Your Competition Wants Your Customers

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

78429767

Competition is a part of business life. Some would argue that competition forces businesses to strive to get better at what they do for the fear of losing customers to rivals. Losing a few customers periodically is inevitable. However, losing too many (especially your best customers) must be avoided at all costs.

For most businesses, the top 20% of their customers account for 80% (or more) of their profits. While much thought and strategy typically go into bringing in new customers, not enough is spent on retaining existing customers. That’s where the real gold lies.

It may be a little uncomfortable to think that some of your best customers might be looking at making a change, but it’s something you must consider if you want to avoid having it become a reality. Everyone talks about taking care of their customers, but in many instances that’s a phrase not truly backed up with action. To build a fence around your customers and keep them far away from the prying arms of your competitors, you mus truly care, protect, and guide them.

Gather customer feedback on an ongoing basis.

Most businesses put a lot of hard work into getting a new customer. But after they become a customer, little effort is put into nurturing that relationship. A customer should never be taken for granted.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day operation of your business and lose touch with what’s happening outside your doors in the marketplace. Phone calls and emails to customers can be a great way to communicate and stay connected. But to do it on a large scale can be unrealistic. Informative company newsletters and surveys can help keep your customers up-to-date and give them a way to express their needs and concerns. These efforts can provide an early warning system to catch a customer jumping ship before it happens.

Tell them what you do.

Your competitors will do anything to steal your customers, including promising the moon. You know that some of these are false claims or teasers to get their foot in the door. Some of your customers may not know that. Your job is not only to provide a great product and service but also to continually remind customers about the value you provide that your competitors can’t match. If you don’t tell them, no one else will either.

Informing your customers through educational marketing content is a powerful way to keep them engaged while differentiating your company as one that truly cares about their success (not just your own).

Where are the weaknesses?

To help plug the holes in your business, start thinking about things from your competitors’ point of view. After all, they’re always looking for any weaknesses they can exploit, so you should, too. That way, you can shore up your weak spots before they get out of hand and, in the process, strengthen your position in the marketplace.

To discover your weaknesses, talk with your customers. Ask them about the areas you could improve. Stay up-to-date with industry trends that could create a possible gap in your defenses, too. You can’t buy every bit of technology as soon as it hits the market, but you can stay informed so you can address concerns with your customers when they arise. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Be proactive in your customer communication.

“There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” ~ Sam Walton, Wal-Mart

Customer retention starts with providing great service and value. Getting to the top is hard work, but staying there requires just as much effort. Being aware of the competition while shoring up the weak areas in your business can go a long way in helping keep your customers coming back.

Monopolies and the lack of competition aren’t in anyone’s best interest. Keeping your best customers satisfied is. Use competition as a motivating factor to continually improve your services. Communicating with and showing appreciation for your customers will give you an invisible force field to keep the competition out of your backyard.

Be Your Business

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

Every business would like to grow sales and profits. The future of the business and the livelihood of its employees depend on it. So, as business owners, we go to networking events, make phone calls, send out mailers, and even spend time on social media. Yet growing the business is never as easy or simple as that.

Making prospects aware of your products and services is important. If you don’t do it, no one else will. But that’s only one part of the equation. There’s something far more important that needs to be done first.

When a doctor goes into surgery, steps must be taken beforehand to prepare the patient. No patient would want the doctor to arrive on the day of surgery and begin poking holes and cutting skin at random to find the issue causing the problem. Yet many businesses go about prospecting and looking for new customers in the haphazard way of the unprepared surgeon.

To win more business, first you must isolate the pain points. What’s the problem your business can solve for your prospect? The more descriptive and specific you can describe the pain, the better. Yes, it takes a little effort to find specific problems for each type of potential customer, but you should notice trends and common traits you can use to attract a wider group of prospects.

After you’ve identified the major pain points, you can present the solution your business provides to solve the problem. Now it’s time to communicate this message.

Having a focused message before you market helps attract and retain the types of customers you want in the first place. The tighter the message, the better return you’ll get on your marketing spend.

Not many prospects care how many years you’ve been in business, how pretty the customer lobby is, or how incredibly innovative and cool your brochure or website look. Your prospects care about themselves. They worry about their problems. Outline what those issues are, and then tell them how you will make their problems disappear.

Oftentimes, your prospect may not even be aware of the problem. It’s your job to show them. Maybe you can save them time or money solving a problem they didn’t even know about. This is how you can make your print communication and all your other marketing messages more powerful. Identify the pain and show them how you can make their lives better by engaging your business.

It’s your knowledge and awareness of specific problems that will earn the trust of your prospect. Customers are attracted to businesses that best educate, communicate, and present expertise in the problems they want to solve. The best way you can do that is to not just represent your business but BE your business.

Being your business essentially means focusing on your brand and what it communicates to your marketplace. Your brand is more about your message than your logo. It’s more about content than design. Once you have your message finely tuned to what your audience is seeking from your business, only then will prospecting and growing your business feel like swimming with the current rather than against it.

Your Unique Selling Proposition

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

137590863

What’s a unique selling proposition (USP)? First the <em>Wikipedia</em> explanation:

<blockquote>”The unique selling proposition (a.k.a. unique selling point, or USP) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to understand a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced those buyers to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. Today the term is used in other fields or just casually to refer to any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects.”</blockquote>

A strong USP can mean the difference between being “just another company” and one that’s unique and memorable in the minds of customers and prospects. To do this, a USP must accomplish three things.

