Most consultants and businesses leaders spend inordinate amounts of time and money in quest of that next customer. The cost of acquiring a news customer is high. But there is something that is more costly, that’s the cost of losing an existing customer.
Think for a moment. What is the lifetime value of just one of your customers? If they spend just $250 with you per month, that’s $3,000 per year in your bank account. Maybe a $250 dollar customer doesn’t sound like much of a loss–but lost customers add up (or, rather, subtract) very quickly!
Lose that one customer and in the course of just five years that’s $15,000 dollars off your bottom line. Ten years lost with a customer would cost you $30,000. If you lost just ten customers in ten years that’s $300,000 that is out of your life. Ouch!
Keep Customers with Good Customer Service
If you are talking to a single customer, you are talking to a person who represents a sizable portion of your total income. Better be nice to them! Think also of the time, money and energy you spend to acquire customers, if you lose an existing customer, you lose the investments you made getting them on your client list.
You can’t afford to lose your customers. Don’t exchange the existing value they bring to your consulting practice in quest for the unproven value in customers you don’t even have yet. Have a balanced prospecting plan that also includes high-quality attentive customer service.
Good customer service adds up to profits at the bottom line. If you pay attention to your customers, instead of ignoring them as most business leaders do, you will have a much stronger consulting practice. Good customer service helps you weather even the toughest economic times.
Add Value to Your Customer Relations In-Between Sales Calls
Blogging can help you improve your share of customer as you also work to increase your share of the market by creating a value-added customer service channel your existing customers can use to stay in touch with you. When they subscribe to your blog feed and hear from you in-between sales calls, you stay on their minds.
You can use blogging to promote their interests too by talking them up to your other readers and linking to their products and services. If your customer’s also blog, add them to your blog roll, chances are high they will reciprocate and you will have access to some of their readers too. Even if your customers don’t link to you, you are still deepening your relationship with your valuable customers.
The good part of blogging is your blog can work even when you are not working. The 24/7 presence of your website on the internet can “be there” to answer your customers needs anytime they are ready.
Often you clients are too busy to make a call during office hours, but might check your site when they are on the road. Maybe they are held up in a lay-over at the airport, or they could be killing time in a hotel somewhere bored stiff wanting something good to read. Why would they read your blog and not the best business sites? Because you may be the only one blogging who really understands their market. You’ll have the power of niche marketing that the big business websites and blogs can’t compete with.
If your blog provides value to your customers, they will read it and will gratefully use the information from you. In the morning, when they quote you in a presentation of their own–you will become a valuable partner to them. And they will not soon forget it.
Get More Frequency of Contact with Customers and Prospects by Blogging
One of the best marketing values of blogging is the repetition of (free) contact availed to you thorough permission marketing. In promotions you have a constant problem that people don’t want to be interrupted with messages they didn’t ask for–it’s getting harder to connect with the people you want to reach because there is so much media clutter. The only way to stand out in the crowd, is to be an invited guest. Permission marketing.
What you need to get in advertising is “reach” and “frequency” to close the sale with your target audience. You generally have to reach people nine times before they decide to act on your message. According to Jay Conrad Levinson the Father of Guerrilla Marketing to reach customers once, you have to send your message three times. So if you reach them once, you have sent the message three times. Twice is six times. Three is nine, etc. To reach someone enough, you almost have to effectively send your message 27 times.
Once someone you “reach” through social media is connected to you as a subscriber, they give you a limited amount of permission to market to them. Provided what you do in terms of marketing isn’t a strain on the relationship, they will stay with you the 26 more times they need to help them to decide what to do about you.
Existing customers can use your blog as a way to connect with you and will browse your blog looking for answers to their questions, or will express their needs by commenting on your blog posts. A blog opens up a two-way conversation with your customers that puts them in touch with you in a way that also shows how you are available to meet their needs.
Serve your customers both new and old though blogging for a more profitable consulting practice.
