Reaching customers should always be your number one priority.

It doesn’t matter what your position or title is.

Reaching customers is essential to getting leads and sales. You have to continuously fill the top of your sales funnel and establish interest and trust before people will buy.

Here are three guaranteed ways to reach customers.

1. Leverage Assets

Today you have to focus on building marketing assets.

These are valuable resources that continue to pay you in the future. You can extract value over time, and the overall of the asset should appreciate.

And the easiest way to make more money is to sell to existing customers.

Established businesses already have a customer base and loyal customers. So you may already have two incredibly valuable assets that new businesses don’t.

The best example is an email newsletter list. Email marketing is one of the best performing online marketing channels.

Another overlooked example is existing website traffic. Stable, consistent website traffic is tough to come by. So don’t waste it!

You want to focus on moving people down the sales funnel. Now that you have their attention, turn it in to interest, trust, and eventually conversions.

2. Create Relationships

Another key aspect of marketing is to create relationships with other people and their communities.

But first you have to create the relationship. Social media has made this easier than ever.

And Twitter, specifically, is one of the best ways to initially reach out, get noticed, and start building relationships with influential people.

Next, you have three options.

You can give access, trade access, or rent access.

Notice that this is Public Relations 101. You’re getting referrals and credibility.

You can give (or be given) access to communities of people, trade some value (time, expertise) for access, or rent access with strategic partnerships and advertising (see final point below).

Strategic partnerships and promotions are underused but highly effective. People online today don’t want to be passive. They want to interact. So using cross-promotions with partners is a great way to get more value and exposure.

Unfortunately, this is one of the hardest stages to measure. Social media, for example, exists at every stage of the sales funnel, so it’s difficult to directly attribute sales.

3. Rent Access to People’s Attention

Finally, you can rent access to people’s attention.

This is commonly known as advertising. And it’s incredibly important.

Before you can create interest, trust, and sell to people, you have to get their attention.

And smart advertising is one of the best, most efficient ways to do this.

Online advertising is very easy to measure. So you can directly attribute real leads and sales to advertising sources.

Reaching customers is the lifeblood of businesses.

You should have a plan and strategy to reach new customers and existing ones. These are your best opportunities to increasing leads and sales.

And the most effective ways to reach customers are to leverage your existing assets, tap into other people’s communities, and rent access to people’s attention.