Why you business needs a database
Setting up and using a database to manage customer information is a vital tool for your business. It’s not expensive to create either. A well- managed database will help you identify key trends and valuable information such as your most profitable customers. This enables you to target your marketing more effectively.
Being able to establish who and what customers buy from you is essential to your business success.
You will benefit from:
• Effective marketing communications. You will be able to create a relationship with your customers with a personal approach.
• Increased sales to new and existing customers with better timing, identifying needs and cross-selling of similar products.
• Improved customer retention and greater customer satisfaction.
• Increased value from your existing customers and reduced costs.
Imagine not only having names and addresses of customers on your database, but also e-mail addresses, phone numbers, items they bought, how much they spent and when they spend. These relatively straight-forward pieces of information, which you should be able to collect from all of your customers without much effort, will help you save money and generate huge amounts of extra business.
You will be able to plot geographically where your customers live or work. This means that you can focus your marketing efforts on similar demographic areas and not waste money on ‘blanket marketing’.
You will be able to identify your ‘big spenders’ and ‘frequent visitors’ and target your marketing efforts accordingly.
You will be able to create a range of e-mail marketing messages to groups of people at different times, all with different offers. Don’t forget e-mail is free.
You will be able to marry up your database to other ‘paid for’ databases and hire or buy in details on potential customers including their names, addresses and e-mails.
The list of opportunities is endless. However like all good things, you get out what you put in. So your database needs to be accurate and kept up-to-date. You will then need to have a strategy for using the data that you have captured, to generate greater profits for your business.
Apple Pie Marketing can help you to:
• Create a low cost database
• Help you capture customer information
• Analyse your database
• Create maps to show you where your customers live or work
• Help you target new and existing customers with the right information at the right time
• Measure the success of using your database
• Offer advice and assistance in all areas of database management
What is your USP?
USP means ‘unique selling point’ and every company should have one. A USP is something that sets your product or service apart from your competitors in the eyes of your customers, both new and existing.
If you want to differentiate yourself from your competition, then you must have a strong USP. Most business owners don’t bother to create one and may be losing out on sales and enquiries as a result.
You may think that you offer exactly the same services or products as your competitors and therefore find it difficult to create an effective USP. However, if a customer asked you why they should do business with you instead of your competitors, would you come up with a blank answer?
Your USP is a statement that clearly singles you out from the competition in just a few words. It forms the foundation on which to build your marketing activity.
If you have a good, clear and honest USP, there is a good chance that you will be able to compete on factors other than price.
Creating your USP
1. Visit your competition and see if you can find something that you do better. Try to stay away from pricing as this isn’t necessarily a USP. Find something that is of value or of benefit to your customers.
2. Ask your own customers why they do business with you. You may be surprised at the response that you get. Don’t be surprised if the impression they have of your company is different from the impression you have. Remember: it’s the customer’s perspective that is important, not yours.
When you have gathered a list of points, you should have a good sense of what makes you special or unique. Start drafting a statement that defines what makes you unique or special. You will probably start with a long statement of two or three paragraphs. You may also find that you have a number of USPs that cover a range of areas of your business. Narrow these down to the most profitable one for your business and one which gives the most value to your customers.
Edit your statement until it is short, snappy and to the point, describing your uniqueness.
Making the most of your USP
When you have identified your company’s USP, you will need to use it in every aspect of your business. Share your USP in your marketing materials, at networking events, on your business cards, on your website, advertising and at any other time when given the opportunity.
You, your staff and your sales team, in particular will need to own your USP and incorporate it into every phone call, meeting or letter you produce. This will reinforce why customers should choose to do business with you, rather than your competition.
When you have a USP that really works, your customers, new and existing, will think only of your company, when they have a need for that product or service.
The value of testimonials
Nothing communicates the quality of what you are offering better than the words of other people who have experienced doing business with you.
One of the biggest obstacles to growing your business is convincing people that you can really deliver on your promises. A testimonial does it for you. And it’s free!
So when customers tell you that they’re pleased with your work, ask if they would be willing to share their experience with others.
Testimonials should give a detailed and specific description of how the person has benefitted from what you have to offer. Try not to use one liners where possible. Include the customers’ name if they don’t mind and, if appropriate, their business name on the testimonial.
Do not use anonymous testimonials because people don’t believe them.
• Once you’ve got testimonials – use them. Put them everywhere – on your website, brochures, emails etc.
• If you are planning to start a new business, plan to make testimonials an integral part of your marketing from the beginning.
• Don’t underestimate the power of testimonials…….They can increase your conversion rates by 30% or more.
Profit from Customer Loyalty
The goal is to get your best customers to return and spend more or buy more frequently.
Increasing a customer retention rate by only 5% can boost the average customer net worth value by an astonishing 35% to 95%, according to recent research by consultant Bain and Company.
How loyal are your customers ?
You will need to know who your best customers are. This may not necessarily be the regular shopper who spends a lot of time in your shop, chatting and spending very little. It may actually be the internet shopper who spends a great deal with you on-line a couple of times a year.
• Spend time looking at who spends most and how often. Cross check this information with the customer details that you have on your database. (For more information on database management read the page on why you need a database).
• Create three or four categories of customer types with the most profitable at the top and the least profitable at the bottom. You will need to focus almost all of your customer loyalty activity on the top group.
• Find out what these customers most like about your products or services and what offers or improvements are appealing. You can do this simply by casually asking questions each time they call. When you’ve formed some ideas, mail a postcard survey to get detailed answers.
• Make sure that you get enough responses to make a decision about what really motivates these customers to buy. You may need to do more than one mailing.
