4 ways to find and keep customers in 2016

by Alice Bredin, January 14, 2016

Targeting. Mobile shoppers. Instagram. These are the buzzwords you must know.

Fully understanding how prospects and customers like to shop and which online channels they are likely to visit can help supercharge your efforts this year. If your 2016 plans call for an increased focus on finding customers and keeping them loyal, consider these tips based on marketers’ and analysts’ predictions for 2016.

Fine-tune your targeting

As consumers’ digital footprints grow to include more information on their preferences, interests, and shopping habits, targeting is a requisite step to your marketing. Facebook^® Ads, for instance, can get your business and offerings in front of prospective customers whose ages, locations, purchasing behaviors, and other characteristics reflect those of your target audience. Making sure your business listings are complete and accurate in local search directories such as Google My Business, Yahoo Localworks, and Bing Places for Business can also raise your visibility to prospects in your geographic area.

The start of a new year may also be a good time to check your business website and social media pages to be sure they still speak to the people you most want to reach. Revisit your website keywords, too, and ask yourself if they are what your target customers would use to search for businesses like yours. If you need help choosing or evaluating your keywords, Google^® provides a free Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide that can help you get going.

Think (even more) of mobile shoppers

In May, Google announced that more searches in the U.S. now take place on mobile devices than on computers; a month earlier, the search giant began giving more weight to mobile-friendly sites in mobile search results. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly site yet, continuing to put it off will likely cost you customers and sales.

Easy-to-use tools are available to help people without web development experience build their own mobile sites. AT&T, bMobilized, and MoFuse are just a few providers of these tools. Your mobile site’s keywords should include terms and phrases that prospective customers might use on the go—they may be more likely to type in shorter phrases than desktop users, for instance, or they may rely on voice commands to search. Mobile sites tend to be lighter on content than desktop sites, but including a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page may be one way to include more of the information mobile searchers might look for. Again, having complete and accurate listings in the major search engines’ local directories is also critical—Apple’s Siri^®, for instance, relies on Bing for its searches.

Accept new forms of payment

Four in 10 consumers used a mobile payment application during the past year, according to a 2015 report by tech-focused public relations firm Walker Sands. This is up from just 8 percent the year before. With digital wallet services such as Apple Pay^® and Google Wallet™ becoming more broadly available—and more consumers preferring them for the convenience they offer—businesses can help strengthen loyalty by accepting these payments. Fortunately, most new credit card readers that support EMV technology are also equipped to accept mobile wallet payments. Your customer-facing staff should be familiar with these transactions; customers simply need to hold the top of their phones near the card reader, and then hold their finger on the Touch ID™ to authorize purchases.

Don’t ignore Instagram

While Instagram has been a quieter presence than social media giants Facebook and Twitter, some digital marketers predict that 2016 may be its breakout year. Since Facebook bought the photo-sharing platform in 2012, it has made changes that could turn the site into a potent marketing tool, such as introducing advertising in the form of “sponsored posts.” Ad recall from these posts is nearly three times higher than that of other forms of online advertising, according to Instagram research. You can create and buy self-service Instagram ads through Facebook; or, if you are not on Instagram now, you might simply create an account to begin sharing images reflective of your business. Instagram can be especially effective for reaching younger prospects: More than half of the platform’s users are between the ages of 18 and 29, according to the Pew Research Center, and one-third of U.S. teens call it the most important social network (the highest share of any network), according to 2015 research by investment bank Piper Jaffray^®.

While not all of these tactics may be right for your business, putting some of them to work may help you grow in the new year. Consistently tracking and refining your efforts can help you see the greatest payoff.

What technology and tools do you plan to try for your business in 2016? We would love to hear from you in the comments below.

Alice Bredin is one of America’s foremost small-business expert, with more than 20 years of experience in the small-business market. She has provided highly practical, actionable advice to millions of business owners through her books, syndicated newspaper column, radio commentary, and small-business forums.

This topic contains 0 replies, has 1 voice, and was last updated by Alice Bredin 2 weeks, 3 days ago.

Log In

Reset Password

4 ways to find and keep customers in 2016