If you have an online business, prospecting isn't just essential for growth; it's vital for survival. Prospecting is how you find customers, and customers bring the sales that fuel your cash flow and profits.
What Is Prospecting?
Prospecting is the work you do to find the right people to sell your products and services to.
Here are four strategies for prospecting online. Together, they answer the "who, what, where, and when" of your marketing.
#1 Focus on Your Target Audience
Identify the attributes of your ideal customer and focus your prospecting there. Those attributes include demographics and psychographics, but don't stop at gender, age, and income. You'll do far better when you also understand the lifestyle and buying behaviors your best customers share.
Build a target list of prospects who match those attributes. The better that list fits your ideal customer, the more of them you'll convert. A few good sources:
- Referrals. Ask your customers to refer people to you. Referrals are often the easiest prospects to convert, because the trust and credibility are already there through the person who referred them.
- Your network. Look for prospects among the people and communities you connect with on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and other networks relevant to your field.
- Website visitors. Visitors are a rich source of prospects. An email opt-in form turns anonymous traffic into a list of interested people, so if you don't have one yet, make it a priority.
- Lead magnets. Offer something genuinely valuable, a guide, checklist, webinar, or free tool, in exchange for contact information. This builds a permission-based list of people who've raised their hand. (Steer clear of buying email lists: it wrecks your deliverability, violates email platform rules and privacy laws, and rarely produces real customers.)
#2 Create a Compelling Message
The quality of your message is the difference between a prospect ignoring you and a prospect reaching out to buy. There are three jobs your message has to do:
- Get the prospect to open it,
- Inspire them to read it, and
- Compel them to respond.
Fail at any one of those, and you'll likely lose the sale.
Ever wonder why email scammers are so effective? They're often selling something you don't even want, yet they get you to open, read, and respond. As sales strategist Jill Konrath has pointed out, scammers know how to use the right words to capture attention and build curiosity, strong enough to prompt action even when people sense something's off.
You can build that same (honest) curiosity into your subject lines, emails, voicemails, and conversations. The key is to identify what your audience is genuinely curious about, and then the golden rule: don't give away the answer. Make them read and respond to find out.
#3 Reach Your Audience with PPC, Retargeting, and Email
Online advertising costs money, and your costs rise with the type of ad and the audience you target, which is exactly why focusing on the right audience and a compelling message matters so much.
One option is pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising: your ad appears on the search results page, you set a budget, and you pay only when someone clicks through to your site. The key is choosing keywords that attract your target audience, and installing conversion tracking on your landing pages so you can measure results.
You can stretch your budget further with retargeting (also called remarketing): showing ads to people who visited your site but didn't buy, to bring them back to finish the purchase. Retargeting used to rely heavily on third-party cookies, but those have become unreliable: Safari and Firefox block them by default, and privacy rules require consent. So today's retargeting leans on first-party data and the ad platforms' own tools instead. Google Ads remarketing and Meta's Pixel and Conversions API let you re-reach visitors using each platform's logged-in audience data, while Customer Match (Google) and Custom Audiences (Meta) let you upload your own email list to retarget people you already know. Set these up with proper consent and, ideally, server-side tracking. However you do it, retargeting reliably lifts conversion rates, because you're reaching people who've already shown interest.
Email is a third way to reach your audience. Send a series of messages that build curiosity and pull readers in, with clear links to your landing or order page so they can act.
#4 Reach Prospects When They're Most Likely to Buy
Timing affects your results, too. The best time to reach prospects, by email or ad, varies by audience and industry, so there's no universal "best time." Test different days and times to learn what works for your audience, and take advantage of the send-time optimization most email and ad platforms now offer, which uses each person's own behavior to deliver your message when they're most likely to engage.
Keep seasonality in mind as well: for a seasonal product, response rates run highest just before and during the season, and drop off afterward. And avoid blasting your message at the exact times everyone else does; when inboxes are most crowded, your message is easiest to miss.
Next Steps
Prospecting is a continuous activity. Start with practical goals, then monitor your activity and results so you can keep improving.
Set a target for how many prospects you need in your pipeline to hit your sales goals. If you need one sale a day and your conversion rate is 1%, you need at least 500 prospects each business week. And unlike the physical world, where salespeople have to be in the office, online sales happen 24/7, so with the right plan, you can achieve a lot more.
Want help building a prospecting and advertising strategy that fills your pipeline? Get in touch with our team.
This is part of our guide to marketing your small business online.
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