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.
As I was going through my regular twice daily skincare routine this morning, I thought how I need to apply the same steps to my business. I do my skin care routine so I can care for my skin and help it survive the best way possible in today’s environment. I really want to do the same for my business!
So, here’s a sneak peek into my life and how I apply the same techniques to taking care of my business as I do to taking care of my skin.
1. Cleansing.
Washing my face with cleanser and water, takes away the dirt and debris that has accumulated throughout the day, or night.
Cleansing in my business allows me to remove the dirt and debris that collects in my voicemail,
Does this need some cleansing?
email and paper files. If I have a routine and do it twice a day, I can stay on top of it and not let the crap accumulate and drag on my attention. If I don’t do this step regularly, I get easily distracted and often start down the procrastination road!
2. Toning.
Applying toner to my face both freshens and revives my skin and prepares it for the arrival of the good stuff – moisture. It’s kind of like preparing a surface for painting or varnishing.
I make a lot of lists
Toning my business is when I get my lists done and focus on certain tasks that must be done each day, get them done and prepare my slate for whatever the big project is that day. Without this step, I don’t get nearly as much done in a day. I can wander from task to task not really finishing anything very well.
3. Treating.
While treating my skin isn’t always a daily task, it does happen two or three times a week. Treating can be exfoliation; cleansing masque; hydrating masque or something special to boost my skin.
In my business, these treatments are the purging of all emails, files, junk mail, people and sometimes even clients who are not helping either move my business forward, grow it or enhance it in some way. I have to decide to do this or I may end up running my business by someone else’s rules.
4. Moisturizing.
This final step is what my skin has been cleansed and prepared for. The moisture applied brings
Adding moisture for optimum performance
it back to it’s optimum appearance and performance and, let’s face it (pun intended!), helps me defy time and stay looking so young!
Relating to business, this final step is the constant reading and adding new information to my business. like nutrients and moisture for skin, a business needs a constant influx of new information, exposure to different people and ideas so it can continue to grow and stretch.
As with skincare, if the steps are not done on a regular routine basis, they lose their effectiveness and you go backward a little. But, you can start a routine at any time. So if I do forget a step or two here or there (and, believe me, I do!) I can just start a new To-Do List and get refocused on what I have to do and start from the first step again today.
Do you send a newsletter to your clients and prospects? It could be an email newsletter or a print newsletter, but you SHOULD be sending one or the other, if not both.
Most businesses are unaware that their customer list is their most valuable asset. Communicating with them on a very regular basis is key to you being at the forefront of their minds when they are ready to buy whatever product or service it is that you offer. As mentioned in a previous blog called Mining for Gold,
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.
There are many options for you once you’ve made the decision to begin a newsletter. I’ve narrowed them down to three basic approaches:
Create your own email newsletter for next-to-nothing using your email software.
I don’t recommend creating your own unless you have the skills, talent and time to do it. Believe me, it is not an easy task! It may not end up looking like you want it to and you will be limited by your email service as to how many you can send out at one time.
2. Use an email service:
Using one of the sources mentioned above (or choose from a myriad of others) is a great way to get started. It means you can take an existing template, customize it to your business in a few easy steps, add your interesting content (always the most time-consuming and difficult part, I say!), import your customer data and email out your newsletter. Easy to follow instructions allow you to focus on the content that will most interest your customers.
3. Delegate or Outsource:
While this may cost a little more to get going and keep going, it allows you the freedom to continue doing what you do best -working on your business so you can make more money! Pay someone else to develop the newsletter format, find the content – interesting text, photos and video – prepare the customer database and get it emailed out on a regular basis. Once the process has been started, you’ll be amazed at how smoothly it runs – you may only have to input a little article to personalize the newsletter – proof it, and give the OK to email it out on schedule.
Our recommendation for this type of service? Ewing Enterprises of course! This is one of the services that we provide to our clients. If you are ready to take the plunge and have someone do this for you – someone who LOVES to do this!! – take a look at what some of our clients have to say about our newsletters and service:
Kim Williams
With Jackie’s help & support we finally got around to sending out newsletters to our past guests. I never seemed to find the time to do it myself but it’s has been fun working with Jackie as she does all the hard work! Jackie’s encouragement to write my ‘piece’ each month has provoked a new interest! And the past guests have been delighted to receive our communication – it’s like a continuation of the holiday time they spent with us. Working with Jackie at Ewing Enterprises has made it all so easy.
