How to improve your profits...with customers you already have
By Dr.Kevin Nunley
Recently businesses have started tallying up what they spend to get each customer. One car dealership estimates every new customer costs at least $100 in advertising. An e-commerce firm figured out by the time they advertise and gave away free things to get customers, the cost is $250 per customer.
This illustrates one of the biggest problems businesses have. Generally, when we think of building bigger profits, we think about getting MORE customers. That isn't the whole picture. For bigger, quicker profits, also market to the customers you already have.
It would be great if your marketing hit the consumer and instantly persuaded her to buy from you now, but the process is almost always more complicated. Here's why focusing entirely on new customers can bleed your marketing budget dry with little sales to show for it.
STEPPING TO A SALE
Before anyone buys from you, they have to step through at least four stages. 1. You get their attention (the toughest stage of all since we are bombarded with hundreds of marketing messages every day). 2. Get the prospect to think about your offer. 3. Have the prospect make up their mind to buy from you. 4. Then the prospect must take ACTION to buy from you.
All four steps take marketing effort on your part. Each step can represent another ad you need to buy to march your prospects toward a sale.
Even after someone buys, they may not come back to buy again. Studies show many people can't accurately remember where they bought things several weeks after the purchase. Meanwhile, current and past customers are the easiest to sell again.
All this clearly leads to the need for you to stay in touch with customers you already have. Also include in this group hot prospects who have shown an interest in your business in the past. These are the most targeted and willing audiences you will ever find.
BUILD YOUR HOUSE LIST
Start right now to make a list of people who have bought from you in the last week, during the past month, over the past six months, and within the past year. The idea is to develop different list so you can send just the right offer to interest and motivate them.
If you clearly see that a big group buys one product or service while another group goes for a different offer, divide your customers up along these lines. You can double, triple, and quadruple your response rate by making your ads zero in on just what a customer or prospect is truly interested in buying.
Here is how this works. Meredith's sewing shop includes two major groups of customers: people who buy supplies to make crafts and people who like to design and make their own cloths. Some of the crafters only come in around holidays. Others are more active during winter months when they spend more time indoors. A large group of those who design their own cloths have no interest in crafts.
Meredith can develop specials, new products, and offers to deeply interest each of her main groups of customers. The seasonal crafters can get her mailed flyer one month before each major holiday and two months before Christmas. Others get her information monthly or only during winter months.
You can use any database program to keep your lists organized. Most word processing programs include a basic database feature, or you can use a more specialized program like Microsoft Access.
AFFORDABLY MARKET TO YOUR LIST
The main reason for working your in-house list of customers and hot prospects is to keep your business in their minds. These days people have LOTS of options to spend their money on, even when buying specialized products and services.
If you live in a city of any size, there are anywhere from a few to dozens of businesses selling the same things you do. There may be thousands more on the Internet that can take your customer's credit card order and deliver the product within a few days. If you don't work to stay in the minds of your customers, others will.
But how do you work your list without taking out a major loan from the bank? Sticking stamps on thousands of letters can add up in a hurry.
Smart marketers who have come before us have endured all the trial and error to give us two good answers. Thousands have found their best low-cost marketing tools for working an inhouse list are postcards and email.
Postcards are cheaper than letters to send and don't require the customer to open an envelope. Having no envelope is a BIG advantage. I didn't fully appreciate this until I watched my neighbor pull his mail out of the mailbox, walk over to his trash can, and start to drop letters in after only a momentary glance at the envelope.
Put a color photo or graphic on one side of your postcard. The other side should have your main offer in a bold, black headline. Follow it with a deadline for the offer. Busy people may put off buying and soon forget about you. Your postcard offer will never be more powerful than it is right now when the customer has it in his hands.
Finally, be sure to briefly tell people how to buy from you. List your web site, phone number, store location, and email address.
Building an email list is even easier and almost free. Unlike a postcard, your email messages can contain just as much information as you want them to. BUT, be careful how you gather addresses.
Get a free list management service like eGroups.com or Topica.com. Both will give you a form to put on your website to gather email addresses. You can also place a printed form in your office or store so that customers can request to get on your list. Make sure you keep the form they filled out in case there is ever a question.
Email messages tend to work best if they offer helpful information along with brief advertising messages. I put a short article with tips my customers will appreciate right at the beginning of the message, then follow it with a short ad.
There's an old saying that 80 percent of your business will come from 20 percent of your customers. Building your own inhouse list and marketing to it consistently will allow you to pull even more business from people who have already proven they like to buy from you.
Kevin Nunley provides marketing advice and copy writing for businesses and organizations. Read all his money-saving marketing tips at http://DrNunley.com/. Reach him at kevin@drnunley.com or (801)253-4536.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Website Marketing Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
This demonstration gives you an overview of IBM® Rational® Build Forge Express Edition, a global offering that provides a framework to automate and execute software processes. Rational Build Forge provides a software assembly line that can support all of your tools, technologies, and platforms so you can achieve a repeatable, reliable, and traceable build and release process.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Download a free trial version of IBM Rational Developer for System i V7.1, which provides a complete development environment for traditional i5/OS application development. IBM Rational Developer for System i is a new eclipse-based workstation offering for i5/OS application development that provides a comprehensive Integrated Development Environment for edit/compile/debug of traditional RPG/COBOL/C/C++ i5/OS applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of IBM Rational Business Developer V7.1. Rational Business Developer offers rapid and simplified development of business applications and services through Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) tools, generating Java or mainframe solutions while shielding developers from technical complexities.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn from the best! Find out how developers use Rational ClearCase to be more flexible, innovative and deliver higher quality code in the Rational ClearCase Power Users eKit. This complimentary eKit provides a collection of materials, like articles, whitepapers, and demos that can help you become a power user of Rational ClearCase.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn how to implement a build management system that uses and extends your existing automation technologies. This tutorial shows, step-by-step, how to install and configure IBM Rational Build Forge to manage builds for Jakarta Tomcat from source code.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Portfolio Management is about effectively managing portfolio value by aligning portfolio investments with business goals. This complimentary e-kit provides a collection of materials that can help you understand how IBM Rational enables and automates best practices for improved governance and clear visibility into portfolio and project performance across the entire IT project lifecycle.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Rational Build Forge Express Edition is an automation framework that packages the latest enterprise-grade technologies into a reliable, flexible and robust configuration designed and priced specifically for small to midsize businesses. The new Rational Build Forge Express eKit provides you with valuable resources – including a case study, podcast, demo, and articles – to help you increase staff productivity, compress development cycles and deliver better software, fast.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this Rational Talks to You teleconference on December 4 at 1:00 pm ET to discuss how Rational Method Composer can help meet your compliance objectives. Get your questions answered!
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Try the latest version of IBM Rational Manual Tester V7.0.1 by downloading a free trial from IBM developerWorks. This manual test authoring and execution tool promotes test step reuse to reduce the impact of software change on testers and business analysts and addresses the needs of teams performing at least a portion of their testing manually.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Explore how Rational and WebSphere software enable enterprise documentation in SOA environments. Specifically, a new integration between IBM WebSphere® Business Modeler and IBM Rational® Method Composer software can help technical writers more easily keep enterprise operations manuals in sync with changes that are made to business processes, resulting in more accurate and timely documentation that benefits the entire enterprise.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
