How to get a customer for life
Avoid the trap of chasing a short-term and losing a customer for life
Here is a problem that a lot of our clients start out with …..
‘I’ve got a great product/service or opportunity for new customers, my current customers tell me that what I offer is great BUT I just can’t find enough customers! And then when I do find a new customer they only make one purchase and then I never hear from them again. What am I doing wrong?’
Does this sound familiar? Do you struggle to find new customers and those that you do, don’t keep making purchases from you?
In this article, we will help you identify who your customer is, how they interact with you, what it is they would like from you and lots more!
Having spent most of my career building sales and marketing structures, here are two mistakes businesses make: -
- Being short-sighted will kill your business
Most companies reward AND focus on getting the first sale. They attract a new customer and get as much money out of that initial engagement as possible. Once they milk that customer for every last cent then they forget about them and move on to the next name on their list.
When you have got a customer to engage or even better, buy, one of your products then you have done 95% of the hard work. Now add the 5% by giving them an amazing customer experience.
Engage with them post-sale and give them a reason to buy again.
You now have a customer for life. It is not always about how many new customers you get, but how much profit your business makes!
2. Without a product journey, customers will go to your competitors
We Get Outdoors has now done over 100 interviews for our Outdoor Business Promo Series. We have looked at 100s of outdoor business websites. What often strikes us is that there is always a logical first sale that interests us but beyond that, we get lost.
There isn’t a product journey for us to follow and stay engaged with the brand.
It is so important to think about what is the lifetime value of a client and not how much I can make today.
We recently worked with an outdoor business in North America. The business had 12,000 new customers coming through every year. Most of them came via Groupon, which pretty much means you reduce what you charge by half. You then give Groupon half of that half, which means you make 25% of what you would charge for the same service. The business is struggling to make more than $40,000 a year. If you had 12,000 new customers visiting your business every year then the opportunity to do something is amazing. Imagine what you could do! The question we worked with was …..
‘How many people repurchase from you and come back to have a second and third experience with you? What are we going to offer to get that % as high as possible?’
We worked to help the business understand what their customer wants, who they are, and how we can actually bravely sell them. The results were staggering!
How to move forward?
We have found one outdoor business that has got this right. They started the business with $500 and now are a multi-million dollar business. They haven’t built this by finding new customers every month but by retaining a big chunk of those customers who visit them for the first time.
Not everyone wants to grow that big but imagine having more customers coming back to you each month. Imagine how many people will be talking about and using your product or joining you on a trip!
They manage to get people to come back every month by doing two strategic things.
- Accepting that they might not make the massive profit margin off the first sale
While the urge to recoup all your start-up costs is massive. You may want to start paying yourself what you deserve. This might solve lots of problems today, but they will only lead to bigger ones in the future. Your aim is to get customers to know you, like you and come back. The more profit you plough back into your business within the first 12 months the faster you will grow! But don’t scare off customers the first time you meet — they may never come back!
2. Building trust with a client to help them move through the product journey to the highly profitable products
Think of your product journey as a staircase. Your aim is to get them to the bottom step as simply and easily as possible. Give them a great first experience that incentivises them to buy the next product on the staircase. Something that builds on the first product, costs a little more and gives a more ‘wow’ experience. By repeating this process your customer will continue to climb your product staircase.
By not trying to take everything at the first engagement you are building trust with your customers. This not only keeps them coming back but also gets them to start telling their friends about what they have experienced. Free marketing!!
We have covered some of the challenges that businesses face to attract and more importantly keep a customer for life. Think about how much a client is worth to your business over a lifetime. How much money do you want each customer to spend with you each year and then plot the product staircase they are going to follow. Don’t get short-sighted and greedy too early in the relationship.
Remember the aim at the end of a first date is to get a second date, not propose!!
We Get Outdoors is passionate about getting people into the outdoors and helping businesses give them an experience that keeps them coming back.
If you want to jump on a call with the We Get Outdoors co-founders and see how you can take your outdoor and adventure business to the next level then book a FREE consultation HERE
If you’d like to promote your outdoor business in front of around 80,000 outdoor enthusiasts, across 30 different podcast platforms and social media, then we would love to have you on our podcast — Outdoor Business Promo Series. Simply click HERE to book an interview slot.
