4 Clever Ways To Get Your Customer's Attention

If you find that your business simply isn’t generating the attention that you need it to, you may have fallen into the trap of building a business that doesn’t draw anyone’s attention. Customers won’t know your business exists by virtue of it existing, and customers are also inundated with generic advertisements daily. Your business might easily be lost in the crowd if you haven’t taken steps to stand out.

A business that’s struggling to grow and gain customer attention needs to revisit its pitch, system, and value. What do you think your business is going to do for people? What are your competitors doing? Think about your business pitch, what you do for customers and what makes your business unique in a saturated market.

1. Develop your unique value proposition

Often the biggest problem a new startup has is a lack of originality. There are hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the United States alone, and your business may not offer customers any unique benefits. One entrepreneur, according to Inc contributor Bob Dorf, created a job searching website that had no pitch or appeals to compete against major competitors like Monster. The business was flatlining, with no attention, hits or users.

You can prevent this by preemptively ensuring that any business you plan on launching comes with a creative pitch. Many watch companies, such as Rolex or TAG Heur have used some of the most innovative marketing in business which companies like The Watch Gallery use to their advantage. You need to design a unique value proposition for your business - how can your business help achieve the goals of people you want to customers, and how can it do so in a way that your competitors can’t? You must have a clear focus on your unique value as well - not a disjointed set of vague promises.

2. Figure out who the right customers are

One of the greatest mistakes you can make is trying to design a pitch that’s too general. You need to identify a specific market segment that you’re going to chase - a group of people with shared interests and needs. For example, a general store that opens in a small but popular coastal town knows that its customers will be locals, fishers, and tourists. It knows that its focus will be on shoppers who want to go in the water, which means it needs to ensure that it doesn’t just offer a standard collection of general store goods - it needs more customized products like bait, fishing lines or sunscreen.

Your business, similarly, needs a clear target for you to chase. Identify who you want to market your business towards and design your product line, services, and marketing towards that target. 

3. Focus on creating customer connections

When you try to reach out to customers, it’s important to humanize your business. This can mean encouraging employees in a brick and mortar store to have genial conversations with customers who walk in, and it can mean a marketing campaign that tries to create a human image for your business.

When business representatives talk to customers, they should be encouraged to inquire about a customer’s personal life, hobbies, interests, and needs. By forming an emotional connection between store and customer, you can help foster brand loyalty that sustains your business in the long term. Brand loyalty results in consistent sales and word-of-mouth advertising, both helpful for growing your business and improving your store reputation.

4. Identify what the customer’s needs are

This conversation gives you both an opportunity to create a connection between the customer and the store, and an opportunity to gauge how your store might be able to fulfill some of the customer’s needs in their personal life. Both on an individual scale and on a large scale, try to create an emotional connection between your customers in order to learn more about what your business can do to satisfy their needs. Developing an open line of communication shows customers that your business is responsive and that it exists to satisfy customer needs. One of the biggest mistakes you can make as an entrepreneur is focusing solely on the product you want to sell. Customers don’t want to satisfy your ego - they want to see their needs met.

When you run a business, you are ultimately trying to serve customers. This means that when you figure out how to market your store, select your product and reach out to customers, you have to keep in mind at all times the following question: what is my business offering that people need and can’t find elsewhere? Once you answer that question, you will attract greater attention.