When looking to get more exposure for your brand, there’s only so much progress you can make by letting people come to you. At some point, if you want to have a more successful company and rise above your competitors, you have to employ some kind of customer outreach plan. While this tactic can be time consuming, if you’re able to create a good outreach plan, you will begin to see the large fruits of your labor quickly. To help those just starting out with their outreach plan, here are three tips to make yours more effective.
Set Out Your Strategy
Before you’re going to be able to execute your customer outreach plan, you’re going to need to set out a clear and effective strategy. According to Craig Rennick of InNetwork.net, some of the most important steps for setting up your outreach strategy are knowing your audience, researching and understanding your market, and having realistic goals. Without blatantly stating your solutions for all three of these strategy aspects, you could end up beginning your outreach plan without a clear definition of what you’re planning to do or why. Strategizing is going to be your key to success for your customer outreach initiative.
Know the Influencers
Once you’ve strategized what you plan to do for outreach and how, it’s time to get your foot in the door with influencers who can help make your outreach dreams a faster reality. However, keep in mind that others in your industry are likely also attempting to reach out to influencers in order to get a bigger brand following, too. To set yourself apart, Rhett Power, a contributor to Inc.com, suggests for businesses to search for a higher number of smaller influencers rather than a smaller number of larger influencers. This tactic could prove to be just the recipe you need for the success you want.
Leverage Your Current Marketing Channels
Outreach is about getting to customers that you haven’t been in contact with before. However, you can still use your current marketing channels and leverage your followers there to help expand your outreach efforts. Kelsey Libert of Buffer recommends for businesses to do all they can to increase their social shares in order to have an online word-of-mouth type scenario to help branch out to new communities using their current following. In this same vein, you could also use your SMS messaging list to ask your current customers to share promotions with their friends or family in order to reach a larger number of people that you normally couldn’t on your own.
Creating an effective customer outreach plan requires enough forethought and creativity to use what you have to propel you to where you want to be. Consider employing some of the tips mentioned above in order to give your business the outreach plan it needs to get to the next level.
Originally posted on December 22, 2015 @ 9:59 am