So you’ve just come up with a great idea for a new product or service. You just need to get people to buy into what you’re selling. How do you get those new clients through the door?
I can’t promise it’ll be easy. But if you commit to the steps below, you’ll be a lot closer to getting new leads and growing a sustainable business than someone who’s just blindly guessing. Or worse, not trying at all.
Know your audience
You know what your product or service is. But do you know who wants to buy?
You could get lucky operating on a gut feeling. Or you could become one of the many businesses that fail because they were wrong about their target.
When you really know who you want to serve, you’ll be able to answer questions like:
- Where do they spend the most time?
- What motivates them to seek out products like mine?
- What do they wish they could fix by investing in something like this?
Here are some great free and low-cost resources to get you started on audience research:
- AnswerThePublic: Enter a short phrase or word to see the most common questions and topics people are searching for. This is a great place to start since it includes YouTube, TikTok and Instagram hashtags. It also includes Google and AI Search. Free with limited daily searches; paid plans start at $20 / month.
- SparkToro: Analyzes where your audience spends time online, including what they watch, read, and follow. Free plan offers 5 basic reports/month; paid plans start at $50 / month.
- Reddit: As you’ll learn later in this post, Reddit is a versatile resource that you can use to learn a lot about your audience. Join subreddits in your niche for a direct window into what your potential clients are curious or concerned about. Completely free.
- GWI: As a tool, this audience research platform is extremely pricey. The GWI blog, however, is a completely free resource. It offers insights like what certain generations spend on, how to reach specific groups, and more. Free, downloadable reports require a work email & related details to access.
- TikTok for Business: A free tool inside TikTok’s Ad Platform that lets you explore demographic and audience behavior data for TikTok users in your niche. Includes hashtags, top content and creators in the space. Free to use with the creation of a TikTok business account.
Research the market
Once you’ve got a grasp on your target, the next step is to look at your market. Unless this is a hobby (kudos if so!), I’m sure you want to have enough new and repeat business to keep the lights on for the next 10+ years.
Market research is a multi-pronged process that will help you understand how much demand there is for your product or service and just how saturated the market is. You can also uncover the best way to position yourself in areas of high competition.
To conduct market research:
If you’re selling a new product, Amazon and similar marketplaces are a goldmine for understanding demand. You can get an idea of how much interest exists in your niche by looking at how many listings exist, plus the number of reviews on the top 5 – 10 products.
A high review count usually signals strong demand. A flood of similar product listings, on the other hand, tells you the space is highly competitive. Of course, lots of products with little to no reviews can also signal potential with the right marketing.
For service providers, use Google to search for similar businesses in your target area. Look at how many results come up, whether those businesses have active websites and reviews, and what they’re charging if a price list is available.
Booking platforms like Vagaro, Booksy, and MindBody are also valuable resources for understanding how busy providers in your niche are and what clients expect when they book.
Dig into social media as well. See what types of content exists by searching for hashtags in your niche and how engaged people are with said content. Reddit and Facebook groups are also great places to read unfiltered opinions from buyers. You can learn more about what they love, what frustrates them, and what they wish existed in your category.
That kind of insight is important to have as you consider how to convince potential clients why they should choose you.
Let the (relentless) self-promotion begin
This is probably the scarier part of the process where some of you might start to drop off. After all, fear of failure tends to hold many of us back from making meaningful steps like trying to scale a new business.
Understanding your audience and market is an important step that helps you understand where to focus your efforts, but that research means little if you don’t start putting yourself out there.
Use what you’ve learned to strategically pour energy into meeting your potential clients/buyers/leads where they’re at. If you’re a real estate agent, that might mean attending local community events or hosting free first-time homebuyer workshops.
For a financial advisor, presenting yourself to new leads could mean speaking at local small-business networking events or posting insightful content on LinkedIn where your clients are already looking for guidance.
Service-based business owners like aestheticians, massage therapists, and hair stylists often find success through a combination of regular Instagram and TikTok posts and showing up for things like expos and corporate events. An organization I worked for had one of these events and invited two massage therapists. The more memorable of the two was the one who brought a stack of business cards and coupons with her.
The point of this stage is really to show up consistently. Being ghosted or rejected is never fun, but just one “yes” is often enough to get the momentum going.
As you start to build that momentum, creating a website to collect reviews and highlight your work becomes one of your most powerful tools for converting curious visitors into paying customers. A referral program can also help you scale up faster by turning the happy clients you’ve just gained into your best salespeople.
Track wins and learn from losses
Speaking of scaling up – keep a running log of what is and isn’t working as you interact with prospective leads. This is your “test and learn” phase. Whether you’re starting from absolute zero or 1,000+ buyers, you’ll always need to keep a pulse on this process.
Understanding the why behind wins and losses will help you lean into what’s working while easing off of what’s not.
Here’s a real example of why this matters: There was a summer campaign that I helped put together with what I (and my whole department) thought had strong “feel good” themes perfect for the season. We were so sure our audiences would love it.
It failed spectacularly. Most viewers dropped within 3 seconds on Instagram ads and TikTok had under 100 views. We were all pretty bummed by the results.
We could have written this off as a fluke and moved on. Instead, I took a closer look at the data. What I learned was the video’s slow pacing hurt us the most. That type of content just doesn’t hold attention on those platforms.
With this in mind, we created another seasonal video with a clear hook and faster-paced story. The changes led to 70% of viewers engaging with more than half of the video, plus thousands of TikTok views.
If I hadn’t taken the time to understand why the campaign failed, we’d have likely continued doing the same thing hoping we’d do better next time.
Since the #1 reason small businesses fail is from lack of money, chances are you literally can’t afford to keep pouring into tactics that don’t have a meaningful return.
With that said, I also want to stress that leaning into what’s working alone doesn’t guarantee long-term success. The point of testing and learning is to strike a balance between finding fresh ways to engage your potential clients and employing your tried-and-true winners.
I can’t tell you how many times, for example, I’ve seen a specific sound or dance go viral on TikTok, only for one or two creators to publish 10+ videos a day using the exact same content format. It works well for a few weeks, but what happens when a new trend takes its place?
How can I test and learn without a budget?
I know that up to this point, I’ve spent a lot of time driving home the importance of testing and learning as an aspect of gaining new clients (and more importantly, growing your business). As a small business trying to gain traction, running experiments on top of everything else you’re doing can seem like one more thing you don’t have the money or time for.
The good news is that you don’t need to invest any money up front. Social media is a free and effective part of your overall strategy. And if you’re already on social, your time investment is just as low since the content you’re already planning to publish is, in most cases, the experiment. With each video or written post you publish, you’ll have a window into what resonates most with your audience.
You can take things a step further by joining communities on Facebook or Reddit that allow you to run small surveys or online focus groups.
Tying everything together
Of all the tactics I shared to help you get new clients for your business, the baseline truth is this: consistency is key.
You’ll likely stumble along the way and experience failure in varying degrees. The pathway to success is to look at both the good and bad as chances to learn, and keep to showing up every day. You’ll not only increase the chances of your product or service landing in front of the clients you’ve worked to seek out, but also get best chance to create a repeatable growth formula.
The fact that you’re here is a huge step towards growing your new business! If you’ve started scaling up and have some budget to work with, let’s explore how to use ads for new client acquisition next.