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How Companies Marketing In Ireland Can Improve By Using CRM |
By:
Matt Eve. |
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How companies marketing in Ireland can improve by using CRM
by Matt Eve.
When working with business owners and reviewing their marketing plan one of the key things I look for is whether or not the have a database of past clients and customers. All too often this basic element is missing.
No matter what type of business I am dealing with, whether it be a retail unit or a service business 80 percent of the time there is no list of existing customers. Of the business owners that do record details of their past customers only 6 out of 10 are using a computer based system that allows for efficient retrieval and reporting of data.
I find this absolutely amazing. The same business owner will stand there and tell me about how much he is spending on advertising and that it is getting more and more expensive to find a steady supply of new customers while all the time he is letting a hugely valuable resource, which he has already paid big money for, slip through his fingers.
The cost of gaining and doing business with a new customer is up to 12 times more expensive than it is to do business with and existing one. This is because you have already won the confidence of the customer and, providing they have had a good experience with you, they will feel that they have an existing affinity with your business. So before you spend your entire marketing budget on looking for and converting new customers think about how you can resell to the ones who have already done business with you.
You wouldn't expect to see a musician spending time and effort creating a new album and selling just one copy, then leaving it on the shelf and then going away and making another album. It makes much more sense to keep selling the same album as many times as you can as the cost of creating it has been borne once already.
Once you understand the value of maximising your past customers you need to look at how you can implement some kind of system in your business to benefit from it. Each time you do business with a customer then you need to take note of their details and enter them into your computerised CRM system.
Once you have the customers? details how hard would it then be for you to send them a mailing such as a card to thank them for doing business with you. This is going to come out of the blue for them and set you apart from your competitors. How about then a month after they did business with you, you telephoned them and asked if the product was working ok for them. You never know they might need something more for you but just hadn't got around to getting back in touch with you.
Three months later send them a special offer to 'valued existing customers only'. It really doesn't matter what you do as long as you do something.
Looking after your past customers will give you better business results in the long term, instead of just focusing on looking for new clients all of the time
Author: Matt Eve is a author and runs a marketing consultancy in Ireland.See more articles at his irish marketing blog Click here to get your own unique version of this article.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article53761.html |
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