ADVICE
BALANCING ACT
Chasing new business versus customer
retention. Carl Reader explains what every
business should know
F
or many businesses,
particularly in the early
stages, a marketing strategy
can be tricky to establish.
Should greater emphasis be placed
on chasing new business or should
the focus be on keeping existing
customers?
Whether you’ve been in business
six months or 60 years, it makes
no difference. Business is actually
very simple. At its essence, it’s all
about getting customers and keeping
customers. If you can get that sorted,
you’re well on the way to a successful
business.TWO KEY FOUNDATIONS
But how do you achieve this? With
two key foundations in your business.
These are the essentials - the bread
and butter. And then we can talk about
everything else:- Customer fulfilment. I cannot
emphasise enough how important this
is. You need to ensure you deliver what
you say you’re going to deliver and you
need to deliver it well. Your product
works and your service is effective. - Customer conversion. Map out
the process a client takes, from the
first level of awareness of you, right
the way through to when they pay
you - and know it like the back of your
hand.
Make sure it works. Once that
journey is solid and working, that’s
when you start the next stage.
PROMOTION AND MARKETING
Only once these foundations are in
place should you start thinking about
the next stage - promotion.
I see so many newer businesses
who have focused solely on promotionand marketing without having the
fundamentals in place. It never works.
The pitfall they all face is the time
and financial outlay of promoting
hard to fill the top of the funnel, only
to realise that the conversion isn’t
there. People aren’t signing up and the
numbers aren’t stacking up.
So the business focuses on fixing
that and then their service falls apart
because they haven’t even thought
about how they are actually going to
deliver what they promised.
The solution to this is simple. Step
one - service delivery - is the real key.
Then look at the conversion. Then look
at the funnel and how to get the leads in.
Once you’ve got that mindset, it will
become clear that you need to strike a
balance. Promotion, of course, is vital.
After all, if you stop putting meat in
the sausage machine, eventually no
sausages are going to come out. But you
have to make sure your machine is able
to cope.The focus should be on maintaining
a steady stream of leads, while making
sure you juggle the customer fulfilment,
your services and operations. It’s a case
of spinning plates - keep the business
running, while you keep filling the
funnel up.
You may reach step changes where
you hit capacity issues with staffing
or location, for example. These kinds
of issues are always bound to happen,
but to succeed in business you just
have to deal with them, keep pushing
through and keep spinning those plates
consistently.To hear more from Carl
follow him on social media
@CarlReader or visit http://www.
carlreader.com.INFORMATION