How To Find Your Customers Online

Maybe you’re not an “online person”.

Perhaps the only time you use your computer is to read your email, search for something on the Web, read the news, or see pictures and other updates from friends and family.

It would make sense then, if you don’t really “get” how the web is supposed to help you sell more of your products and services.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you are a vitamin wholesaler, provide language translation services, sell timeshare resales, or write books, your clients and customers are online. If you can intercept them while they’re there, in a way that adds to the quality of their lives, rather than intruding upon it, you’ll be light years ahead of your competition.

Because there’s another truth. Most companies either go from quick fix to quick fix, never really getting anywhere or find leads and customers haphazardly, with no real system, hoping for the best. And it’s sad because the resolution is pretty simple.

Pinpoint what your target market is doing online. Then get in their path. Instead of fighting the uphill battle of getting visitors to come to you in some kind of vacuum, go to them.

You’re probably thinking, well whoop-de-doo for you, Ms. Has-it-figured-out. How exactly do I do that?

Of course I can’t provide all the answers to that in one day, but let’s think about it for a minute. Where are your customers online? Better yet, how do I get to them, or get them to come to me? We’re going to come back and answer that more specifically momentarily.

First, let’s look at the question in general terms.

According to the US Census Bureau, three out of five households are online, now that’s just in the United States, and translates to 110 million households. About half of those have high speed internet access. Think about how your business would suffer if you turned away business from 60% of your clients. If you’re not making your presence felt online, that may be what you’re doing.

Or think of it this way – what if 60% of your customers referred you one more paying customer this month? What is the math on that for you?

If you count wireless, the market is even bigger than that. Half of Americans have accessed the web using a wireless device such as their cell phone. And if you’re talking about awareness and occasional use, 77% of US Adults have used the internet. There’s no way you can say your customers aren’t online anymore. Somewhere in that 77% is someone who would like to do business with you.

Let’s go beyond that a little. What are people doing online, and how often are they doing this? This is important because this will illuminate how exactly we can come across your specific customers and clients.

If you think that most people are not “online people” get ready to be shocked. 73% of Americans use the internet on a daily basis. The same study tell us:

* 58% of internet users are reading or sending email,
* 50% are using search,
* 38% are getting news,
* 38% are online just to pass the time or for fun, and,
* 27% are using social networking sites.

(Of course some people are doing more than one of those things, so the numbers aren’t going to add up to 100%)

Those first four activities are the top four actions people take online, email, search, news and leisure. And although social networking is fairly new as a mainstream activity online, more than one in four people are using them. Now, if 73% of Americans use the internet, and most of them do one of the top three activities, then obviously, you need to be where that’s happening.

Your customers should be getting periodic emails from you. Your site should be showing up in search. Your company should be making news, online and off. And if your newsletter or website can help them pass the time when they are bored, in a way that’s related to your products and services all the better. If it can’t, it can certainly contribute content to the social networking sites where they might be spending those idle moments.

Let’s get back to your specific site now. How do you narrow those people down to folks who are interested in what you specifically have to offer?

The initial step here would be making sure there’s a market for what you have to offer. Search for the problem your product is the solution to, and find out if people care enough to pay for that solution, then that they can afford to do so. There’s a lot of people who are looking for jobs at any given time, recession or not.

All of those people aren’t willing or able to pay for resume services or for job seeking advice. If your solution has a price tag on it, target the people who see the value in paying for information they may find freely online. Make sure you remind them what that benefit is.

Can an expert give them more precise advice? Do you have a track record of matching jobs to people? Would the time wasted looking for the information possibly cost them the open position?

Now, once you find where the pain in your market is, even if you aren’t planning on relying on search engine traffic, the insight you can gain from doing simple keyword research is invaluable. keyword research can tell you who is searching, what context people are discussing products like yours in, who your top competitors are, and most importantly, give you an intelligent estimate of how large the market is for your solution.

Many is the entrepreneur who is shocked to find that upon discovering the perfect solution, and marketing to the perfect market, that there just aren’t enough of those people in the niche they’ve chosen to make a living from month to month. Armed with this information, it’s easy enough to expand a product line into nearby niches, but if you don’t know this, you might spend months attempting to gain traffic that just isn’t available.

Once this research is over, it’s time to attack on all fronts. Make sure you are reaching them in all the ways discussed. Start with one primary way to gain customers, like advertising, then add ways to make money from existing customers, like a new product. It’s simple enough to find your customers online if you know what they’re doing and where you need to be to be connected to them. Then all you need is a system for keeping the visitors coming to you consistently.