You should now have a list of top customers along with a list of top products (most profitable) that they buy. This is simply gold dust to you! You don’t have to start big with your loyalty activity. Your loyalty activity, including the marketing materials you create to promoteit, can be very affordable.
Make the most of your research
• Send personalised thank-you messages after each visit or major purchase. You may also include a discount or offer that they can use on their next purchase.
• If you are measuring the frequency of purchases your customers are making, you may want to send out reminders. Send a letter or postcard with an offer or incentive after a certain period of time during which the customer hasn’t bought anything.
• Use e-mail. E-mail only offers are a great way of communicating with your customer and it’s free.
• Send a gift or a card on an anniversary such as a birthday.
• Send information about a particular brand or new line that you have that may interest your customers.
• Send free information or advice. A customer may have purchased an expensive garment or piece of furniture. Sending advice on how to care for this item shows that you care.
Finding New Customers
Attracting new customers to your business can be a difficult, time-consuming and expensive exercise. There are a number a tried and tested techniques that can bring new business in your direction. Many companies offer great services and packages that will help you find names and addresses, but this can be costly and you may end up buying details that are not appropriate to your business.
A simple and inexpensive way to find new customers
For the purpose of this exercise, we are going to assume that you have a database of existing customers. This database can be as small or as large as you wish, but it should be accurate and contain the names and addresses of people who have bought from you in the past. The information you keep about existing customers will help you build a profile of the type of people who buy from you, where they live, the amount they spend, the frequency of their spending with you and much more.
Addresses and postcodes are quite possibly the most important pieces of data that you should have about your customers. They should be kept up-to-date on a regular basis.
This very simple exercise involves plotting onto a map where your customers live or work. You will need a map, preferably with street names visible but this will depend upon how widespread your customer base is. You can download a range of maps with different scales on them from the internet. Next you will need to plot (a simple coloured dot will do) the address of the customers from your database. At the end of this process, you will be left with a map covered with lots of dots showing your customers’ location.
Identifying your new targets
When you look at your completed map covered with small dots, you should be able to identify ‘hot spots’. These ‘hot spots’ are clusters of dots that are close to each other. You may find a street with a high number of dots along it, you may find that an area of a town has a larger number of dots than others, or you may find a town in your catchment area with more dots than other towns.
These ‘hot spots’ are very important to you as they not only tell you where your existing customers live or work, but also tell you that households or businesses within the ‘hot spot’ area are likely to be made up of a similar demographic profile to your existing customers, they are therefore a target for your business. You may find that you have a number of ‘hot spots’ on your map.
You are now in a position to think about target marketing. You know where existing customers live to target with loyalty promotions, and you know where your ‘hot spot’ customers live to target new business.
What next?
Your next step is to create a marketing strategy for these two groups and start communicating with them straight away.
Apple Pie Marketing can help you:
• Set up a database
• Clean up existing databases
• Plot customers onto maps using our software
• Provide completed maps with customer locations
• Source names and addresses of new and potential customers
• Create a marketing strategy for new and existing customers
Instant Ways to Grow Your Business
Here are some instant ways for you to bring in more customers and grow your business.
The following are 32 questions that will immediately pinpoint where your business is doing well, and where you can take action that will produce rapid results.
If you are willing to spend a few minutes giving these questions some serious thought, you will find the results amazing.
You should be aware, that for each question you answer ‘no’ to, probably means that you are missing an opportunity. However this should motivate you to make your marketing a priority.
- Can you name three things that set you apart from your competition?
- Do you communicate the benefits of your product or service in all your promotional literature, web sites, letters etc.
- Have you tested Telemarketing to attract new customers?
- Did you accurately measure the results?
- Have you tested Direct Mail to attract new customers? Did you accurately measure the results?
- Have you tested PR to attract new customers? Did you accurately measure the results?
- Are your adverts powerful, direct response adverts that drive the reader to contact you, or are they mundane like all the competition?
- Do you advertise in certain publications just because your competitors do?
- When you speak to a potential new customer, do you use words that set you apart from the rest and immediately capture the customer’s attention?
- Have you tested pay per click search engine advertising?
- Have you tested Internet Advertising?
- Do you send regular email communications to your customers and prospective customers?
- How much time each year do your key team members spend learning leading edge sales skills?
- Do you have an excellent lead generation process in place?
- Do you set up an ongoing communication with qualified leads consisting of phone calls, letters and emails?
- Do you obtain and use testimonials from your best customers?
- Do you have excellent referral systems in place?
- Did you know there are more than 90 ways of obtaining referrals?
- Do you offer something of value to your website visitors in exchange for their contact details?
- Do you know how to write a press release to instantly grab the attention of the person reading it?
- Do you personalise your email newsletters?
- Do you know the most important piece of marketing information there is – your clients’ birthdays!
- Does your team understand that the best way to sell, is to ask questions?
- Do you rent or purchase mailing lists of your target customers?
- Do you take amazing care of your current customers?
- Do you know why it is important to include a ‘PS’ in all of your sales letters?
- Do you communicate by mail, email and telephone on a frequent basis to your current customers to ensure they know what you have to offer?
- Do you use just one or two ways of marketing to promote your business?
- Do you know why you should be using between six and ten?
- If you used ten ways to market your business, have you any idea, how wealthy you would be?
- Did you know that if you follow up a mailshot with a phone call, you can increase response rates by 100 – 1000%
- Do you realize that your competitors probably answered ‘no’ to even more questions than you did?
Here is another Free Tip.
Pick just three of the above that are important to you and take some action today to improve those areas.
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