Whatever your business, the lifeblood of that business is your customers. Without them, you don’t have a viable business and it won’t make you any money.
Too many businesses make the mistake of constantly seeking new customers to sell to while ignoring the customers they already have. A lot of money is spent on marketing to prospects while little, if any, is spent on marketing to the existing customers.
Making your customer feel special
Just think about it, you’ve spent time, effort and money in getting a customer to buy from you – are you just going to sell to him once, or are you going to make every effort to sell to him over and over again?
If you can communicate to your existing customers that they are special to you, you will find it far easier to sell to them than to a crowd of unknown prospects. Business owners need to remind themselves constantly that their customers are people, and people like it when they are made to feel special in some small way.
So, how can you get this idea across to your customers? By communicating with them on a very regular basis! With the advent of so many new mediums in social media – Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In to name but a few – some people think this is the only way to communicate now. That would be an incorrect assumption as not all of your customers will be in that particular social media audience. There are still those customers out there who want to get something from you via email and snail mail – yes, people still do want to get something in the mail!
My recommendation for effective communication with your customers would be to have several different ways of communicating with your customers
phone
email
direct mail
some well-chosen social mediums
It’s my belief, based on my own experience with clients, with businesses that I do business with, with some of the major corporations that we all deal with on a
Which ones should you use?
daily basis, that using all of these together will reach far more of your customers in their way, at their time. If you choose to use only one method of communicating with your customers, you will be limiting your success with them. Your decision to choose only one could be based on time, money and/or effort – a very normal way to deal with this. But email is relatively inexpensive with a wide reach; social media is free for the most part and direct mail can be inexpensive but have a great return on investment (ROI).
I recommend that you try several different ways at once, integrating them whenever possible. If your website is the ultimate place you want your customers to land, then all other communcations with them should point them to your website. You can connect your blog to your website, use Twitter to promote your blog, use Facebook to promote your blog and your website, use an email newsletter to direct people to Twitter, Facebook, your blog and your website. Are you starting to see the pattern here?
Next post will discuss each of these in a little more detail.
Feel free to ask questions that you want addressed.
Instead of spending all of your time and money on looking for new customers to buy from you, have you thought about “mining” your past customers for “gold”?
What I mean by that is, if your customers have purchased from you at least once before and have enjoyed their experience of dealing with you, the chances that they will buy from you again are very good. So, have you contacted them and asked them if they are looking to buy something similar? If they are not, have you asked them if they would recommend you to their family, friends and acquaintances? Their recommendations can be an excellent source of unpaid “advertising” for you.
We all know how referrals work in our own lives – you have a great experience at a restaurant, or see a great movie and you tell all your friends about it. There is a very good chance that they will try that restaurant or movie based only on your recommendation!
Your customer is talking about your business!
Well, that same principle applies to the business of selling. Personal recommendations from your customers to THEIR personal circle will generate some form of business for you. It might not be in the form of immediate sales, but over time, it will result in sales and repeat customers. Remember that what other people say about you, your product or your service is far more powerful than what you say about it yourself.
This is where the power of Social Media can really help this concept. You should be using the power of excellent social media tools (e.g. Twitter, Facebook Fan Page) to communicate with your customers on a level that is NOT about selling. You should be learning about them, from them and giving something back to them. The power of the personal circle and recommendations can be seen daily on Twitter and Facebook and you should make that a part of this mining process.
You also need to communicate with your customers on a regular basis through email and print. If you don’t have an email newsletter, you are losing out on the potential of building really lasting, long-term relationships with your customers. Your communication to them is not a bother, if they don’t unsubscribe. They may not react immediately because they are not ready to buy. But when they are, because you communicate with them regularly, you are at the forefront of their mind when a particular need arises. Some will respond better to print so you should also use direct mail as part of your mining process. Continue to “mine” your list and communicate with them very regularly.
A nice reward
If you offer to reward your past customers for referring folks to you that do end up purchasing with you, you will have a better response. It doesn’t have to be anything major – although most folks would really appreciate a 53” Plasma screen TV! -it could be a discount off their own next purchase with you; it could be a $25 Starbucks card; it could be free pizza for a couple of nights – the possibilities are endless. They are limited only by your imagination!
If your customers ARE going to purchase again, then make them an offer they cannot refuse – while still making a decent profit from the sale. Be creative and make your offer so compelling, that they will WANT to come back and buy from you and are ready to buy now.
So, my advice is to turn to those that you have done business with in the past and “mine” them NOW for some “gold” in your business that is waiting to be found.
I spent a good 45 minutes this morning going through my inbox and making instant decisions on which email lists to stay on and which ones to unsubscribe from. Frankly, my inbox was just getting too crowded with stuff that I either never open or intend to open and read but never do. C’mon, who else doesn’t have this particular problem?!
Well, what started out to be a relatively quick and simple task turned into a bloody customer service nightmare – hence today’s blogpost! Thankfully, not ALL of the companies I was unsubscribing from made me jump through hoops, but many of them did. Being an email and direct marketer myself, I do understand the reasons behind it, but anything more than 2 steps is just downright stupid. One particular company had me take 4 steps and then had the audacity to tell me that they would email me to confirm my changes – for crying out loud people, I just told you I didn’t want any more bloody emails from you – get with the program and service the customer, don’t drive them away forever!!
Something I noticed about the really good ones was that their system put my email address on the screen where I had to click the unsubscribe button, confirming to me that I was unsubscribing that particular email address. It was quick and painless, with no more than 2 clicks to finish the process with a confirm page on my screen before I closed it out. Unfortunately, they were very few and far between. Most companies made me type in the email address I wanted to unsubscribe. As a customer, I much preferred the former.
