How You Can Cut Back On Expensive Marketing...

Let’s start this week with some questions:

When was the last time you received a card or thank your note from a business that you are customer of?

How often do the businesses you deal with keep in touch with you, for instance, via a newsletter?

Using those same businesses again, how often have you been asked what the experience of dealing with them is like?

Every day we are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages from businesses eager for us to become their next customer. Of course, it is essential to have the new customer pipeline producing the correct number of qualified leads to meet your marketing projections; the challenge is that sometimes we fail to have a balance between old and new customers.

Most businesses will have a marketing budget to attract new customers, but I have yet to work with a business that has a budget for looking after the customers they already have! Depending on where you look it has been estimated that it costs between 5-10 times more to buy a new customer than it does get a customer you already have, to buy again.  What effect does that have on the profits of a business?

Businesses go to all the expense of attracting new customers, then just let them slip through their fingers because they don’t look after them!

One thing you should always assume in business is that your competition are always marketing to take your customers and, if you are not proactively doing things to keep them, they could well be enticed away. So what can you do to keep your customers? 

Here’s just a few ideas:

Get to know them. People buy from people they know, like and trust and one sure way to build trust is to have a genuine interest in your customer on a personal level. What are their interests? What hobbies do they have? What sports teams do they follow? Where do they prefer to holiday? Etc..

Most businesses, when keeping in touch with their customers via some form of marketing, are attempting to sell to them. How different would it be if you were to send them some information that is of interest to them instead? “I remember you saying that you were DIY fan, I found this really interesting magazine piece the other day and immediately thought of you, I’m sure you’ll find it interesting...”

Next time this customer is in the market for something that you provide, who will be front of mind for them, you or your competition?

Ask for feedback. In my experience, the number one reason businesses fail to ask for feedback is because of the perception it will be negative. Negative comments are great! They give you the opportunity to fix something that is not working the way your customer would like and also shows your customers that you value their feedback. How often have you been asked to fill a feedback form in and had the feeling that it doesn’t matter what you say nothing will change? It is probably the same for your customers, so imagine how refreshing and different it will be for them when you do listen and make changes. Is their loyalty to you likely to go up or down?

Mystery shop your business. It is quite surprising sometimes the assumptions we make about the customers experience. When I ask owners, “What makes you different from your competition?” the number one answer I get is, “We give good service?” Is this really a differentiator? Surely, as far as customers are concerned ‘good service’ is a given and if I were to ask your competition the same question, I would more than likely get the same answer.

Have you ever phoned your business to see how the phone is really answered?

How many times have you phoned to check for consistency?

How easy is it to buy from your company?

What is the experience like from the customer’s point of view?

Sometimes we wrap our businesses processes in red tape to protect the bottom line and from a customer’s point of view that can be a real turn off their perception can be you are only interested in taking their money.

Map out your process. The key to outstanding customer service is ‘Consistency’ and one of the most consistent businesses in the world is McDonalds. It doesn’t matter where you go on this planet, visit a McDonalds restaurant and the experience will be the same, and this experience is delivered  mostly people under 20 years of age, how is this possible?

Systems. So what customer service systems do you have in place? Does everybody on your team understand and use the system 100% of the time? Once again, how are you measuring that? How often do you look at your system and upgrade it? If systems work brilliantly for McDonalds what is getting in the way of them working for you and your business? How much is that costing you?

Business = Customers, keep them happy and coming back time and time again and your business will thrive.

If you would like to take a much deeper look at this subject take a look here.