Are You Throwing Away Your Most Valuable Asset?
Here is some of the best marketing advice I can offer to small business owners. Make the most of your advertising and marketing dollars. Specifically, I’m referring to utilizing your existing customer base to its greatest potential, which can significantly reduce your marketing costs.
Three Ways to Increase Your Small Business Profits
1. You can increase the average dollar amount per sale.
2. You can increase the number of sales.
3. You can decrease your average marketing/advertising cost per sale.
These will be covered in greater detail in another article, but I mainly want to focus on the third point. By decreasing your average marketing cost per sale, in other words how much does it cost you to make that sale, you will naturally increase your profits. One of the simplest yet most overlooked methods of accomplishing this feat is by utilizing your existing customer base. I have seen numerous small business owners constantly struggling to find ways to get more new customers, yet they often ignore their most valuable asset which is their existing customers. You must always think in terms of lifetime value of a customer, not just how much profit you might make on one sale.
Your Customers Are More Valuable Than You Realize
Your existing customers are not only several times more likely to buy from you again as opposed to a new prospect, they are also much more likely to spend more per sale because they already know and trust you. You have already established a relationship with them and they trust your product or service as well as the company that stands behind them. Additionally, they will also be more likely to give you referrals.
This brings me to my next point and that is the importance of actually knowing who your customers are and having a reliable way to contact them. This bit of small business marketing advice can increase your profitability. You may have heard the expression, “The money is in the list.” This holds true whether you are marketing online or off-line, but it is especially important when you are using the Internet to market your small business, because of how easy and cheap the process is to implement.
Building Your Customer List
There are several ways to build and maintain your customer list. If you already have systems in place for accomplishing this, I commend you. However, if this part of your business could use some help, here are some suggestions. If you have a business with a walk-in traffic, you should encourage your customers and prospects to fill out some type of registration card, which would entitle them to either some sort of special discount on your product or service or perhaps as a monthly drawing for some special gift. Be sure to ask for their e-mail address which you can incorporate into your online promotional efforts. If appropriate, you could also ask for their birthday, without the year of course, for which you could then send them a birthday greeting. Little things like this make a big impression since very few businesses ever do it.
For your online promotional efforts, you should take every opportunity to make sure that you capture your prospects name and e-mail address at the very least. This is very important for follow-up messages, since most people need to see your message multiple times before making a purchase. The more times you can put your company’s name in front of them and create more top of mind awareness, the better it will be for your bottom line.
Professional E-Mail Services
It is highly suggested that you utilize a professional e-mailing service such as Aweber or Constant Contact. These services offer very professional templates for your newsletter or announcements, provide very good tracking of your responses and are very reliable. You can automate much of the work so that you only have to create the message once and schedule it to go out at predetermined intervals.
You should keep in touch with your customers and prospects at least once or twice a month. Your newsletter does not have to be anything formal, but it will allow you to update your customers regarding special sales or discounts that you’re offering, announce changes in your product lines or services, personal news about your company or its staff or any other tips or advice that would be of benefit to your readers. It is also recommended that you asked your readers for their opinion regarding things they like or do not like about your company. Not only will this help to build the relationship because your customers or prospects will feel that you actually care about what they think, but you will also find out specific issues that may need additional attention.
Relationships Are the Key To Sustained Profits
Marketing in the 21st century is all about building relationships. That is some of the best small business marketing advice I can offer. Letting people know that you care is more important now than ever because of the rather impersonal environment that exists online. Taking a few extra steps to get to know your customers and reassure them that they are truly important to you will go a long ways to adding sustained profitability in your business.