<ol><li>Each USP must make a strong appeal to the target audience. Not just words, not just product puffery, and not just window advertising. It must say to each reader: “Buy this product, try this service, and you will get this specific benefit.”</li>

<li>The benefit must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. In other words, it must be unique.</li>

<li>The proposition must be strong enough that it can attract new customers to your product or service on its own.</li></ol>

Here are some USPs you might recognize:

<ul><li>Nike: “Just Do It!”</li>

<li>Apple: “Think Different.”</li>
<li>Miller Brewing: “Tastes Great, Less Filling”</li>
<li>KFC: “Finger Lickin’ Good”</li>
<li>Subway: “Eat Fresh.”</li>
<li>Energizer: “It Keeps Going, and Going and Going…”</li>
<li>Head & Shoulders: “You get rid of dandruff.”</li>
<li>Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less — or it’s free.”</li>
<li>FedEx: “When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight”</li>
<li>M&M’s: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand”</li>
<li>Metropolitan Life: “Get Met. It Pays.”</li>
<li>Southwest Airlines: “We are the low-fare airline.”</li>
<li>Walmart: “Always Low Prices. Always.”</li></ul>

Your USP is your unique answer to these questions:
<ul><li>Why should I listen to you?</li>
<li>Why should I do business with you instead of anybody and everybody else?</li>
<li>Why should I do something instead of nothing?</li>
<li>What can your product do for me that no other product can do?</li>
<li>What will you guarantee me that nobody else will?</li></ul>

There are two types of USPs: explicit and implicit.

<strong>Explicit USP</strong>
<ul><li>The message you lead with</li>
<li>Clearly stated in your marketing materials</li>
<li>Involves promises & guarantees</li>
<li>Aimed at new customers or first-time buyers of a particular product or service</li></ul>

<strong>Implicit USP</strong>
<ul><li>What customers love most about you</li>
<li>Things that keep existing customers coming back to you</li>
<li>May get mentioned by customers in testimonials & word-of-mouth referrals</li>
<li>You may go for years and never state it publicly: “We operate with absolute integrity.”</li></ul>

Whether you have a new business or an existing one that needs a stronger USP, here are some ideas to help you come up with a USP that translates to a benefit the customer wants. A strong USP can have some or many of these characteristics.

<ul><li>Faster service</li>
<li>More personal service</li>
<li>Services above and beyond the basics</li>
<li>Guaranteed on-time completion</li>
<li>Guaranteed delivery</li>
<li>Guaranteed friendliness</li>
<li>Guaranteed live phone support</li>
<li>Better prices</li>
<li>Exclusivity (“Ours is the only package that includes ‘x.'”)</li>
<li>Superior quality</li>
<li>Convenience</li>
<li>A better promise or guarantee of results</li></ul>

Your USP should be unique, useful, simple, and memorable. A well-thought-out USP can help you position your company in a powerful and strategic way. It’s never too late to strengthen your USP. Start today.

Please Don’t Ignore Me

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

78631099

The bulk of marketing budgets is often reserved for acquiring new customers. Much energy, time, and money is spent pursuing prospects that have a marginally small chance of ever becoming a customer. There’s a flaw with this strategy.

The simplest and most effective way to boost your bottom line profits is to remember who brought you where you are today: your existing customers. If you aren’t consistently advertising and staying in touch with current and past clients, you’re missing out on the best way to continually grow your business.

For every month that goes by without making contact with your past and existing customer base, you’ll lose up to ten percent of the clients you’ve worked so hard to acquire. Retaining clients is therefore an extremely important business growth strategy.

Selling your services to new customers means earning their trust. It takes hard work to build this trust. When a prospect becomes a customer, you have only begun to earn their trust. You cannot expect to maintain that trust without consistent, frequent contact that adds some value for the customer.

One of the best ways to maintain and build that trust is to communicate regularly via a newsletter. An effective newsletter has a mix of about 80% infotainment (fun and informative content that may not have anything to do with your particular industry) and 20% information about your business or industry.

The recent trend of companies switching to all digital email newsletters is now reversing with the realization that actually getting the emails opened and read is far more difficult than many were led to believe. Also many survey respondents favor a printed newsletter that they can hold versus one more email that clutters their already overfilled inbox.

Sure, email newsletters are inexpensive and require no postage, but there is a cost involved when the recipients never see or open the messages. By contrast, a printed newsletter is still one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to stay in front of your customers without overtly selling them.

The Lifetime Value of a Client

Perhaps one of the reasons past clients are ignored is because some business owners don’t really know the lifetime value of a client. An existing client who is treated right, is not ignored, and is communicated with on a regular basis will not only return to do more business themselves but will also refer your company to those around them. Therefore the actual lifetime value is often five, ten, twenty (or even more) times the value of an initial sale.

That’s the power of relationship marketing and the reason why your existing customers should get the bulk of your marketing budget. If you treat your existing customers well and communicate with them on a regular basis, you may not need to chase as many prospects as you have in the past.

To learn more about defining and understanding your lifetime customer value, please visit: http://hbsp.harvard.edu/multimedia/flashtools/cltv/ (requires Flash).