Total Marketing Solutions

What’s the one thing really worth keeping when you’re in business? Yup, your customers, of course. It might seem blindingly obvious but this small yet rather crucial point in our experience is surprisingly overlooked by many companies, both large and small.In a recent post by John Jantsch of Duck Tape Marketing, he argued that there are four ways to grow a business, namely: get more leads, close more deals, increase your average transaction and/or add products or services to your current offering. He was quite right to also point out that a fixation on lead generation as the only way to grow a business inevitably runs your resources dry.But there is one more element to growing business that is not included in his list: stop losing customers – plug the leaky bucket!Many companies continue to win new business, close the deal – and then head for the hills! To get long-term value from all your marketing efforts you have to do all you can to hold onto those precious customers once you have got them.Frederick Reichheld, in his book “The Loyalty Effect” (Harvard Business School Press, 1996), states that a 1% increase in retention will amount to a 17% growth of the bottom line.  Compelling, isn’t it? Even if Reicheld is wrong by a factor of 50% it still demonstrates the value of looking after your customers.By ensuring that customer attrition is reduced as much as possible, all your efforts to secure that hard-won business won’t have been in vain.  As marketing consultants we have worked with a number of customers who have had startling results, simply by turning their attention to addressing their customer churn.  This is truly an effective use of marketing resources as a “lost” customer knows the company and products or services and was prepared to buy from you in the first place.The key to slowing your customer churn is to identify the reasons why customers stop buying from you – and then do something about it. When we looked at our customers’ leaky buckets, we found holes relating to poor customer service, inflexible payment terms and lack of ongoing communication. All these issues can be easily resolved by being focused on the customer and treating them as if they are worth more to you than the value of their last transaction. Keep in touch, keep them interested, make them feel loved and they’ll keep coming back for more.

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