Everyone has heard the old adage, "It's cheaper to keep an old customer than to find a new one." Well, it's true. It's easier to sell to customers who have already had a positive experience with your brand. But as a smart small business owner, you don't want to wait for them to come back. You want to inspire them to return!
So, how do you do it? How do you generate more revenue per customer, from your existing customers?
Below we break out five guaranteed-to-work ways.
Past customers are more likely to make a repeat purchase because they are familiar with your brand. They already know who you are and how you operate. Well, the same works in reverse. Once a customer has purchased from you in the past, you know key pieces of information about them, as well. Consider what your past customers may like to buy based on what they've already purchased. If someone has purchased a pair of winter boots, they may be looking for a winter jacket or other winter accessories. Use direct marketing to pique their interest and bring them back to your store, increasing customer value.
If you're unsure of what customers may want, Audience Propensities within MyAcxiomPartner can be a great aid in helping you understand this. The Audience Propensities reporting tool tells you which customers are likely to spend more based on their behavior, predicting what they are likely to buy next. For example, Audience Propensities can identify customers who are in the market to buy a new car and may want new insurance, customers who recently bought a golf membership and may need new clubs, or customers who are likely ready to book a luxury cruise and like tropical climates. If you know this information ahead of time, you can use it to send them an offer they want.
Propensities look at not only what someone has bought but also what they will likely buy next, and they can be used to predict buying patterns. Use this data to identify what your customers will likely be in the market for next or complementary products or services you may want to offer them.
You can't market to a customer you don't know. Thankfully, MyAcxiomPartner not only helps you fill in the gaps of your customer data, but appends new information related to hobbies and interests, purchase behavior and demographics to give you a ton of new information about your customers to use in your direct marketing efforts and increase your revenue per customer.
For example, with Audience Propensities, small business owners have access to pre-built consumer behavior models to help them build their audience around psychographic data to understand not only who that customer most likely is, but to predict what they're likely going to do, as well.
Sample Audience Propensities include:
And hundreds more!
You can find all of this data for your current customers and then send better email campaigns, create better social advertisements and upsell using direct mail. This new insight can help SMBs better segment their customer base to speak directly to their specific interests and wants. It may also open up new ideas for marketing copy or expose marketing channels (like Facebook or mobile) you may not have considered, all while increasing customer value.
The Portrait Reports within the MyAcxiomPartner application analyze hundreds of different variables and elements about your audience to give you the demographics and psychographics of your best customers. These reports, along with the information available through Audience Propensities, give you a clearer view of your audience, identifying not only their demographics but their lifestyle and interests, as well. All of these reports can be used to help you generate more revenue from your existing customer base.
For example, the Personicx Portrait Report will help you by breaking customers down into interest clusters like Career Centered and First Steps. Once you have a few clusters to work with, you can craft messaging that is directly relevant to their interests. That means sending dog-related mailers to your customers who are dog people, and cat-related offers to your customers who are cat people. By segmenting your audience by clusters, you can use deliberate messaging and verbiage to reach them.
As mentioned earlier, the List Enhancement Services from MyAcxiomPartner take your current prospect list and enhance it with additional data. But List Enhancement Services do more than just fill in missing information holes. They propel new marketing initiatives, too.
For example, after running a List Enhancement, you may find your best customers are heavy Facebook users. With this information, you may choose to run a Facebook advertising program where you can market your new clothing line specifically to these portraits. Or, maybe you start offering special Facebook promotions or use Facebook's language in your next direct marketing campaign. If you know where your customers are hanging out, you know how you can reach them and the language to use.
This is why direct marketing is so effective for small business owners. It helps build your customer's top-of-mind awareness of your brand. Whether it's a coupon, a postcard or a handwritten note at the end of the year to thank customers, these things help you keep in touch with your customers in low-pressure ways at very little cost.
Sure, as a small business owner, you always want to be on the hunt for new customers and ways to expose new eyes to your brand. But don't forget about the revenue still sitting in your current customer database - additional sales from loyal customers. Increasing customer value begins with knowing your customers and how to reach them. The tips above can help you improve your marketing to current customers and stay top-of-mind, leading to more sales down the road.