Get More Customers - Management Tips Part 1 of 4

The first stage in getting more customers is lead generation. You've got to identify potential customers and making first contact with them before you can do anything else. Converting all your new potential customers to actual customers is the second stage of growing your customer base, and a separate topic unto itself.

In this multi-part series we're going to focus on management tips for lead generation first, and then move on to conversion strategies. When it comes to increasing the number of customers you have, you must have a good method of contacting potential new customers or it doesn't matter how good the rest of your business is.

What follows are 5 of the best traditional advertising techniques available. They are the most effective and most common. Each of these lead generation techniques is an article or a book in itself. Use this list to spark some ideas, and then do a little research into the ones that interest you.

1. Radio & Television Advertising

Radio and television advertising offers a lot of flexibility and has the potential to reach huge audiences.

Television advertising can elicit a very strong emotional response due to the powerful combination of audio and video. Television is excellent for running emotion based campaigns because it is a very intimate advertising medium using both audio and video together.

Like television, radio reaches enormous audiences and offers great potential for emotional response using sound. Unlike television, radio is often listened to at work and in the car. This means that people tend not to go to the bathroom or go make a sandwich during commercial breaks. It also means they may not be paying attention at all when your ad is run. Like television, the time and frequency of the ad is going to be important.

Both radio and television are predominantly useful for consumer advertising (as opposed to business to business) and can be difficult to target to a specific audience. Although the costs can be prohibitive for small to medium sized companies, lower cost local stations can be a good place to introduce yourself to the benefits of radio and television advertising.

2. Newspaper and Magazine Advertising

Newspapers and magazines have very wide distributions and can be very effective places to advertise. Printed media has some advantages over radio and television as newspapers and magazines are often kept around for days, weeks or months and read multiple times.

Newspapers are a good choice for time sensitive advertisements, specific to a local geographic area. Some examples advertising suitable for newspapers are special events, weekend sales, job openings, homes or apartments for rent, etc. Notice that many of these are consumer based advertisements, as opposed to business to business ads. Although newspapers reach a lot of people, they also have a very diverse audience which makes them less effective for targeting specific markets (other than geographic targeting). They have a short shelf-life, but do tend to get read regularly so are great for last minute announcements.

Magazines have a longer shelf life than newspapers, and offer much better opportunities for target marketing. If your product is sailboat winches, then a newspaper ad would probably be ineffective because only a small percentage of newspaper readers sail. An advertisement in "Island Sailing" magazine would be much more effective. Magazines are only purchased by people interested in the specific topic of the magazine, so they are a great way to send a message to a group of people who will be more likely to be interested in what you have to offer.

3. Display Advertising

A billboard or bus shelter advertisement in the right place can get a lot of attention. You can also easily blow your advertising budget with large display ads, so make sure you know what you are doing and you make your message simple and easy to understand in a few seconds.

4. Brochures, Flyers & Leaflets

Brochures, flyers and leaflets can be distributed in a wide variety of ways including door to door, at events and on advertising poster boards. How you distribute them depends on the type of audience you are trying to reach.

5. Direct Mail

Direct mail is sending postcards, or letters to a specific list of people. You need to do some preliminary lead generation before you can use direct mail (so you know who to mail to). Direct mail helps you qualify which leads in a generic leads list may be interested in a specific opportunity. Suppose you have an existing business, and you are about to offer something new. You already have a list of your existing customers, but you have no way of knowing who might be interested in your new offering. A direct mail campaign to your existing customer list could be a cost-effective way to generate leads interested in your new offering without trying to advertise to the whole world. Many high cost advertising firms frown on direct mail campaigns, but there is one simple reason they are still around – they work.

Summary

So there you have the top 5 traditional advertising methods for attracting new customers. Consider who you are trying to reach and choose the ones that work best for you. But don't stop there, some less traditional methods work every bit as well, and are often overlooked by small and large businesses alike.

In part 2 of this 4 part series we'll look at some less expensive, yet powerful ways to get your message out.

Daryl Cowie has shared management tips with 1000s of people in over 30 countries around the world. His mission is to help you and your company turn business opportunities into business realities. Sign up for his free business management home study course at http://FreeManagementTips.com