10 Clever Ways to Win New Customers (No Cold Calls Required)

Business is booming. 

You’ve got leads coming in left and right, the phone’s ringing off the hook, and your inbox is overflowing with just the right kind of customers who can’t wait to work with you.

It’s the dream, right? And it’s totally attainable.

Stay tuned, and I’ll show you how.

Watch the Video or Read the Full Article Below

1. Run LinkedIn Ads

First up: LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn is a powerhouse when it comes to making meaningful business connections. But it’s not all networking and job-seeking.

LinkedIn is also a potential powerhouse for finding new customers – if you have the correct strategy in place.

That strategy starts with LinkedIn Sponsored InMail ads.

InMail ads allow you to send personalized messages to prospects via LinkedIn Messenger.

One of the (many) cool things about these ads is that they’re only delivered when prospects are actively using LinkedIn, meaning there’s little chance your recipients will miss them.

Another cool thing? You can target users in your specific demographic. And with all the targeting options available through the platform (including new interest-based targeting!), you can narrow down your audience to only those that make up your ideal customer base.

All in all, with the correct targeting in place, you can expect to see an open rate of about 20% and click-through rate (CTR) of 2-5%.

Not too shabby, I’d say.

A few best practices to keep in mind regarding Sponsored InMail:

• Keep it concise (body text under 500 characters has a 46% higher CTR), personal and relevant
• Feature a clear CTA (1 or 3 words work best)
• LinkedIn recommends initially starting by targeting a location and two other criteria and going from there (this will depend somewhat on how tight a handle you have on your target customer)
• Keep campaigns running all week long (Tuesdays see the highest open rates while weekends get the most clicks)

2. Find New Customers With YouTube Ads

I’ll start with something sure to perk up your ears (or eyes): YouTube ads are incredibly inexpensive right now.

Which means for just a few hundred dollars, you can get your brand in front of thousands – or even tens of thousands – of potential customers.

Again, reaching those customers will come down to your targeting and demographics. The good news is, most social platforms offer similar targeting abilities, so you can use similar profiles when setting up LinkedIn ads, YouTube ads, etc.

What you want to do with YouTube specifically is hit your target audience repeatedly with different creatives.

Eventually, the repeated exposure to new ideas from your company will snowball into more customers at your door.

Along with different creatives, you can also experiment with different ad formats in YouTube.

As of now, YouTube offers the following ways to display your ad:

• Display ads – appear to the right of the video above the video suggestions list
• Overlay ads – semi-transparent and appear on the bottom 20% of  a video
• Skippable video ads – viewers can skip after 5 seconds, can appear before, during or after a video
• Non-skippable video ads – can’t be skipped, and can appear before, during, or after a video
• Bumper ads – non-skippable ads up to 6 seconds long
• Sponsored cards – display content relevant to the video

The key here is to keep them short and clever enough to hold your viewer’s attention for at least 5 or 6 seconds. Check out the ad below for inspiration.

3. Interview Potential Customers

Here’s a clever little way to find new customers, without them thinking you’re trying to find customers: interview them.

Interview them in a podcast, for your blog, vlog, what have you. The key is to set up a process where you are interviewing people that you want to do business with.

See, when someone’s included in your content, they’ll be motivated to watch, read, and share it. And from that point on, they’ll be more interested and invested in what your brand is doing in the future.

So down the line when they have a problem that your type of business can address, they’ll be that much more likely to seek help from your company.

You can ask for interviews via social media, your email newsletters, blogs, etc. Ask either for volunteers to be interviewed, or include specific questions throughout your copy and ask for answers in the comments. Then, turn those responses into a separate piece of content, either with active participants or by tagging anyone who submitted an answer.

4. Facebook Ads

Facebook is still a hugely effective platform for running ads and finding new customers, but here’s the thing: you have to have an amazing piece of creative.

Which means you have to be ready and able to put in the time and effort necessary to create an ad your audience will respond to.

My advice? Go for a professional video ad.

Why? Because frankly, videos are all the rage these days, and that extends to ads.

And contrary to popular belief, making a great video ad doesn’t have to be complicated, time-consuming, or over-produced.

Instead, focus either on storytelling or product highlights.

One of my personal favorites is from Allbirds. They keep it simple but visually show off what makes their brand unique: super comfortable shoes.

As far as targeting, I generally recommend uploading your existing customer list and creating a lookalike audience and then further creating a 10% lookalike audience.

Once that audience interacts with your video ad, you’ll want to serve them additional remarketing ads to push them further and further down your sales funnel.

All in all, we’re talking about a 60-120 day window, from initial ad interaction through remarketing and conversion.

This will ensure that more and more of the people who interact with your ad are converting over time. Because these days, it’s rarely a click-and-convert process.

Instead, most businesses require a longer sales cycle with multiple touchpoints and interactions along the way, so make sure you’re accounting for that by setting up and running remarketing ads.

5. Get New Customers Through Email Outreach

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: email is a crucial part of good marketing and getting new customers.

While growing a list organically is absolutely something you should be investing in, to streamline the process you can start by buying a list.

With today’s targeting abilities, you can buy a list of almost anyone you want, based on interests, business titles, locations, etc.