Jackie has proved to be totally reliable & trustworthy – she meets the deadlines set and is the sole of discretion.
David Leather
She has taken on the onerous task of categorizing our data base, which is at least 7 years old, and writing monthly newsletters which are both factual and easy to read.
I learnt that Jackie Ewing does this as part of her consulting services and I asked her to explain to me how it worked. She visited my
Joanne Kjolsen
office and the only effort was in the formation of the names database which was just a matter of data entry – not difficult at all by any standards and now I have a created list in the correct format to now receive monthly newsletters.However I had no idea about what to say/what to write/format etc, and once again, Jackie has this down to a fine art. She comes up with the topical news snippets which are of interest to my client base both potential and existing and creates a newsletter for me and all I have to do is provide a couple of photos of things done during my month and a few words about one or two topics and she does the rest,.I proof read it before it goes out and voila! I know my customers are reading it as I see them mention something in it during correspondence with me, it might be something that I did or something that was mentioned in the newsletter. Either way, it’s a very simple and informative way of keeping me in touch with my clients on a monthly basis without it appearing as a direct selling piece. It totally is, but they see it as a fun thing to read about the place they love, Orlando!
You’ve heard enough about Facebook by now to know that you probably should be doing something about using it in your business. But like many others, you are probably also wondering WHY and HOW?!
This article will address the WHY part of that question.
In a nutshell, if you add a Facebook Fan Page to your overall marketing strategy (and Yes, you should have one of these!!) you will supplement your efforts at driving traffic to your website or phone.
Here are 3 really good reasonswhy your business should have a Facebook Fan Page and why it is imperative that you do it NOW as opposed to “just as soon as I can find the time”.
Excellent Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Very effective communication tool
It’s FREE!!
Let’s take a look at these in more detail so you can see how they apply to YOUR business.
Excellent Search Engine Optimization:
If you have a website for your business then you surely are aware of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how much time and energy is spent on this. The idea is if your website is optimized with the right keywords and meta data, the search engines will find your website, like what they find and then place you high in their rankings of other websites similar to yours. Good SEO will place your site high in the organic (non-paid for) listings when folks search for your product or service. A Facebook Fan Page will supplement all of your other SEO efforts.
You can add content daily and change it out at will. The static pages of your site once indexed, remain that way because they typically don’t change much. Search engines like new and updated relevant content and will index it well if they see it happening on a regular basis. Posts to your Facebook Fan Page can be done daily, even hourly if your audience is receptive enough.
You can add unlimited photos and videos to your Facebook Fan Page. Tag and describe these with your top keywords and you give the search engines many more reasons to visit and index your site.
Very Effective Communication Tool:
Of the 350 million users that are on Facebook almost daily, do you think any of your customers are among them? Absolutely! So use Facebook to converse with them in their style. Of course, first you need to get them to come to your Fan Page and become a fan. You can do that many ways – email signatures, newsletters, mail invitations. Just find the customers that choose Facebook as their favored communication tool and interact with them regularly. Take a llok at Coca Cola’s Fan Page to see how they interact with their fans and you’ll see how powerful a communication tool this really is!
It’s FREE:
This the greatest reason why your business should have a Facebook Fan Page – it’s completely Free to use! You can double or triple your SEO efforts at no cost to you, but some well-planned time. The speed that good fan pages are showing up all over the search engines is phenomenal! If you don’t take advantage of this, you will most certainly be left behind.
In case you haven’t heard about the newest, most fun way to connect with people, here’s an update on Poken – a replacement for your conventional business card. Use a Poken usb to create your unique identity complete with contact details, social media network information and use it to connect with others and exchange your contact details.
Say goodbye to business cards and say hello to Poken!
Visit ClubPoken.com for a complete overview of all the new Pokens in the collection and make sure you get your own!
Here’s a quick video introduction to Poken, presented by Stephane Doutriaux – creator of the Poken.
