What is marketing? You can go on the internet and find 20 different definitions, but I like to keep things simple. My definition of marketing is: Any and all communications you have with prospects or customers. That’s it. The goal of marketing communication is getting new customers and keeping in contact with customers current and past so they spend their money with you.

Why is regular contact so important to your bottom line?

The concept is deceivingly simple! We keep in regular contact with our current and past clients to increase the likelihood that they will buy from us again and again with no additional marketing costs.

Why do I say ‘deceivingly simple’? Because when nurturing a continuing relationship with clients, what you say is as important as how and when you say it! You can’t just blast ads at them at regular intervals, or commit one of the biggest mistakes I see businesses making in their communication; talking about you and your business instead of the customer’s needs and wants. This will cause them to hate you and tag your emails as spam!

To keep customers with high loyalty, you have to have a conversation system to deliver promotions and messages to the right customers at the right time. Here are some of the keys to making this work:

• Know the life-cycle of your products and send reminders to re-order and suggest related items that complement what they have purchased.
• Use permission based and non intrusive forms of communication most preferred by clients/customers. They don’t have time for repeated sales calls or to read unsolicited direct mail. Numerous studies show that they dislike telemarketing most of all.
• You can develop a great conversation system through data created by customers when interacting with your business. Use this information to develop practices and models to follow in your customer loyalty and retention efforts.
• You must regularly communicate with these groups: Customers/clients, prospects, investors, bankers, vendors, employees, media, civic leaders, and family members.
• They need to be communicated about many different things depending on the group, to include sales, promotions, special offers, new services or products, events, press releases, announcements, thank you messages, seasonal greetings and other items of interest.

Segment Your Customers Into Logical Groupings For Communication/Conversation Purposes

You should be able to sort your communications by groups. Obviously, the messages or conversations you have with vendors would not be the same things you would communicate to prospects. There are many software programs that can assist you in keeping separate groups, or you can use MS Excel spreadsheets. Here are the things you need to keep in mind:

• Segmenting of clients/customers lists into categories allow you to tailor the right communication to the right group at the right time with the right products and services.
• The possibilities of grouping are dependant on your customer’s needs, interests, and your company’s capabilities. A common system for all businesses is three groups: Prospects that have not purchased anything, customers who have made purchases, and GREAT customers that use your business with high frequency.

There are different goals you will have with each of these groups; you have to match your conversation/communication appropriately. Some other important tasks that you need to consider include:

• Communicate regularly and systematically! The rule of thumb used by most marketers is ‘touch’ each of your groups once every month.
• Provide special offers and news of value to them, and keep them informed of new products, new legislation that may effect their business, new applications for existing services and any new services.
• Use a skilled copywriter to produce these communications. There is some expense involved, but if you are new to this, it will pay for itself many times over.
• Always remember to thank customers and send seasonal greetings. A personal touch still means something in today’s competitive world. Keeping business costs down by not sending Christmas Cards or Season’s Greetings are not good strategies!

Often the effects of a good communication program with all of your customers and prospects doesn’t create a flood of business overnight, just like watering flowers doesn’t make them instantly grow. Look at the results quarterly, and at the end of one year. You will see the effect!

- RSS Ray

Bookmarks [ del.icio.us | Digg it | Blogmarks | Diigo | FeedMarker | Google | Netscape | Yahoo MyWeb ]

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 10:45 am and is filed under About the Show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.