Most for-sale services can benefit from this principal…customers like to buy more than one of a thing when they find something they like and believe in. And it really doesn’t matter what you sell . . . haircuts, cold-pressed coffee, carpet cleaning or dog walking. When your customers are making their decisions, give them the option to buy more than one at a time.

You can offer haircuts every two months, daily coffee delivery, quarterly carpet cleaning or dog walking whenever they need it. It’s why the “subscription of the month” clubs and the weekly meal delivery services are so popular right now.

Give them a discount or a bonus of some kind if they make a long-term commitment to you. Your customer no longer has to think about where they are going to go for that service six months from now, because they’ve already chosen you. You no longer have to worry about how many customers you will have six months from now.

The quick answer to that question is, more than you probably think. Let’s look at all the ways that you can connect with your customers.

The first way is with your website as a whole. You should have a clear enough idea of who your trying to reach that when they go to your site, your ideal customer immediately knows they are in the right place. Use imagery and language that speaks to them. Understanding who they are and what they are looking for will set you apart.

Another way is when they sign up to join your email list. Sign-ups often get an automatic reply letting the customer know they’ve been subscribed. These emails are typically very easy to customize. Take a moment to test yours out and see if it has the message you want. If it is a boring line of text that just says ‘Thank you, you are now subscribed,’ you can do better.

If the customers completes a purchase, what do they see after the purchase goes through? There are many opportunities for connections when you are tracking your customers the way that we recommend. For instance, if you integrate Facebook ads to your marketing budget, adding a Facebook pixel allows you to create audiences for your ads based on what your customers do.

See this post for more information about segmenting your Facebook ads. But basically, Facebook ads can target people who have ever visited your website (once the pixel is in place), people who visited your Pricing page (this means they were interested but probably not yet convinced to buy), people who abandoned their shopping carts (again, interested but not yet ready), and people who have previously purchased). With some creativity, you can come up with even more audiences based on your specific needs. Following up with each of these unique audiences is a unique way to connect.

Let’s say someone does make a purchase. Do they get a confirmation email? What does it say? If it’s just a boring line of text, make it better and more personal.

Send a follow up email after they’ve had the item for a couple of weeks checking in to see if it’s all they dreamed of. Perhaps ask them for a review. Suggest they take a photo and tag it on Instagram (make sure you follow up and like the post).

All of these are examples of connecting with customers in ways that many businesses don’t think of. But when you break it all down, isn’t it just all about getting personal? You’re giving them opportunities to get to know your business in many ways, and they’re giving you the opportunity to get to know them and exactly what they want.

What? Email marketing and a healthy and growing email list has long been seen as the holy grail of marketing. Email is still important. I’m definitely not denying the importance of keeping in touch with people that way. But I’m here to tell you unsubscribes aren’t something to stress over.

Your own expectations for your growing email list can make any unsubscribe–especially if it’s from someone you know–feel as bad as a romantic breakup. Marketers, and myself included, have told people to closely monitor your email unsubscribes to see if the message you’re producing is reaching people the way you hope it will. I still recommend paying attention to your statistics. But at some point you will realize that you can’t make everyone happy. And trying to make everyone happy and avoid those unsubscribes will bring you down.

You might even consider removing inactive subscribers yourself. If someone hasn’t, say, opened any of your emails for the last 4 months, you can remove them. In the “olden days” many businesses sent out print catalogs. They welcomed having their recipients call to cancel their catalogs, because it meant that they were no longer paying mailing costs to send a catalog to someone who didn’t want it.

Email marketing is so much more cost-effective than that. It may be tempting to think that you’re better off keeping anyone on the list. Not so. Trim the deadwood. Make room for people who really want to hear your message. And email those people. If you are constantly re-evaluating your content and adjusting your messages to try to reach the people who unsubscribe or don’t open your emails, you’re not focusing on the people who really do want your messages.

With all this in mind, everyone on your email list is not the same. Each person who subscribes is at a different point in the “journey” to purchasing your products and services. (Learn more about that here: “The 6 Levels in the Customer Awareness Spectrum) Treat them differently. Mail services are robust enough now that you can easily send a separate message to the people who haven’t bought in six months, or bought yesterday. If you want to try a softer approach before you manually remove someone, you might try a separate re-engagement tactic just for those unresponsive emails. Do that, and don’t sweat the unsubscribes.

Blogging can be a good way to achieve a number of goals for your business, but without a significant number of subscribers paying attention to your blog, achieving these goals is a lot more difficult. It can also be difficult to attract more blog subscribers! 1,000 subscribers means you have achieved critical mass. It’s enough to prove your blog’s success and also provide enough traction to keep it growing and improving.

How do you go from 1 subscriber to 1,000? This article provides constructive strategies to help you achieve that number. It also outlines questions to ask yourself to clarify what type of audience you are trying to attract to your blog and why.

Know who you’re trying to reach

You cannot build an audience of 1,000 if you don’t know who you want that audience to be. If you’re starting a juice cart, the target audience will likely be very different from the target audience of a meatball sandwich cart. Where do people who love juice shop? What blogs do they read? What social media outlets do they use? It has been said that good marketing offers solutions to problems that people may not have even known they had. think about how you will solve the problems for your audience and find them where they are.

Prioritize good navigation and search.

Evaluate your blog from the perspective of someone who has never seen it before. In fact, consider asking someone who has never seen it before to go over everything. What does a first-time visitor to your blog see first? Do your blog title and tag lines instantly communicate what your blog is about? Do your theme and colors reflect your brand identity?

Pay attention to navigation. If a reader clicks the search bar the results should immediately take them to something that matches what they were searching for. If nothing matches, consider implementing a “suggested” item. If a reader clicks on an article, it should be easy for them to get back to the main page, or continue on to another article.

Position yourself as the expert.

The visitors to your blog must be convinced that your blog is worth their time. Put your qualifications and testimonials up front. Your About Page should be thorough and personal. Link to places where you have guest posted, or to others who have been mentors to you along the way. Show off your client list. 

Make it worth their while.

Once you have identified your target audience, go after them with an offer they can’t refuse. Offer a freebie, or solve a problem. Maybe a BOGO coupon for your juice cart, or a free download of juice cocktails.

Give your content purpose.

Have a plan and only publish top-notch content. We’ve written before about how a blog post does not have to be the typical three paragraphs and a photo. If photography is your place to shine, tie your Instagram account to your website (you may need a custom plug-in to do this), but then every time you post a beautiful photo it will be right there on your blog. Add more text to describe the photo on your blog when you’re in between customers. 

Embrace social media. 

You do not have to have a productive presence on every social media platform that’s out there. In fact, that’s not recommended. Pick one and do it well, based on the identity of the people you want to attract. Facebook is an obvious choice, because its paid posting options let you target people in certain demographics and geographic regions.

But beyond that, connect with other leaders in your industry and promote their work. They may respond and promote yours. Build relationships with other leaders in your industry through commenting on their blogs, responding to their tweets, and engaging on their Facebook pages. 

Make your content easily shareable by including social media buttons everywhere you can. Posts with images automatically get more attention than those without, so choose good quality stock photos if you’re not taking your own. Work to produce content that people actually want to read.

The deeper your understanding of your target audience, the easier this becomes, as you can know where to find your readers online, know how they interact with other blogs and other online presences, and know what their problems and concerns are and what they need to solve those issues.

Once you know your target audience to the greatest level you can, the type of content that you need to produce becomes more obvious, as do the methods that you can use to promote that content.