As a business owner, your customers are key to growing your company. Keeping regulars coming back helps you sustain your business, but bringing in new buyers enables you to grow it. In the competitive New Zealand industry, how do businesses actually do this? Along with mainstream marketing techniques, building a solid base of satisfied customers starts with putting them first.
12 Smart Ways to Attract Customers to Your Kiwi Small Business
Getting the word out about your business while nurturing your existing customers doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it can be as simple as implementing these 12 steps:
- Get to know your customers
- Meet your customers at their transaction point
- Tailor to the New Zealand market
- Reward loyal customers and earn big
- Stay connected with old customers
- Offer discounts and offers to new customers
- Make payments easy for customers
- Be smart with online reviews
- Be prominent in local Kiwi communities
- Join the social media conversation
- Dabble in sponsored links, posts or ads
- Transform website rankings into customers
1. Get to Know Your Customers
Putting the customer first begins with understanding who they are and how best to engage them. In a recent survey, 93% of Kiwis said they would trust a business, buy from it and recommend it to friends if it demonstrated empathy.
Therefore, as a business, it’s imperative that you show your customers that you get them, and that you’ve got what they need.
One way to do this is by creating a “buyer persona” from your own market research, competitor analysis and reviewing your own customer base. This will help form a profile of your ideal customer based on things like their:
- Traits
- Likes
- Dislikes
- Behaviour patterns
- Pain points
From here, you can tailor your marketing comms to speak directly to their needs.
To help you get started, you can play around with this buyer persona resource from New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE).
2. Meet Your Customers at Their Transaction Point
Another way to demonstrate empathy is to identify where your customers are at and meet them there.
For example, a repeat customer who you haven’t seen in a while might benefit from a “we miss you” email while someone who’s not familiar with your brand could be more incentivised with a discount code.
Tailoring how you speak to each person goes back to letting them know that you’ve understood what they need, and ultimately nurtures the relationship.
3. Tailor to the New Zealand Market
Local NZ businesses can achieve a few easy wins by paying attention to what Kiwi customers want. When it comes to buying from businesses, Kiwis often prioritise…
Supporting their local:
Kiwis are a loyal bunch. Over 60% prefer to buy their products locally because they understand how this fuels the economy and employment. As a local business owner, this is something you can sing about!
Sustainability:
A 2023 study by NZ Post showed that almost half of Kiwi consumers are willing to pay more for products and services from environmentally responsible companies, and about 85% of Kiwis prioritise sustainability in their purchasing decisions. Why not implement small steps to help your business and the environment?
Quality and value for money:
While Kiwis prioritise shopping locally and ethically, price continues to be a main consideration for them. When promoting your products or services, spend time to demonstrate how it provides them with quality, whilst giving them value for their hard-earned cash.
Digitisation:
With everything being online these days, it’s no surprise that Kiwis often buy from businesses with an e-commerce presence. Customers frequently begin their purchase journey on the internet – searching, reading reviews, comparing and finally, purchasing.
Make it as easy as possible for them to buy directly from your website, and ensure every experience on your page is a positive one, to attract new customers.
4. Hand Out Rewards for Loyalty and Earn Big
Your return customers are your business’s best friend. They not only ensure a steady stream of customers coming through the door, but they can also act as your promoters. News of good customer service spreads quicker than wildfire and is integral in attracting new customers.
So why not thank your customers for their loyalty by creating programs that reward certain behaviours?
The most common loyalty program is the coffee card for cafes. Gamifying a behaviour as inherent to customers as buying their morning coffee, not only gives them something back for a purchase they would have made anyway, but keeps them interested in returning.
5. Stay Connected With Old Customers
In this day and age, customers are spoiled for choice. They may switch who they’re buying from for a multitude of reasons – maybe their needs have changed, or their budgets aren’t what they were. So don’t be too quick to write them off. Making a schedule to reach out at relevant times with messages like “we miss you” or “it’s been a while” can be the prompt they need to come back.
