10 WAYS TO FIND MORE CUSTOMERS FOR YOUR BUSINESS WITHOUT SPENDING CASH.

Every marketing budget doesn’t have to be extravagant. While many businesses spend large sums ranging in millions of Naira and Dollars on promoting their products and services, a few others spend next to nothing and achieve almost the same results or even better. A lot of businesses put in a lot of marketing efforts to find more customers for their businesses. If you don’t have the budget most large businesses do, there are several other ways to find customers for your business without spending any cash, or spending as little as possible.

 

Here Are Ten Cheap Ways To Find More Customers For Your Business Without Spending Any Cash

 

1). Take Advantage Of Online Communities & Market Places:

One great way to find more customers for your business is to take advantage of online communities and market places. Online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Nairaland, and a few others are a great way for businesses to sell their merchandise. You can start a Facebook page and ask your friends to share your product posts, so it can get a wider outreach. You could also do the same with Twitter, and Instagram. As you grow a loyal follower base on social media, you can always be re-marketing to your followers without spending any cash.

You can also patronize online marketplaces like Jumia, Konga, Opiid, OLX, and a lot more to sell your merchandise. Doing this, you don’t pay any sign up costs. You only get charged a percentage fee whenever you have a successful sale.

Taking advantage of online communities and marketplaces is a free way to get more customers and sell more products without spending on marketing.

 

2). Reach Out To Bloggers & Online Influencers:

You can reach out to bloggers to feature and review your brand for an exchange of a free product or service you sell. For example, if you’re launching a new handbag brand, you can contact multiple fashion bloggers and send them free sample handbags, so they can review them and let their readers know what they think about them. Reviews would sprout their readers interest in your product. While many may not immediately patronize your business, some will subsequently make a purchase over time because of the positive review the blogger probably wrote about it.

Using blogger reviews to create awareness for your brand is a great way to find more customers without spending a dime.

 

3). Sell In Person:

This involves going door to door, going to networking events, going to niche gatherings, and more to market your products & services. By going from door to door, you physically let households and various individuals know about the products and services you offer. Networking events are also a great place to get more sales leads. Identify events where various personalities that need your products and/or services are going to be present. Talk to various individuals and exchange complimentary cards. Make sure you do follow ups after the events to increase your chances of getting one or more sales closed within a short period. By selling in person, you cut marketing costs and also build better personal relationships with the individuals and businesses you encounter.

 

4). Offer Customers Incentives To Share Your Business:

To incentivize your customers, you could offer them an exciting bonus product or service for every new customer they bring to patronize your business. For example, Swift Networks in Nigeria incentivized their customers by offering a free one month internet connection service for every new customer they refer to Swift that finally makes a purchase. This means twelve (12) new customers equals twelve (12) free months of internet access for the referrer. Many businesses can leverage on the power of incentives to find new customers for their businesses.

 

5). Do Giveaways:

There’s nothing more exciting than free stuff! People would do anything to get a product or service for free, especially when you’re announcing a massive giveaway. One way to get more customers to use your products and services is to first offer it to them for free. Give them a taste of it. If what you’re offering is really good, some will come back to buy the full product or service. An example of these are SaaS solutions that offer you a free 14 day trial. Since you know you could use the service for 14 days without paying, you’d be motivated to try it out. When you eventually decide that you truly need the service, you can subscribe for the full solution.

 

6). Start An Affiliate Program:

Affiliate programs work simply this way; “you only pay once there’s a successful purchase”. People taking advantage of your affiliate program can source customers for your business either online or offline, and get paid whenever a person they refer makes a purchase. Since the people referring equally need little to no capital to source the customer, you’ll save a lot of marketing funds and subsequently acquire more customers.

 

7). Start Guest Blogging:

When you guest blog on popular websites, you could intelligently chip in a word or two about your products and services. The guest post must be highly informative and interesting to the reader. Then the way you chip in information about your services must be exceptionally creative, so that the website you’re guest blogging on, and the potential customer you’re trying to reach doesn’t see this as a direct sale.

 

8). Leverage Your Existing Networks:

This involves taking advantage of your friends, family, partners, co-workers, and more to get more sales leads. Try to provide your products and/or services to those of them that need it, and have them introduce you to people they know that may also need what you’re offering. By doing this, you could have your immediate networks help you find more customers for your business.

 

9). Do Some Free Work If You Offer Services:

If you run a business that majorly offers services e.g A web design company, and the likes, you could offer some free services to some big companies in exchange for testimonials, PR, and more. Offering these services also adds them to your portfolio even if they didn’t pay you a dime. By doing some free work, people who respect these businesses would contact you on the long run for some services they need.

This method is one great way to find more customers by building a solid reputation through servicing big brands.

 

10). Offer Discounts & Deals:

People love a good old deal. For instance, e-commerce businesses could pair up two products, slash their total prices, and offer them for sale. This strategy would get even passer-bye’s attentions, and prompt a bunch of them to take advantage of the deal as a first purchase. People love wonderful and unbelievable discounts. Offering mouth watery deals would help you find more customers faster than you imagined.

 

These ten methods are totally independent of spending on a marketing budget. Whether you’re a large or small company, you can apply these to your businesses and start earning some revenue at the cost of nothing.