If you think marketing is expensive, you should try not marketing.
I find it interesting that many companies market the way that they do. Especially the larger discount businesses – they market to make a transaction, make a sale. So even though they probably have all these loyal customers, they are marketing to all their customers and their potential customers as though they are the same.
With economies of scale, nigh-unlimited resources backing them up they can do it and succeed. For the rest of us mere mortals we would probably go bankrupt long before we ever saw a return.
We can always get an advantage over these types of businesses who operate with the same lack of sophistication simply by understanding that the most valuable list for every business is the list of currently active customers.
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As soon as you are able to put together your database of existing customers you have power.
More power, control and predictability can be had in your business getting your potential clients contact information. The sooner you do that the sooner you can stop broadcasting your sales message and you can start point-casting it.
As in you can send messages through media just to them. That is the power of email and postal mail, it is a cheap way to shift things in your favour – by being able to target the most likely to respond.
As soon as you have a person’s contact details, that means you can start to nurture them, turn them from a potential customer into a real customer. If someone has given you their contact details it means that they are interested enough to want to know more about what you can offer them.
To me this means that it is only a matter of time before they gather the information they need and make a purchasing decision. Structure your follow up after they make their decision well and you can be certain that you have a dead set winner – they will in all likelihood buy from you in preference to someone else when they finally decide to make a purchase.
Marketing to get contact details – generating leads is the one of the biggest sources of wealth that you can imagine – it creates an asset you can repeatedly monetise again and again. It creates stability, it creates an assembly line of new customers.
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Finally, it means your business doesn’t come to a screaming halt should you lose access to particular media. Many businesses have been lost when Google changed its SEO algorithms or administered a Google Slap. We will see the same with Facebook in time. Having a database of leads provides a buffer while you get any issues sorted out.
