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Turn Back Time
Let’s begin our story like one of those films you see on TV with a flashback in time
6 Months Earlier
So there you are looking to attract new business and clients. You do your market research and know your ideal customer. You spend money on Google or Facebook adverts. You may even have hired a marketing expert or social media guru to make sure your advertising is just right.You promote your business and products in the right way spending time and effort getting your promotions perfect so as to attract new clients. Your logo is designed well, your product is fantastic and your website or physical premises looks great.
With competition so fierce you even hire a marketing company to show your business and the products you sell in their best light. You are doing the right thing. You are doing all you can to attract new business.
Fast Forward To Today
You have attracted new customers and more important they are buying from you. What a success. You know in the back of your mind that it did cost a small fortune on advertising, marketing and promotion, but it was worth it. Spending late nights in the office making sure everything was set up correctly in order to attract all those new customers paid off big time. OK so you missed one of your kids birthday party’s and had to forego meeting up with some friends, but it was all worth it because the new customers are buying from you.
Where Many Businesses Fall Down
We agree. Spending thousands on attracting new customers is well worth it as long as the profit made from those new customers is more that what you spent. But here is where many businesses let themselves down. They don’t realise that attracting past customers back hardly costs a thing.
Yes that’s right. It costs much more to get new customers than it does to get past customers to return and buy from you. This is what most businesses forget to do.
3 Tips To Attract Past Customers
1. Ask For Feedback You identify that your customer is happy. He/she is fully satisfied with the product or service bought from you. You see them to the door and wave them a cheery “goodbye”….. and that’s it!No no no …Stop!
Think of all that money you spent trying to attract that customer in to buy from you. Have you forgotten already the extra hours you put in with your marketing consultant to lure the client in?
Do the right thing. Just as you are showing your satisfied customer to the door or writing them a “thank you for shopping with us” email. Ask if they would review their shopping experience by giving you feedback. Doing this simple thing is completely free and has taken no extra time at all.
2 Contact Information Many businesses will take a phone number or e mail address or even a physical address of their customers. However if you don’t get this information as you may not in retail customers, then ask for it.
Take note of which product or service they bought from you and then you may say something like “would you mind if I contacted you again when we have an offer on similar products/services?
You could run some kind of promotion for new customers and ask them to leave their details
You may want to run a competition or prize draw for new clients.
Make sure they give you explicit approval to contact them in the future and then add them to your mailing list. Sending out newsletters or product offers can cost very little time or money.
3 Be Personal Make full use of the information you have received from the customer or client. You may know their name, postal address, e mail address, phone number, date of birth and so on. You might have all, more or less information than this. But whatever you have make use of it.
One thing you definitely know is what they bought from you, This will tell you a lot of information about this person.
If you have their postal address then why not send them a followup note one month after their purchase. This could be to thank them once again or to check that they are satisfied with their purchase. Or how about a birthday card through the post or a happy birthday e mail.