How can you make regular contact with past clients and current customers? Photo / Getty Images
Imagine that a year ago you hired a tradesperson to do something around your home or business.
Let's say it was an electrician and you spent $200 using their services.
What do you think happened after you used this electrician?
In most cases they did a nice job, they got paid and basically disappeared.
So for the last 12 months you have not heard at all from this electrician and you have forgotten them.
It's a problem for this electrician because over the last 12 months you could easily have referred this electrician to at least two of your friends or colleagues who could have used their services.
Let's be conservative and say you could have given this electrician one referral in the last year who then spent $200 using their services.
And let's say that 200 other customers could have done the same thing. (But they didn't because they forgot the electrician.)
That's $40,000 of easy referral sales this electrician didn't get.
In other words, in the last 12 months the electrician just lost at least $40,000 of easy sales.
Ouch!
My favourite way to stop losing easy sales is to use AVSIT Marketing.
AVSIT means Add Value Stay In Touch. The basic concept behind AVSIT Marketing is very simple.
1: Pick a group or existing clients and customers. (Choose at least 100 people to start with.)
2: Once a month send something to these clients and customers that adds real value to them.
You could do this for instance with something like a helpful added value newsletter in either hard copy or electronic copy format.
3: When you send out this added value newsletter include a cover letter or cover email that explains why you are sending the newsletter.
And invite your customers in a low key way to give you referrals if they know someone who might be interested in what you offer.
There are two reasons that an added value newsletter works well when sent consistently. First of all you get positively remembered once a month by many of your clients and customers.
Secondly because you are regularly adding value when you make contact, a number of these clients and customers will be quite receptive to giving you repeat and referral sales.
If you are not in contact regularly with existing clients and customers (in a way that adds value and gets you positively remembered) it is highly likely that you are losing a small fortune in easy sales.
(I personally use both hard copy and electronic added value newsletters and recommend both types of newsletters to many of my marketing clients.)
The advantage of hard copy added value newsletters is that they have a very high readership rate from the people you send them to.
The disadvantage is that you have to spend money on printing and postage for hard copy newsletters.
The advantage of an electronic added value newsletter is that it's relatively affordable to send out to large numbers of people.
The disadvantage is that you will usually get a much smaller number of people who will actually read it compared to a hard copy version that is sent by snail mail.
If you are interested in using an electronic added value newsletter than one business worth chatting to is Newsletter Ready.
Newsletter Ready will create a professional looking electronic newsletter for each business client and they will also send it out to your own database of customers and clients. They charge a very affordable monthly fee to do this and their newsletter service is helping many of their clients to enjoy delightful amounts of repeat and referral sales.
Newsletter Ready have produced a short, easy to read 20 page guide called 'Newsletter Magic'. The guide is crammed with useful ideas is helpful reading if you've ever thought about using an electronic newsletter as part of your marketing. You can get a free copy of this guide at this link.
My main point in this week's marketing column is very simple.
If you are not in contact regularly with existing clients and customers (in a way that adds value and gets you positively remembered) it is highly likely that you are losing a small fortune in easy sales.
"Loyal customers, they don't just come back, they don't simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you." - Chip Bell
How can you make regular contact (in a way that adds high value) with a number of your past clients and customers every month?
Who's in line for influential TVNZ role?; $1 sales: Five NZME community newspapers saved.