It may sound tacky to ask, but who is your best customer? Are you better off marketing to your existing customer base or to potential new customers? They’re both critical to the growth of your business, but where is your best dime spent?

Believe it or not, if you’ve done your job right, your previous customers are a walking, talking, and breathing advertisement! Getting them on board with your new projects first is the smartest way to grow your business. Marketing to new clients (prospecting) is important too. But the cost of converting a previous customer is far less expensive and much farther reaching. When they’re happy, they tell their friends, co-workers, and even family members. You can’t buy that kind of credibility!

How Do You Retain Your Customers?

Communication is the key. It is critical to stay in front of your customers 25, even 30 times a year! I’m not talking about spamming, I’m talking about relationship building. I’m encouraging you to remember to make your best offer to your previous clients first, and give everyone opportunities for feedback.

Every company offers specials, combined deals, or even reduced bulk rate products or services during strategic marketing periods. If you’re not, realize that successful businesses are. Don’t sell yourself short (you can’t afford to work for nothing), but if you aren’t currently doing this, take a good hard look at your offer and see where you can spearhead choice ideas to get them in front of your customers in an affordable fashion. Maybe that only means altering your payment schedule. Whatever that means for you, don’t miss out on the advantage that specials can make to your bottom line.

If you’re an email subscriber to Inside Line, you are a viewer who comes to us through the services of AWeber. In the Do-It-Yourself section of our Web site navigation, you can learn how to take advantage of this easy to learn method of getting your name in front of your clients on a regular basis. This is one of the most effective ways to reach your previous clients and new prospects at the same time. AWeber provides a sign up box for your subscriber and then you use one of several template forms to broadcast an e-mail special, regular newsletter, birthday message, or tips that are useful to your readers.

AWeber takes the subscriber information and sends out an ‘opt-in’ message that gives you permission to reach them via e-mail. You create the thank you messages, the content, and schedule when they go out. Everything else is automated and several different messages can be scheduled at the same time to different lists. Your readers also have the ability to ‘opt-out’ whenever they wish. If you want more detail in your template or one that is not offered, we can do that for you for a small fee. We custom built the Inside Line.

Okay, HOW Do You Stay In Touch With Them That Often?

• Blog updates 2-3 times a week
• Weekly newsletters
• Quarterly promotions
• Birthday messages
• Thank you messages for purchases made
• Customer service surveys
• Social media presence
• E-book offers

How are you retaining your customers?

Photo Credit: Jungle Jim’s International Market on Flickr

Related Pages: DIY Email Marketing

It is a cold and blustery Saturday morning, so it is a good time to catch up on some of the things I’ve been meaning to get done. One such item is catching up on reading through a few of the trade publications that came in this week’s mail.

As I was thumbing through one particular publication something familiar struck me. On a recent trip to somewhere we needed to go, my wife and partner commented about a billboard advertisement. It created a little conversation about how much has changed in the past few weeks, but after looking through a few trade publications and magazines it suddenly sparked an important thought.

Is it Time-Sensitive?

Many messages we wish to convey to our customers are time-sensitive. Our business environment is always changing and lately it changes with each blink of an eye. Let’s look at the one that sparked this particular post…gasoline prices.

Current Events are … Current!

The billboard and the ads in the magazines were centered on gasoline prices being at all time highs. In a print media there is a lead time between when the ad is conceived and when it is presented to the consumer. The same thing goes for billboards.

Factor In Lag Time For Print Media

In this particular case, both are touting the high price of gasoline. Although this was a major concern just a few weeks ago, in the blink of an eye prices are nearing record lows by comparison. Gas was over four dollars a gallon; now it is just under two dollars (in Neenah, Wisconsin) so the message has lost a great portion of its intended impact. Sure, it serves as a reminder of what the prices were, but for the most part consumers live in the present. If the message wasn’t written to be a reminder, it too will lose its impact towards the market it was intended to reach.

Timing is everything. Remember that print media of any kind has a lag factor associated with it. Broadcast media is nearly instant. New media (Twitter, Facebook, all forms of social media) message can be updated with just a few keystrokes or even by cell phone. Make sure you consider the timeliness of your message before selecting your media venue.