Recently, I had over $4,000 worth of work done on my property. The experience with the sales staff and crew was phenomenal, timely, and clean.
After I paid the bill, I received one email about a new product they were launching. But nothing since! No request for reviews, no request to use before and after photos on social media, and no follow-up call six weeks after.
I understand the home improvement category is so busy they are turning down work and my small project isn’t some big six-figure commercial deal. However, I would absolutely recommend them if someone asked. I would become a local influencer for them by sharing my great experience. Heck, give me 50% off the next service and I’d send six people their way.
My point is – your list of customers is a goldmine. You just need to mine it.
What do I mean by mining data? I mean understanding the power that lies in the people you’ve already done business with. This is NOT a sales pitch for email marketing (but if you want one of those, check out our blog: https://www.midwestfamilymadison.com/2021/09/10/sell-more-without-spending-more/).
Did you know it can cost five times more to acquire a new customer than it takes to retain your existing customers?
What is repeat business worth to you?
How about their word-of-mouth referrals? Past customers already trust you. It’s your job to keep the conversation going by sharing relevant information with them. Especially in an age where advertising is so affected by privacy. Your customer list is people who want to hear from you and do business with you is skyrocketing in value as online advertising methods become less targeted.
Did you know you can take your customer list and use it in various digital marketing tools? While it’s illegal to sell your customers’ information, you can use it to find others like them. Third-party tools such as Facebook or programmatic digital ads can find other people based on the criteria of people in your list. People with similar interests, location, behaviors, or purchase intent.
In the early days of online marketing, we could set a geofence around buildings with high concentrations of people likely to buy from you and call it good. You used to be able to say “I want Men ages 25-54 in Sun Prairie WI who purchased a Kubota zero-turn in the last 6 months, and whose middle name is Steve.”
Now you need to spend more time developing content that speaks to a potential customer, than just placing your ads where you think they’ll be and scream SALE!
For example, if you sell mortgages, is it fair to say you speak differently to someone who is looking to buy their first home in the next 6 months, versus someone who’s been in their home five years? One may need a basic education while the other only cares about a strong refinancing offer.
So how do you move forward? One simple step: Take Inventory.
Where does your customers’ information currently live? Is it in a customer relationship management (CRM) system like Hubspot or Mailchimp? Is it in an excel spreadsheet you only update every couple of weeks? Even worse, is it scattered across bar napkins or crammed into that file cabinet you haven’t opened in years?
That’s the first step. Figure out where your customer list is.
To take the next steps, call us and we’ll take a walk together. We’ll help you speak to those customers at the right time, with the right message, to make them your walking influencers in the market.
