brandarticles marketing First sale, second sale
First sale, second sale
Written by Alan Bright-
font size
decrease font size
increase font size
It costs somewhere between 4 and 7 times more to gain a new client than it does to keep an existing one. Most of us recognise and accept this figure, but have we stopped to ask why this should be? What are the factors that make new clients so much more expensive to acquire and how does brand management influence client retention?
Imagine a football stadium. The pitch is full of ordinary people, just milling around, maybe interacting with each other. In the stands, company representatives are shouting about their products. Waving placards and blowing whistles, each one is trying to be noticed by the people on the pitch. The sound is deafening and it’s pretty close to impossible trying to hear one voice above the others.
In the centre of this crowded stand is you. You shout along and wave your placard. Sometimes you think you’ve caught someone’s eye down on the pitch, but it’s fleeting. The thing is that most of the people on the pitch have no idea who you are. They don’t even know that they need your product. They are not looking for you, they are just ‘there’.
After a while you start to notice that some areas in the stands are different. Some people are wearing really bright colours. Others have a much bigger placard than their neighbours. Some are shouting into megaphones. There are even some areas where many people have the same placard and are shouting the same thing. One enterprising character has even managed to hack in to the scoreboard and is displaying his messages there.
You realise that these people are standing out from the crowd. They have managed to gain a tactical advantage by putting more effort into their ‘presentation’. They have spent more money on their outfit. They have spent more money getting themselves a bigger placard. They have sent more people to the stadium. Each one of them has invested more time, more effort, more resource and more money. Even with this advantage though, they still need to shout. They are still surrounded by competitors. The people on the pitch may not be interested in what they have to say.
Finally you manage to attract someone’s attention. They beckon you down to the pitch and invite you to tell them all about your product. You now have the daunting task of helping your new friend to understand your product and how it can help them. Answering their difficult questions – why is yours better than all the others? Why should I trust you? It costs how much?
Once you have won your customer, the task becomes different. Your purpose now is to deliver. Your product or service has to live up to the promises you made to attract the client in the first place. Your delivery team needs to deliver what the sales team said it would! Your service staff must now be the consistent face of the company as they deal with customer queries or problems. In short, your whole organisation must work together to build and sustain a relationship with your client.
Customers don’t stay because they love the quality of your advertising. They don’t stay because you have a really ‘stand-out’ logo or a clever strap line or because your product brochure is of the very highest standard. They stay because they are happy with the experience they have had of the organisation and because the product matches the promise. They stay because their questions were answered and their issues were dealt with.
So, retention is vital – without retention, growth is both hard work and expensive. Get your retention right and there is a pleasing side effect. The more customers you can retain, the more you will attract. If you want to get more new clients, then a good place to start is to work on keeping your existing ones. Why? Because companies that are good at building relationships that last care about their clients, and companies that care about their clients attract new clients more easily. Back to the stadium – some of those people milling about will be your clients. As they interact with people they come in to contact with, they will be telling their story. Other people who may not have noticed you will be looking out for you because of those stories.
Many businesses find themselves in the uncomfortable position of losing existing customers as fast, if not faster, than they can attract new ones. It’s like inviting people into your house through the front door only to have them look around, decide they don’t like the décor and leave through the back door. The response from many organisations to this problem is to throw more money at marketing.
Getting them in faster, however, won’t mean that they’ll stay any longer. So why take the risk? If ‘experience is king’ then surely it’s better to make sure your customer has a great experience with your business. Delivering your best in every area of your business will make it much more likely that not only will customers come back again, but that they’ll recommend you to others.
Now that’s got to be the best type of marketing in anyone’s book.
To find out more about this author, click on their name below.
Unlocking Your Potential