Are Your Throwing Away Your Business’s Most Valuable Asset?
When I’m talking to business owners they usually tell me their biggest challenge is how to get and keep customers.
The dictionary defines a customer as “a person who purchases goods and services from another” And I’m sure you have used the term “a Tough Customer” when describing someone who is difficult to deal with.
Is that the way you think of a customer? Sure that is the ultimate goal of a business to sell your goods and services. But maybe,(and by maybe I mean THIS IS A PROBLEM) it’s time to change the way you think about the people who come into your business. If we only think in terms of people who are coming into our business to give us money and no matter what we need to kiss their *ss even when they are upset with us in the hopes that they don’t go out and tell everyone that they had a bad experience. (Wow that was exhausting to write! ) Well…where was I? Oh ya so if you are thinking of a customer that way you are going to have a heard time building a truly exceptional business with ANY kind of marketing.
So let’s throw that out and start making a paradigm shift that will change your mindset as well as your business! From here on out..no matter what business your are in…start using the term CLIENT instead of CUSTOMER. “one that depends upon the protection of another” Cool right? If you don’t already, start thinking of your clients as highly valued human beings who deserve and belong “under your protection”
Ok so back to what I started this with. Maybe you know where I”m going with this already when I say You May Be Throwing away your most valuable asset in your business!
I have not doubt that when it comes to your business the most valuable asset you have is a list of prospects and clients who trust you and are willing to buy from you repeatedly and recommend you to their friends and associates.
But I’m finding that most brick and mortar businesses ignore this asset.
Think about this from your prospective as a person who has gone into another business in lets just say the last week or so. Did any of the do anything to capture your name, email address or phone number or any other Personal Data? Probably not! Think of that as a HUGE opportunity missed and as more money they will now have to spend on Advertising to get more people in the door who will leave without dropping a little DNA.
It costs a lot of money in advertising and expenditure to get a prospect or client to walk though the front door of your business, to call you on the telephone, to send you an email.
You need to have a way to capture these leads and follow up with them Automatically otherwise the value of the leads you generate will be much lower and the amount of money you can afford to acquire a new client will also be much lower.
The good news is we live in one of the best times to market in this direction. In the recent past it was not very cost effective for some businesses to capture leads in a database.
A small mom and pop cafe is probably not going to make a good profit hiring telemarketers to call their prospects every night to offer them a great deal on desert.
But let’s take that little cafe that has done a great job at capturing the email address of their clients now they can send them a special deal coupon that can be printed off and used whenever they want.
This type of marketing starts with capturing an email address. Any small business can use an “autoresponder” service and send an email to every prospect and client automatically.
There are tons of services that you can set this up with for about $20 a month. Aweber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact to name a few.
Once you have entered your prospects information into the database on one of these services you can write a series of emails with offers or updates can schedule them to go out over time. Kind of a Set and and Forget it.
The important distinction should be made here, you will want to gather their information using a Special Offer that makes them want to OPT IN to get it. This is not SPAMMING your prospects and clients. They have asked to receive your offer and at anytime they can OPT OUT with these service. just putting a bunch of names and email addresses from a list that you purchased on line into your data base and sending them out is SPAM! that will work against you in the long run.
In future posts we will go into some really great ideas to gather a list of people who will eagerly await your emails as well as some other super cool marketing you can do that will build raving fans and repeat customers.
Ok so next week let’s talk about targeting only the prospects and clients that make the most since and give them a HUGE Incentive to sign up!
