How many times have you found yourself in a discussion with one of your clients where you heard them say, “I didn’t know you guys did that?” or “I never thought of taking that approach.” I am not sure what your answer is but I can tell you I have heard that far too many times. All of us work hard to build awareness of our products or services through advertising and PR efforts. We work so hard to attract new clients and in the meantime we ignore the largest assets every company possesses. OUR OWN CUSTOMER BASE!
Sure you may have an excellent customer service plan but how often do you put effort toward communicating with your clients on an ongoing basis? Do you share successes you’ve experienced with other clients or show them how they can be maximizing the effectiveness of the product or service you have provided them? Well, if you are like me your answer is probably, “Not as well or as often as I should.” Don’t worry, you can change that today and eliminate it as future mistake.
Let’s look at your company offering logically …
Every single one of your customers chose your company because they felt you were qualified to deliver them the results they were looking to receive. When someone chooses to work with my company, Mindscape, they do it because they have seen the results we’ve helped over 500 companies receive over the past 8 years. Whenever someone decides they need to make a purchase, their goal is spend their money with a company who they believe can deliver the absolute best results. I understand some companies make this decision based on relationships and others simply make their decision based on price. The ultimate factor in the decision making process typically is whether they believe the company can deliver on the promise they are making.
If you believe that is true, you need to ask yourself one simple question. “Am I doing everything possible to ensure my clients will continue to purchase from me?” If you can’t easily spit out three or four things you are doing to further strengthen your relationship with your customers, you are probably missing the boat. Many companies stop all communication with their clients once the sale is made. This is the costliest mistake you could ever make. If you find yourself in this situation, you need to immediately get to work and create a plan to continue the communication channel between you and your existing customers.
Simple Communication Strategy
Whether you are offering a product or a service, there are certain benefits your clients are expecting to receive through their buying decision. There are also benefits they may not be aware of. If you can do a good job uncovering these benefits, even after the initial sale, you will continue to build trust and deepen your relationship with your customers.
Email Marketing provides every company with the ability to provide frequent communication with your customer base very inexpensively. I know everyone has email inboxes that are becoming increasingly full of junk, and why would they want to receive yet another email? This concern is extremely valid, but the way you approach your email marketing strategy can make it a complete non-issue.
If you focus on providing ongoing education for your clients showing them how to maximize the impact your product or service can deliver, they won’t only view your email as something they don’t want to miss, they’ll also love you and become a raving fan! Most companies fail with their email marketing efforts because they can’t seem to stop sending out one way advertisements which are constantly trying to get you to pull out your wallet or checkbook. Be different.
You should develop an email marketing strategy that is focused on education. Send out a couple emails each week which provide highlights on how another client used your product or service to receive a certain result. These type of real world examples might just give your new customer an idea which not only solidifies, in their mind, their decision to choose your company, but also will increase the value of your product offering. If you are focused on continually improving on the value you offer your clients, even after the sale, you will create a fan base and they’ll be anxious choose your company again.
Think about it for a second. You just invested $10,000 because a sales person showed you how you could turn that $10,000 into an additional $100,000 of revenue in the next 12 months. They seemed to know what they were talking about, and showed you how a very similar company had experienced those exact results. You made your buying decision two weeks ago and everything seems to be going in the exact direction you hoped it would. As you are thinking about it you get a notification that you have a new email. You realize it is coming from this sales person and in the email he is explaining how a brand new client just used their product to create an additional $400,000 in annual revenue. Not only that, but the sales person explained exactly how they did it. You think, “WOW, I didn’t realize it could do that!” Then once you think about it you realize if you made one simple change in your process, you could realize an additional $1,000,000 just by thinking about it differently.
If you use a combination of your website and email marketing to continually provide value and ideas to your existing client base, you will find yourself working hard to simply keep up with the demand. Using email marketing to constantly ask for business is the wrong way to go about it and a quick way to be viewed as a pest. Using email marketing to provide ongoing value through educating your clients will help you turn your website, and your clients websites into ATM machines.
Take a few minutes to think about ways your clients can maximize the benefits offered through the purchase of your product offerings. Once you’ve come up with some ideas you may have not thought of before, send an email to your clients and share this information with them. They will be extremely grateful and your relationship will ultimately strengthen.