Again, building a list is always best, and I suggest a pop-ups to entice users to subscribe with targeted content and offers.

However you go about building your list, you’ll want to conduct an outreach campaign.

You can approach your campaign in a couple different ways, going either the highly personalized route or sending them in mass.

If you have the proper data collected, I highly recommend launching a segmented, personalized campaign.

Your segment is somewhat pre-determined by the fact that you’ve (hopefully) determined all the recipients on your list are potential customers.

From there, you can further segment by location, expressed interests, job function, website interaction, etc., and send personalized content to each subgroup.

Or, you could go broader and send emails aimed at the group as a whole.

Just make sure that every email you send is addressing a particular pain point of your audience. What problems do they have that your business can solve?

6. Direct Mail

I’ll let you in on a little secret: direct mail still works really, really well.

In a world that has shifted dramatically towards digital, a direct piece of mail stands out and offers a personal touch that can’t be found in Google or Facebook ads.

The thing with direct mail is that it can be tailored to almost any content strategy, whether you’re announcing the release of a new book, creating hype for a new service package, or just sending a personal letter (think email, but hard copy) to introduce yourself and your brand.

Direct mail also has to be done with a strategy in mind. A one-off letter won’t get you very far, and too many will land you on a customer’s most unwanted list.

But if you can find a balance – and find a way to bring value to your prospects – then you’ve found a way to set yourself apart from the crowd and make yourself memorable.

And that’s pretty good marketing right there.

Consider including offer codes or discounts in your mailers (think Bed, Bath, & Beyond – we’ve all seen them).

Moral of the story: don’t discount direct mail. Even better, if you can use the same list as you do for email outreach, you’ll have an effective communication funnel for getting more customers.

7. Get Ranked For a Top Term in Google

No surprise here: this is one of my favorite tactics on the list.

Here at Ignite, when we’re ranked for a top term for one of our services, we get in a ton of leads – almost more than we can handle.

Good problem to have, right?

We think so too, and it’s all a matter of good search engine optimization.

See, the higher your page ranks for a given search query or term, the more people see it and the more authority they’ll accredit to your site.

That translates to more clicks, more trust, and ultimately, more conversions.

The question, of course, is how you get to get ranked in the first place.

That’s a matter of solid keyword research a working knowledge of your target audience, a good content strategy aimed at producing relevant, high-quality content, and a linking strategy in place to earn as many links as possible.

There’s a lot more to it than that, and I highly recommend you check out my full guide on search engine optimization in 2019 for more detail and actionable insights.

8. Promote Strategic Content

You’ve heard the saying that half the work in creating content is promotion, right?

It’s absolutely true, and you should be spending as much time promoting your content as you do creating it.

First, of course, you need a craft a piece of content that your audience will really want.

This will go back to addressing pain points, and finding out what it is that your customers need from your business, and why they choose your brand over others.

The form that content takes, whether it’s a free whitepaper download, webinar, an event, etc., will also depend on the nature of your business and your audience.

If you’re revealing an industry secret that will make your customer’s lives easier, host a webinar to do it and promote it through email, social media, everywhere.

Or, if you’ve put together a comprehensive guide on the best AdWords hacks for beginners, create an ebook download and push it through popups and ads.

Or maybe you have a new product to unveil. Why not host a free event and send out invites teasing the big release? (Sidenote: it’s a perfect opportunity to put that direct mail tactic into play).

The trick is to kick anyone who expresses interest into a funnel, whether it’s by collecting email addresses, phone numbers, what have you, to continue the communication and eventually have them become a new customer.

9. Get New Customers Through Channel Sales

Here’s how you should go about this one.

First, find all the businesses out there that are as similar to you as possible, but are not direct competitors. The idea here is to share business, not steal it (or compete for it).

The businesses you find should have the same clients – or types of clients – you’re hoping to attract.

From there, reach out and suggest setting up a program with those businesses that will result in them sending you business.

This can be approached in many different ways. Maybe you propose sending them a referral fee, or simply come to the understanding that you’ll both work together to send each other business.

Whichever way you approach it, setting up channel sales and referral systems can be a great strategic move for businesses.

10. Buy Another Business

This one may sound a little far fetched, but hear me out.

Whether you find a smaller or larger business, the key here is to find a business that already has the customers you want.

Once you have access to those customers, you can cross-sell them the products or services of your original business.

And while this may not seem like the soundest business decision, there are entire business models dedicated to this sort of tactic.

The thing is, by buying a new business with a client base you want, you have access to a lot of new customers very quickly – and that could very well pay for the new business expenses all on its own.

Obviously, this isn’t a decision you rush into just for the sake of a few new customers. You’ll need to be in the right financial place, or at least have a solid strategy for getting there, before jumping into new ownership.

But for those able and willing, buying a new business can be an extremely effective way to bring in new customers, and expand your own business at that income streams at that.

Are You Ready to Get New Customers?

Getting new customers isn’t as hard as it seems – especially if you follow the tactics above.

Remember, social ads, killer content, and solid SEO will bring customers to you, and a few lesser-utilized tactics like direct mail will put you in front of them.