Needing a Boost for your Business.
Working with clients on their business numbers means I often hear that a major challenge for business owners is getting more sales. It’s become obvious to me that marketing is a critical business skill for business owners, but that one of the most overlooked elements of marketing success in small businesses is communications with existing customers.
FACT. We are all often so close to our businesses that it is often a challenge to step back and look at the obvious.
Most marketing efforts focus on acquiring new customers. But making the most of your existing customers is often overlooked. So, the true question is… are you sitting on a potential goldmine? This goldmine consists of the value that is hidden in your relationships with you current customers and from demonstrating that additional value to them.
So, are your customers missing out on value that you could offer them, and are you missing out on additional sales?
Find out by answering these questions:
- What do you have to offer your existing customers that they don’t already take advantage of?
- What are you not offering existing customers that you could be offering them?
- When did you last let them know of additional value you could offer?
- When did you last send a letter, email or call your customers?
- Did you measure the response?
- When you do communicate with them, what more could you be doing to clearly explain the specific benefits that they could receive and why these could be valuable to them?
Here are some more useful questions:
- How often do you communicate with your customers by direct mail?
- Do you test and measure the response?
- What might happen if you doubled your contact with them this year?
- Could you spend at least 15 minutes each month thinking of an exclusive offer you can make to your existing customers?
- Do you ask your customers for referrals? ‘Word of mouth’ recommendation is one of the most powerful forms of marketing.
- Do you say 'thank you' to your customers either by letter, email or telephone for their business or for referrals?
- If you have a limited service or product line - do you know of additional companies, products or services that your customers could benefit from?
By answering these questions, you can work out what goods and services your customers might be missing out on, communicating the potential value to them, deliver more value to them and generate more sales for you.