Archive for Referral
Determining your Customer Perspective – Can you retain this customer?
Posted by: | CommentsThis is part 3 of a 3 part series on Determining your customer perspective.
Can you retain this customer?
Do you really look at this as a consideration when developing your marketing segments and the value you place on acquiring a certain type of customer? Most of us look at repeat and referral strategies across the board for every segment. Though, I would not disagree that we should have a strategy for each but consider the segment or that type of customer that you acquire that always seems to give you the benefit of the doubt or refer business to you. Should you not be biased in how you allocate your resources to that segment? Would it not be beneficial to offer certain incentives to that segment? Is this not the measure that most determines the profitability of the customer? My first question to most new clients: Do you have customers that refer you, and why? That is the strongest indicator on the health of the brand.
A great book on the subject is The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld. The Net Promoter website is a great place to start. To calculate your company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors.
When John Jantsch author of Duct Tape Marketing, talks about the Marketing Hourglass, he says, “The top half indeed resembles the funnel concept, but the expanding bottom half, to my way of thinking, adds the necessary focus on the total customer experience that ultimately leads to referrals and marketing momentum.”
Just considering these statements above you can see why I feel so strongly that you need to consider throughout the entire marketing process your ability to maintain and build that customer into a repeat/referral customer. The initial sale should be nothing more than allow your best advocates to experience the entire brand! If you have segmented your marketing channels into: Who you want as a customer (part 1) and Who wants you? (Part 2), the next logical step is, Who will repeat and refer?
Losing customers is the clearest possible sign that customers see a reduced stream of value from the company. It is simply the strongest indicator that a brand is in trouble, even if you are replacing the lost customers with new customers. New customers typically cost more to acquire having to go through, the entire hourglass and older customers are working in the bottom half of the hourglass. Since that is true, repeat customers tend to produce greater cash flow and profits than newer ones. Referral customers are also more profitable because they typically enter the hourglass not at the top but at a much lower stage.
Ask yourself, does retention and referrals matter? Put numbers to it. How much does it cost to obtain new customers, to retain old customers? Consider, do the repeat/referral customers have different purchasing patterns? What makes a repeat customer attract other customers?
How would you go about in gaining a repeat customer? I believe customers evaluate you based on three areas: Value for the price, Quality, Service. If you provide metrics that are very responsive to these areas and continuously educate to receive input from your customer base, you will go a long way in retaining clients. However, these measurement metrics must not be at the expense of your customers time and resources.
You should consider ways of making them a part of your operations, service, sales and marketing processes. As an example, you may notice less frequent contact or payments extending. Look at these as signs to engage your customer. Building quality measurement systems into your process may be the most important ingredient in your marketing hourglass.
Related Posts:
Determining your Customer Perspective – Who do you want?
Determining your Customer Perspective – Can you satisfy these customer segments?
Where do you start your job search?
Posted by: | CommentsMost people feel uncomfortable when they out of work and start searching in newspapers, online and cold calling. Even though, we have all heard that 80% of the jobs are never advertised. If that many are not, how do you hear about them? It is pretty simple, just do the math. Most people know approximately 300 people on a casual basis. In fact, when not knowing, many wedding planners, funeral directors will use than number as a figure. So if you know 300, does that mean your wife or husband will know 300 probably not but maybe a 100. What about both of your parents, your siblings, your cousins and people that know you well?
You get the idea. But make sure everyone knows what you do, your capabilities and whether your willing to relocate. You would be amazed at how many people will pre-qualify you and may not think to tell you about a particular job. Also, ask them to tell others about you. Don’t give them one business card, give them a couple and make sure you have a page on the Internet where they can learn more. Ask people to tell others! If you can only get a small portion of these people in the other circles to start looking, you will have the best marketing campaign going for you that money could buy.
How do you start? Start with your family and ask them to give out a few business card. Work at being easy to know and hard to forget. Be quick to understand others and listen to them. But always give them a card. Remember, people like to do business with people they like so work at pleasing others. If you touch your 300 people in a week, just think how many people you may have working for you.
Build a Referral Program for your E-zine
Posted by: | CommentsI have made just about every mistake possible in e-mail marketing and I am still learning. I have a list of 2500 but only get open rates of 20%. But I also have a client that gets open rates of over 50%. That list is only 600. Who has the better list? Without a doubt the one with 600 and it create
s business. Why? It was created solely with direct sign-ups.
People want to increase e-mail mailing because it is free. But e-mail is not free. It takes effort, great content and current material. E-mail is struggling as a medium, it is still push marketing. But I have this junk mail theory, if it is cool enough, it is not junk. If an e-mail is worthwhile enough, it is not spam.
I believe an active small list allows you to target your message better and therefore have a more interested party. I would have a tendency to recommend not increasing their list but segregate it into more accurate groups. I think what makes a great list is creating more of a direct message to individual groups within the entire group. Than grow it by doing this:
A suggestion, create a referral program, it is referral week:
1. Segregate the list into groups.
2. E-mail only twice a month with more precise content.
3. Personalize as much as possible
4. Ask for referrals(forward e-mails) and if your friend signs up???
5. Become a guest writer on another’s e-mail. Leave them write on yours. Each of you, of course would get a link to that persons. Ask for a signup to yours inside the post.
6. People that have customer traffic, create an offer to acquire their e-mail, especially at point of sale or a computer that could print a coupon.
7. Get and post testimonials about your newsletter, everywhere.
If they want to create a better list, make a better offer to get the name or better yet content that someone wants to read. If you want to grow your list do it from within not by trying to acquire more.
And then to start blogging.
