ATTRACT NEW CUSTOMERS ONLINE USING THESE 10 FREE TOOLS

Attracting customers that bring in good revenue is every business's desire, after all, money Is the lifeline of any business. In this blog post, we'll be going over the single basic principle to growing your customer base and ten tools to have in your arsenal during this process.

The Basic Customer Growth Principle

You begin your digital marketing activities to attract customers to purchase your product but that doesn't naturally occur immediately. Since you must have carried out your product research assignment before launching, it's not that your target audiences aren't interested in your physical or digital product, it's just that it takes a little bit of time to warm the market to your product and make customer purchase decision favor you. You must be wondering, "so what should I do to move the warming-up process faster along?" Well, asides from pushing your marketing activities relentlessly, ensure you create a system to help you build your target customers list.

Growing your target customers list is a crucial activity that will allow you to connect with your ideal audience in a more personal way, warm them up and lead them to the stage where they are ready to buy from you.

The simple basic principle here is to attract and keep your target audience. Attract them, add them to your list, give them value, and pitch your product to them. if no sales are recorded, give them value again and again till they're so "attached" to your brand that they begin to put your product in their purchase decision.

7 Tools To Leverage On To Grow Your Target Customers List

To grow your target customers list, the first step is to create a method of attraction, followed by a method of contact collection and finally a communication channel.

STEP 1

THE ATTRACTION METHOD

Have you ever considered why you registered for the free webinar that's coming up? Likely because it offers valuable information you're interested in. But have you ever thought about why the webinar was created in the first place? It was designed to attract a particular audience and provide them with value. This type of free webinar is known as a High-Value Content Offer (HVCO). To attract your desired audience, the best approach is to offer them value by creating a High-Value Content Offer. Examples of HVCOs are Free ebooks, webinars, low prices products, promos, informative surveys etc.

1 Powerful Tool For Creating HVCOs

1. Canva - This is a powerhouse for creating any form of graphics design, digital documents and prints. You can use Canva to create ebooks, seasonal promo graphic designs, PowerPoint presentations, printable artworks, gift cards etc. Its photo editing tool is also a plus.

Pros

• Its free plan is very resourceful and the paid plan is super affordable, with pricing starting from $30/year

• You require little to no design skills to use it

YOUR PLACEMENT

Where will you position yourself to reach your target audience? Instagram? Facebook? LinkedIn? Wherever you choose to be, you most definitely have to create content to attract your audience to you.

7 Powerful Tools For Content Creation

1. Youcut - A video editing app for mobile. This tool is one of the best out there for video editing. This tool allows you to edit your videos, add transitions, stickers, amazing effects and a whole lot more.

Pros

• It is extremely easy to use. You don't need to be an expert to get pro looking video.

• The free plan is great and the paid plan is worth more than its price.

2. Capcut - Another amazing video editing app for mobile. Asides from the video editing filters, transitions and effects, Capcut has some other advanced features such as green screen, text-to-speech generator and auto-captioning.

Pros

• It's easy to use. Again, no expertise is needed. If you do need guidance, numerous tutorials on YouTube will guide you.

There's the free plan and affordable pro plan

3. WeVideo - This is a video editing tool for PC. To add to its video editing features, it offers a wide variety of video templates for marketing, social media content, YouTube intro and outro clips etc.

Pros

• It has a lot of video templates for creating unique clips in a short period.

Its free plan has great video template choices to pick from and the paid plan starts from $4.99/month. Its free plan however is slightly limiting on video template options

4. Canva - This software once again offers great value in the social media presence category. Asides from being able to create graphic designs, you can schedule future posts directly to your different social media accounts. This saves you a whole lot of stress that comes from handling multiple social media accounts. This feature is only available on the paid plan.

5. Meta Business Suite - This is a free tool that also allows you to schedule posts to Facebook and Instagram pages only.

6. Planoly - This is also a wonderful app that allows you to schedule your posts on multiple social media platforms in one space.

The free plan is slightly limited compared to the paid plan, which starts from $13/month

7. Linktree - This tool allows you to share multiple links on one page. Whether it be the link to your online store or a free ebook you just created, it easily allows you to share the links on the same page, at the same time. All you have to do is share a single link to your Linktree page.

Pros

• You get access to your link analytics I.e you'll be able to track your Linktree page views and link clicks.

• You can collect your audience's contact via subscriptions

• You can customize your Linktree page appearance to suit your brand identity.

The free plan offers unlimited link addition and just basic analytics. The paid plan, however, offers more features such as deeper analytics, priority linking, collecting payments, subscriptions, etc.

The paid plan starts from $4/month

STEP 2

THE AUDIENCE RETENTION METHOD

The HVCO you created is your audience attraction ticket. Now that you have their attention, ensure you collect their contact details in exchange for your HVCO material, a win-win arrangement. Then forge further by keeping in contact with them.

3 Easy To Use Audience Retention Tools

1. Wix - This is a website hosting platform that allows you to create fully functional and interactive website pages easily, even without having any web design experience. You can create landing pages where you place your HVCO sign-up form or have it pop up once your audience lands on your page. Wix also allows you to perform email marketing, so that you can stay in contact with the audience.

Pros

• It is easy to use

• It allows you to set multiple automatic email responses triggered by form submission

• Its AI website creator can also help you if you need a quick design.

Wix has a free plan that gives you full access to the website creation elements, editor and some site plugins.

However, you won't have access to a custom domain name with the free plan, you'll need to upgrade to one of the plans. The most basic plan starts from $4.50/month

2. MailChimp - This software also allows you to create webpages and forms where you can collect audiences' contact.

MailChimp also comes with email marketing tools that allow you to stay in contact with your audience.

Pros

• It is easy to work with.

• You can set automatic email responses to your audience triggered by form submission.

The free plan gives you access to the full site creation and editing tool, but limited access to some email marketing features and tools that make your site interactive. You also won't have access to a custom domain.

The paid plan starts from $13/month

3. Typeform - If your HVCO is designed to help your audience figure out a problem by answering questions, then Typeform is the tool for you. This a survey creation tool. It helps collect answers to questionnaires and surveys. It's easier to work on it using your PC.

To collect your audiences' contact, simply ask them for it in the form, letting them know that their needed information will be delivered to them there.

Afterward, simply add your collected email/SMS to your contacts on Wix or MailChimp.

Pros

• It's easy to use

• You can save time with its AI form-generation feature

• You can set a redirection prompt to another page after the survey has been submitted (In case you'd like to send your audience to another page afterward)

• You can customize the form appearance to fit your brand identity

The free plan is amazing, but there are certain limitations to it, for example, the number of form submissions you get per month. The paid plan starts from $25/month.

Asides from email marketing, you may also decide to stay in contact with your audience via SMS. Bulk SMS delivery tools like EbulkSMS (Nigeria local delivery) and BulkSMS (worldwide delivery) make this extremely easy for you.