Posted by Jackie Ewing on June 14, 2010
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.
Posted by Jackie Ewing on January 19, 2010
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 reasons why 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.
Posted by Jackie Ewing on December 29, 2009
Your Goldmine is your customer list
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.
