
Cash flow is your monthly income minus your expenditures, and as the saying goes "Cash is King”. No Cash = No Business.
And the major reason for not having sufficient cash flowing into your business monthly, is a lack of paying customers.
"Your customer holds the key to your success deep in their pain, behavior, dreams, values and the jobs they are trying to accomplish." - Eric T. Wagner
NO CUSTOMERS = NO CASH = NO BUSINESS
So it suffices to say that, in order to increase your monthly revenue you first need to increase your customer base. In fact, you need to grow your customer base by 25% every year in order to stay profitable.
To successfully grow your customer base, you need to make sure your location, marketing and customer relations is on point.
- Location.
Simply put a Location is a point where people can see, interact with, and order for your products or services.
The location of your business is very important. Ideally, your business should be located as closely as possible to where your target customers are.
If you sell law books, then your ideal location should be around or within the vicinity of a courthouse. If you sell high-end designer clothing, then your ideal location would be where the rich reside or work.
Your location is the contact points between your business and your potential customers. The more of these contact points, the more customers your business is likely to get.
But increasing your location doesn't necessarily mean increasing your presence on the ground.
Here are 3 tips to reach more customers.
1. Have a Website or Blog.
Having a website/blog is a must these days for any serious minded business person. It's quite easy to set up and unless you want some specific features like secure payment options, it's also cheap.
For your website or blog to rank well you should have problem-solving content on them. Proffer solutions to problems in your area of business or niche. This will help you in search engine rankings and also confer on you authority status.
If the solutions you offer are practical, free, and you are consistent, you would become the go-to guy for problems related to your niche. The copy should be written brilliantly to include the benefit of your product/service as related to the solving of this problem.
The best part is you don't even have to write the posts yourself. You can hire a professional, and you only need five key posts related to your niche to give your site a presence.
2. Have an Online Store.
If your business requires it, then open an online store.
Online stores are getting popular these days thanks to the success of Jumia and Konga.
Owning an online shop is easy and it's cheaper to run than a physical one. Add this to your business and see an increase in your customer base.
3. Social Media:
With Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter's combined active monthly users of over One Billion, Eight Hundred, and Thirteen million people, social media marketing is a must these days. Even politicians have keyed into it.
You have got to put your business where your prospective customers are, and right now, they are on social media.
Your business should have a presence on at least two these platforms.
When it comes to Location what really matters is your ability to reach your Target Customers, your relationships with them, and your ability to get more customers. You can achieve this by combining a physical address(offline address), with a website or online shop, and a social media page.
To be continued.
By Ben Bassey.
Culled from Pulse NG.
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