Guide
How to get more customers through the door.
Most advice about getting more customers is about ads. That is the most expensive route. A small business grows cheapest on three things: being found by people already looking, turning first-time visitors into regulars, and letting happy customers do the marketing.
This guide walks through eight moves in the order we would do them. None require a marketing budget, and most are done in an afternoon.
1. Complete your Google Business Profile
When someone searches for a café nearby or a hairdresser in their neighbourhood, your Google profile decides whether they find you. A complete profile with correct hours, fresh photos and answered questions beats a half-finished one, every time.
Check especially that the category is right, the phone number works, and the photos show the place as it looks today. A profile with photos from 2019 reads like a closed shop.
2. Collect reviews, every day
The number and freshness of Google reviews is one of the clearest ranking factors in local search, and the first thing new customers read. A 4.3 with 80 reviews beats a 5.0 with 6.
The key is asking at the right moment: right after a good experience, while the customer is still in the room. An NFC card by the till makes the route short enough that it actually happens.
3. Turn the first visit into a second visit
A new customer is the most expensive to win and the easiest to lose. Businesses that do well live off repeat visits: the customer who comes every week is worth fifty times the one who came once.
The simplest tool is a stamp card. Make it digital, in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and it never gets left in another jacket. The customer sees 7 of 10 every time they open their phone, and the reward pulls them back.
4. Reward regulars, not discount hunters
Blanket discounts attract people hunting discounts, and they leave with the next offer at your neighbour's. A reward that requires repeat visits, like the tenth coffee free, only rewards the behaviour you want more of.
Keep the reward concrete and nearby: something from your own counter, reachable within a few weeks. Buy 9, get the 10th is a classic because it works.
5. Build a customer list you actually own
Instagram followers are a borrowed audience: the algorithm decides who sees you. A loyalty club is your own list, with consent, that no algorithm can take away.
With a member card in Wallet you need neither an app nor a mailing list. Joining is one QR scan at the till, and your messages land on the lock screen, not in a spam filter.
6. Let gift cards bring in new customers
A gift card is a customer paying to introduce another customer. The recipient has often never visited you before, and arrives with money already spent.
Make the cards visible by the till before holidays, and sell them digitally so they can be bought last-minute. Christmas Eve at 2 pm is the gift card's finest hour.
7. Send reminders, not adverts
A message to everyone is advertising and gets ignored. A message to those who have not been in for six weeks is a reminder and works. The difference is timing and selection, not the words.
Three good moments: when it has been a while, when a customer is one visit from a full reward, and when you have a quiet week that needs people.
8. Measure return visits, not just revenue
Revenue tells you what happened. Your return-visit share tells you what is going to happen. When the share of customers who come back grows, the rest grows by itself.
Pick one number to follow per week: share of visits from regulars, new members, or reviews collected. One number you look at weekly beats ten you never do.
You do not have to do everything at once. Start with the business profile and the reviews this week, add the stamp card next week. KORTA is free for your first 100 customers, so starting today costs nothing.
