How to Find Clients and Customers

Establishing and understanding your customer base allows you to identify new markets, hone your products and services, and grow your business steadily. Building a process for finding new customers requires an investment of time—and sometimes money. But there are plenty of ways you can get clear on who you’re selling to by leveraging established resources.

Here are some things to consider when developing a system for identifying and building your client or customer base.

Defining your ideal customer

It’s important to know who your ideal customer is. One place to start is by asking who your competitors and their customers are. Or, imagine a profile of your ideal customer.

• Where would that customer be located? 

• Is this customer making purchases online? 

• Are they buying in-person? 

• What’s the problem the customer has? 

Consider how your ideal customers make purchases and what decisions feed into those transactions. Once you understand your customers’ buying decisions, you can narrow your vision and focus on specific sales channels and markets that match their preferences and habits.

This way, you can fine-tune your product, meet clients and customers where they are, and anticipate their needs to bring them to your business.

Identify customer pain points

A common theme among the most successful entrepreneurs on Squarespace is an obsession with their customers’ experience. Stay curious and engaged with your customers’ needs, what delights them, and what frustrates them.

Understanding pain points can help you infuse your marketing strategy with clear messaging, humanity, and humor, allowing you to connect more directly with your customers and set you up for long-lasting customer relationships. That’s both a money-maker and bottom-line-saver, as you can be more intentional with the resources you put into your marketing efforts.

There are a few ways to research your customers’ pain points and priorities.

• Ask questions through a survey.

• Study your competitors’ customers.

• Leverage customer relationship management (CRM) and analytics software.

Analytics can pull the curtain back on how your customer thinks and makes purchasing decisions. Use this research to help you see patterns in the kinds of purchases your ideal customers are making, as well as when, how, and in what amounts.

Start with who you know

Regardless of how long you’ve been in business, but especially if you’re newly launching your brand, a good place to find customers is with established relationships: friends, family, and colleagues. It may feel uncomfortable to tap people you know, but leveraging those who already know how capable and hard-working you are makes for a lower hurdle of buy-in and credibility. 

Try offering a friends and family discount program or a new customer rate to kick things off, and ask for honest feedback to help you iterate on your business as you go. Your network will appreciate the perk and you’ll gain valuable insight into your target customer, as well as what works and what doesn’t across your product offering.

Referrals also tend to come from your established circle, too. If you can show your immediate network how great your product is, they will likely recommend it to others in their networks. Warm introductions through friends-of-friends and word-of-mouth are the best (and not to mention free) endorsements you can cultivate.  

See how a skincare consultant tapped friends to launch her services

Build and foster a community

Face-to-face interactions with your customers can’t be beat. Show up to trade shows, markets, or classes that allow you to spend time with your target client. There’s no greater opportunity for market intel. It’s a chance to share your brand, ask questions, and most importantly, listen for insights on their needs and priorities.

You can also find your community online. Think a little about the subculture your brand lives in. Social media is a great place to get involved with conversations around that culture and your brand’s product offering. Posting and engaging often can help you build your brand’s voice and visibility, and further cement your relationship with established and potential customers. 

Create a calendar for your social media strategy and plan posts regularly. The more active your business is on social media, the more eyeballs your feed will draw. You can use engagement to point people toward your website, either through a direct link or a link in bio tool.

Start building visibility in search engines

SEO techniques are about making it easy and intuitive for customers to find your business online. Start by brainstorming phrases or words that your ideal customer might search to find your business or what you offer. It can be helpful here to go back to your research on their pain points and priorities. What would someone search to solve those problems?

You can also connect an online store to Google Shopping or create a business profile if you have a physical location, so it’s easier for people to find you in product or local searches. 

The better you can match your website content to possible search terms, the easier it will be for a potential customer to discover your business. 

Offer promotions and discounts

One way to attract first-time customers is by offering a promotional discount or special offer trial period. New customers will appreciate the opportunity to try your products at a discounted rate, while established customers will feel appreciated for being part of your business. It builds loyalty and helps customers find greater delight in their purchases.

Offers like this can take several forms. 

• Free trials over a specific period

• Referral discounts (i.e. offering an established customer a coupon or percentage off with every referral)

• Buy-one-get-one (BOGO) offers

• Free shipping for new customers

Follow your intuition on when the time is right to offer each of these promotions. Over time, you can see through the data and feedback from your customers what offers resonated most.

Don’t be afraid to experiment, as certain approaches may be more fruitful in identifying brand new customers, while others help bolster the bond you’ve already built with an established audience.