Are You Forgetting to Market to Your Existing Customers

Most business owners have tried different marketing strategies and methods and there is a small percentage that dominate the market while the rest spend a lot of time and money only to generate very bad results. When they generate bad results they usually jump to the conclusion that the type of marketing they were doing just doesn’t work or that customers just aren’t responding to a particular advertising channel or platform. The truth is that most of these business owners are just not doing their marketing correctly. Marketing is a complex art that can generate ridiculously high ROIs when done well and can waste a small fortune when done poorly.

With marketing any business, most of the principals are the same and there are minor things you will need to change and some major ones depending on the platform or audience but overall when you combine knowledge and execution you will generate fantastic results. Plus you have to keep in mind that testing is very important but must be combined with analysis to make things more effective and improve your strategy. This takes time and effort but will ultimately help your business flourish. Failure to do this removes the “knowledge” part of the two part equation mentioned above. The execution part of the equation to market your business is to actually get out there in the market place and try things… in small doses at first and then as you uncover the strategies with the highest performance you can start to invest more heavily in those areas.

Nevertheless with all of this there is one major thing that most businesses are not doing and it is the single greatest marketing failure we have seen across the board with over 3500 customers world wide – this failure stands out as the common thread among all clients we have interviewed before we helped them transform their marketing efforts.

The biggest failure in your marketing is that you are not marketing enough to your existing customers.

It is statistically proven that it is easier to sell to existing clients than new ones. It has also been proven that it is far more economical to market to your existing customers. This is because the effort required to catch the eyeballs of new customers and convince them to do business with you is vastly greater than the effort required to get an existing customer to make another purchase.

Think about your own transactions. Compare the number of repeat transactions you make at certain businesses vs. the one-off transactions you make at new businesses. You will likely see a pattern where you spend 80% of your shopping dollars at the same venues throughout the year. This is part of human nature. It is easier for us to say yes to something we have said yes to before because we had expectations that were met and we believe history will repeat itself.

So the single best thing you can do this year is to start developing a strategy and marketing plan targeting your existing customers. Continue to promote your business to new customers of course but make sure that you target your existing customer base as you will be able to generate much more revenue with less effort, less time, and less money spent than if you focus solely on converting and acquiring new leads.