Costs of finding new customers- and keeping existing ones

Why do so many businesses treat their customers so badly? How many emails do you receive that say “do not reply to this email, this address is not monitored”? What they are saying to you is that they really don’t give a damn about you nor do they want a dialogue with you, so don’t bother to contact us.

What is the point of that message? Not only is the sender wasting their own time- they are also annoying you in the process.

What the company may have thought would been a fantastic opportunity to engage a current customer has gone, vanished- disappeared in a pile of dust.

Instead, they will spend millions trying desperately to find new customers to replace the ones that they have just alienated.

How long do you think that they will be staying in business?

Research after research has found that it costs a lot more to get a new customer than to retain a current one.  It’s also a lot easier and cheaper to upsell, or resell a current customer than acquire a new one. 

The same process works for social networks- many businesses spend a lot of time getting the traffic numbers up but little time engaging or providing relevant content.

Like us on Facebook?  WHY?

Why waste your hard earned advertising budget driving new or existing customers to someone else’s website- over which you have no control, nor the ability to export or retain the database? It’s madness.

If your company treats customers like a second thought I have a suggestion for you- take 10% of your marketing budget that you use for new customer acquisition and add it to a customer retention budget.

What you don’t have a customer retention budget?  That’s ok, if you treat customers like an afterthought- you probably won’t be needing any budget soon.

Please wait and just for a moment stop thinking, working, strategising about new customers.

Instead, think about the experience that you are offering to your current customers.

Heck- why not spend five minutes actually talking to one of the great unwashed? It’s amazing what you will learn.

Who knows- it could even make the difference between your business’s survival and dust.

Too afraid of the answers that you might receive? Well please contact us and we’ll try and keep your business alive– don’t worry I’m sure that we’ve seen worse!

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