My least favorite of all, Build A Bear, made me go to their website – which took way too long to load – and then go through no less than 5 choices to find the email unsubscribe function. Once I found it, and entered my email address to unsubscribe I got a pop-up message to tell me that if I unsubscribed from the email newsletter that I would also forfeit my Stuff Fur Stuff membership and any existing points in the account (my daughter’s account). Does anyone else find that completely incomprehensible? What the heck does an email newsletter have to do with a membership where you accumulate points for the things that you have already bought or plan to buy in the store? With blood boiling, I hit the unsubscribe button, only to get yet another page asking me to confirm my changes…. again! Why don’t you just call me stupid, stupid?! I can tell you, this particular Mom will NOT be shopping at that store ever again. I hope whoever designed their unsubscribe process gets a right butt-kicking at some point in their miserable lives.
On another note, while somewhat annoying, I did complete the couple of surveys that the very savvy companies used, trying to find out why exactly I unsubscribed and if there was anything they could do to improve the emails for me. My favorite was from Sur La Table. All of the good ones also gave me the option to immediately opt back in. And the really, really good ones thanked me for being a customer and said they were sorry to see me go. Even though I know it’s an automated process, it still did it’s job – gave me warm and fuzzies about those particular companies. I will in all likelihood continue to patronize those businesses even if I don’t want their email newsletters.
Many of them I will probably also continue to interact with in different ways, such as Twitter or Facebook, because I can control that interaction myself. The big majority of the companies that I unsubscribed from today, had their social media links prominently displayed close to the unsubscribe button. These guys at least recognize that I am not the only one limiting emails and moving my interaction with them to new mediums. Kudos to them and I’m happy to remain a customer of this savvy set – Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Sur La Table, PacSun and Macy’s.
I just spent a couple of days in Miami Beach at the Florida Governor’s conference on Tourism. On my way there I was somewhat optimistic that perhaps we were looking at a slight rebound in travelers to the Sunshine State. Now, I’m not so optimistic!
With a 30% budget cut to the funds Visit Florida have to promote tourism to Florida, their efforts will be severely hampered. With a new concentration on social media and reconnecting with previous visitors, they are targeting the customers that they KNOW have already visited and will be an easier sell to get them to come back. Same idea should apply to all businesses in the hospitality industry – know your customers and keep in touch with them. When they are ready to buy, you should already be on their mind.
Entertaining speech
The opening night speaker was humorist and author, Dave Barry. He was very entertaining with his take on life in Miami-Dade County and in Florida in general! Other than take my mind off the issues at hand, I couldn’t really relate his speech too much to the current state of tourism – but he was still my favorite speaker of the conference!
The dinner that night was fantastic. The culinary staff at the Fontainebleau Hotel outdid themselves and earned a standing ovation from the entire conference for their fabulousness!
Governor Charlie Crist surprised the masses by showing up and saying a few words at the conference. According to those that have attended the conference in recent years, the Governor has NOT had time to show up for his own conference on tourism. Given that tourism provides so many jobs and so much tax revenue, perhaps Charlie has become more informed and realized that he might need to show a little support to the industry royalty…….”and the times, they are a changing!”
Overall, the message appeared to be – we are in for a continued bumpy ride in tourism. Hold on and do whatever you can to promote your niche to your existing customers. Social Media was touted as being a great source to communicate with your customers – Visit Florida has begun several initiatives to incorporate social media into it’s dwindling marketing budget.
A recent report from the Orlando Sentinel (apologies, the link is no longer working – they have removed the article) more or less confirms that Florida Tourism is suffering. Orlando as a top tourist destination is perhaps suffering more than most.
NEW – short video clip from the Governor’s Conference.
I had the pleasure of another power failure today – one of the hazards of living in Orlando! Anyway this time all my office equipment powered down and did NOT power back up like it usually does. After much rebooting, I did finally get it all back…except my Broadband router. I tried it in several different power outlets, but to no avail! Being the equipment non-techie that I am, I first called my IT provider to report my router being powerless. He asked the right questions of me so we knew the router was from the cable or phone company. Excellent customer service as always, that’s why I pay him more than the average – he is better (for me) than the average.
On to the next call – the cable company that provides my internet service. Several layers of automated voicemail lay the grounds for a build up of frustration. Hey, I can’t help it if their automated system can’t understand my Irish accent! Anywhoo, finally got to speak to some nice lady (not located in the US, but I cannot guess correctly where she was!) who was absolutely no help to me at all, except to get a case number from and then transfer me to tech support – which is where I thought I had already been.
Very nice chap had to break the bad news to me that No, the router was not part of their equipment so he could not assist me. But on a good note, the cable modem showed a nice healthy signal!
On to the phone company. Yes, I have VOIP service and no signal. This time I got a very helpful chap who asked a few questions and then agreed that the router was indeed dead because it did not power up. (It almost makes me afraid to wonder about the level of moron that these poor customer service folks have to deal with!) So, he took about 4 minutes to process a replacement router, free of charge, with free express shipping and to confirm that it would ship out to me bright and early tomorrow morning. Now THAT was customer service that I can live with. Yes, there are all kinds of VOIP phone services being offered today, but no matter what issue I call my phone company with, they solve it and don’t charge me anything for solving it. That is why I will not change my service to the other, cheaper, solutions. Again, I am willing to pay more to get better service.
Have you checked lately how your customer service people are servicing YOUR customers? Might be time to “secret shop” them and find out for sure!
