In part 8, we talked about the power of retention to make the long term profits of your business higher.
The solidarity of your customer base means that you can also grow faster. The more customers you are keeping the less you have to replace. It’s the key to long term positive growth.
Say you’ve got 1,000 active customers. If you are losing 100 per year – then you have to add 100 new customers before you can grow that year. Cut the losses in half – remember as Dr Glenn Livingston says – repeat purchasing is about your customer LIKING YOU.
That means that you’d only have to replace 50 customers to start to grow.
That means that more of your customer acquisition marketing is actually going towards creating growth. We know we are a long way deep into this series but this explains why any established business should be more concerned about retaining their existing customers than they should be about getting more customers.
It’s the easiest path to growth. Keep what you have so that you need less new customers so that your business can grow.
Focus on improving retention before you focus on your customer acquisition.
Unfortunately, many of the business we talk to are actually backwards about this. They want more customers now and they aren’t concerned with keeping – the longer you keep them the more profits you’ll bank – you’ve already gotten them – its like free money.
Also, the longer you keep them and the more they spend with you the more you can AFFORD to spend to get them.
We do improve our client’s customer acquisition systems. But we can do more to improve them when our clients can afford to spend more on customer acquisition because those customers are worth more to them.
Got it?
Good.
So get focused on retention for your business, it makes it easier to grow.
For the first time ever we are revealing our step by step blue print to build an ironclad bond with your customers, so that they keep purchasing from you for longer, they buy more of your services from you, they buy in larger quantities and take your other products and services that you might offer (if you don’t have any there is nothing stopping you from finding some).
And finally, getting them to refer without you being seen as pushy!