6. Offer Discounts and Offers to New Customers
As important as it is to retain old customers, for a business to grow, it needs to constantly ask itself how to get new customers. Providing special offers for first-timers buying online, or limited-time discounts aligned to specific moments (like EOFY, Valentine’s Day) can help foster a sense of urgency and encourage potential customers to buy now.
7. Make Payments Easy for Customers
45.9% of customers prioritise the overall customer experience over everything else. This means that when it comes to attracting more customers to your business, the focus should be on delivering a good customer experience. A critical part of that experience is when it comes time to pay. Consumers don’t want to jump through hoops to make their purchases. They want an experience that’s as smooth and easy as possible.
One way to provide a seamless experience is by offering flexible payment options. There’s nothing worse than waiting in line for a popular restaurant only to get to the front of the queue and discover it’s cash only. Make sure you offer them all the ways they might like to pay – like contactless, cash and credit/debit card options. Need to get these set up? Smartpay can help!
8. Be Smart with Online Reviews
Social proof is a powerful tool. A good Google Review from a customer can increase your brand’s credibility and trust, and boost your rankings on Google. It’s also an efficient way to win new customers. So why not use it to your advantage?
Beyond encouraging customers to leave a review by:
- Following up via text or email within a week of purchase and encouraging customers to share their experience
- Asking them face-to-face in-store
- Implementing a review request after a customer has purchased online from your website
- Searching for mentions on social media and requesting a review in the comments
Make sure you’re also monitoring Google and Facebook for any negative reviews so that you can address grievances immediately and offer resolutions. Empathise. You can set up email notifications to make this easy for yourself.
9. Be Prominent in Local Kiwi Communities
One way you can sing about being a local business is to be involved with local Kiwi communities. From supporting charities close to your business’s heart to joining in or sponsoring local events (like festivals) and collaborating with other local businesses. Showing up locally will cement your place in the NZ market.
10. Join the Social Media Conversation
74% of customers rely on social media to guide their purchase decisions. Given this, engaging in social media marketing is integral to your business’s success.
With TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and even X climbing the ranks, your first point of call as a business owner is to know which platforms your audience is the most active across (you can look at your buyer’s persona for this). Then, you’ll need to ensure your social profile is updated regularly with content that will resonate with your customers.
Have some fun with this! Content creation gives you room to test and learn different formats – do videos perform strongly? Do your customers reshare stories?
The key here is to post consistently to stay relevant and top of mind.
11. Dabble in Sponsored Links, Posts or Ads
An effective way to promote your business and attract more customers is through sponsored links and ads on search and social media platforms.
This is a paid marketing approach but your business ads are linked to a page connected with your business and serve as a bridge for people who do not know about your business to find your products and services.
By publishing Google ads or boosting Facebook ads and posts for a small payment (even a few dollars per day), your post or ads will appear in those people’s search and social feeds. This is a great way to be “seen” by new customers.
12. Transform Website Rankings into Customers
With NZ E-Commerce set to grow by $4bn between now and 2029, it’s crucial that local businesses lean in to the online world. Regularly review your website to ensure that its design, graphics, content and load time is up to scratch. Remember, it’s all about the consumer experience!
Then, ensure that your website is easily discoverable when a customer searches online. You can do this by investing in marketing strategies like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to boost your ranking in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This will increase your visibility and drive more traffic to your site – helping you attract new customers.
Bear in mind though that SEO is a long-game. It needs time and investment but pays off by turning clicks onto your webpage into customers.
Give Your Small Business the Best Chance of Success
Ultimately, customers are the backbone of your business. The key to winning new customers and retaining old ones is to show them that you understand them.
But don’t worry. This isn’t difficult when you know where to look. There are so many local resources you can tap into to support you with your business journey. Did you know that the NZ Government offers services like mentoring and funding for small businesses? You can even get solid advice on who to speak to and when, if you’re really stuck.
At the end of the day, providing a good customer experience is what winning new customers boils down to. Show them that you get how busy they are and want to help by adopting seamless processes and forms of payment that make it convenient and quick for them to pay in a flash.
