customer retention Archives - BCC Business Consulting

Tag: customer retention

McMinnville Business Mastery Lunch & Learn

Posted on January 4, 2022January 30, 2022 by Amanda Bedell

EVER FELT LIKE MARKETING, STAFFING, AND GROWING YOUR BUSINESS WAS LIKE NAVIGATING A DIFFICULT MAZE?

What if you could follow a proven and time-tested roadmap that provides you the EXACT steps to more cash flow and freedom?

At my Business Mastery Lunch & Learn events, join area business owners as we tackle the business challenges of the day. In each session, walk away with no-cost strategies that can be implemented immediately.

Lunch and beverages are provided but registration is required.

To register for an upcoming event, click on the date you want to attend:

January 25 – Topic: Finding & Keeping Employees

(POSTPONED) February 8 – Topic: Position Your Business for a Bank Loan

February 22 – Topic: Exit Your Way – Grow with the Exit In Mind

March 8 – Topic: Pricing Workshop (details coming soon)

March 22 – Topic: No Cost Conversions & Sales Strategies (details coming soon)

Past events included Non-traditional Ways to Find & Keep Superstar Employees, No-cost Lead Generation Strategies, Increase Conversions and Sales With Small Tweaks, and more!

What these events aren’t:

NOT a disguised sales pitch

NOT a boring presentation about buying ads that don’t result in new customers anyways

NOT a place for me to listen to my own voice for a whole 90-minutes 🙂

What you will get is:

REAL strategies that you can implement yourself

INSPIRATION that can only come from being in a room with like-minded business owners doing the same work at the same time

The PEACE OF MIND knowing that you’re focusing on the business activities that really make a difference so you can work smarter rather than harder.

30 Ways to Effectively Market Your Business

Posted on December 4, 2021 by Amanda Bedell

A step-by-step guide to creating and executing a successful advertising campaign

Have you spent thousands of dollars on radio or Facebook ads and seen zero sales from the advertising spend? Maybe you’ve been burned by a marketing consultant that promises the world only to fail to deliver results… today, I want to lift the veil on how to create a successful advertising campaign.

To do that, first, we must understand why people buy products or services. Every purchase is an emotional response. People always buy a higher emotional state. They’re buying for one of three reasons

to solve a problem or stop pain
an experience that feels good
for certainty

To develop emotion and a call to action, the majority of successful professionals use a succession of information-based commercials. What we find is that information-based advertising is much more effective compared to usual brand-based advertisements.

Here, I want to share with you that the principles used to put together high-impact (and oftentimes, high-priced) ads can be adapted to fit your needs and offer you similar results.

Here are some ideas for creating and executing a successful advertising campaign:

Put together a short report that you’ll automatically send to prospects when they contact you. This should include a short description of your business and what you specialize in. Don’t forget to include case studies, samples, or other proof of your success.
Develop value-oriented “yellow page” like ads.
Consider newsletters as a way of educating and informing customers about your industry and the services offered.
Offer a free lecture or webinar to raise awareness of your business, but make sure the content is relevant to your target market and that the presenters are well-known in the field.
Buy an existing business, improve marketing and grow this new business faster than a “from scratch” business.
Always test different versions of your ads to determine which ones are the most effective.
Use direct mail marketing to grow your business.
Put together a database of previous customers and send them new information.
Offer incentives such as frequent purchasing benefits, loyalty programs, or referral programs.
Approach large firms who may need your services and negotiate a deal to be their exclusive expert in your field.
Offer a 24-hour information line with a regularly updated recorded message. Make this available to all current and prospective customers/clients.
Donate time or materials to local charities to show support in your area.
Offer public clinics for the general public to come along and discuss what they need that’s free and approachable.
Organize seminars your customers/clients can pay to attend by putting together a high-perception value package.
Approach local newspapers by offering to write a weekly column about your area of expertise. Don’t ask for a payment, just a byline, and bio.
Develop a weekend or other destination seminar for customers/clients, not only does this give you an action-packed weekend with the most important people, it gives them a tax-deductible business adventure.
Take a good seminar and turn it into written form as a home study, member site program, audio, or video program.
Approach large companies and offer to give seminars to their employees, investors, or management.
Be proactive with your marketing plan.
Trade for your marketing. Offer products or services instead of payment.
Be willing to bring in new clients, even if at an initial loss because it will likely pay off later.
Adjust your marketing budget to maximize the potential income from them for the following year, and try to postpone advertising costs for the following year to offset your expenses.
Make offers to target markets or target market businesses to pay them for referrals or shared databases.
Offer loaner products to replace equipment that’s being repaired or refurbished.
Give away something free to everyone who brings in a print version of your advertisement. This is a great way to see which ads are giving you the most bang for your buck.
Continually consider what new products/services you can offer to current customers/clients.
Develop a mail order division of your company.
Offer a proposition to your competitors to trade customers/clients you were both unsuccessful in selling to.
Use different marketing tactics as an excuse to attract new customers/clients with new offers and goodies.
Offer a “you-pick-a-price” program. This is especially good for products you just can’t seem to sell.

So now you have it: 30 ways to market to other professionals and businesses. Other great ways to get your name out there for little or no money are as follows:

Get engaged in your community-volunteer, donate to local events, etc.
Join your local Chamber of Commerce and attend networking and other activities throughout the year.
Join local, state, or regional professional associates for further networking opportunities.
Become a board member of a local organization.

Advertising should never be your only method of marketing strategy, there are numerous ways to get your name out there in a way that feels personal to potential customers/clients.

“Many companies have forgotten they sell to actual people. Humans care about the entire experience, not just the marketing or sales or service. To really win in the modern age, you must solve for humans.” – Dharmesh Shah, CTO & Co-founder of Hubspot.

If you’re not sure where you start with your marketing plan or how to reach out to your local community, competitors, customers/clients, and others who could influence your business in a highly positive way try our GUIDED TOUR to experience the tools and resources we have to boost your business to the next level and beyond.

Kick start your marketing

Posted on April 17, 2019May 26, 2021 by Amanda Bedell

In Reid Hoffman’s podcast Masters of Scale, he interviewed Brian Chesky from Airbnb and they talked about something that has stuck with me since I heard the segment in 2017, “If you want your company to truly scale, you have to do things that don’t scale.”

Today, I’d like to share three things I did to get (and keep) my first customers.

Meet your customers in person: You must meet with customers/clients in person whenever possible. I understand that is challenging but remember the potential connections in-person meetings cultivate, otherwise, there’s always Zoom or Skype. You will learn so many valuable insights from this person’s attention that will carry you and your company to the future.
Follow-up letter: When was the last time you got a piece of mail that was unexpectedly delightful? It’s been a minute for me (read: never). Your first customers want to feel valued and respected. Consider taking a moment to send a follow-up letter personalized with what you talked about and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you.
Phone call: I hear you! No one calls anyone anymore. But, use the phone to share an article or something that triggered you to think of them, and that customer will be loyal forever.

A word of caution: None of these tactics will work if you don’t have a quality product or service to back you up.

Here are the key steps for putting together your start-up marketing tools:

Research potential customers, buyers, competitors, and their preferred methods of distribution.
Talk to potential customers! Surveys, polls, prototypes – take a hard look at your product from a customer’s perspective and see what it needs to be successful.
Follow up with your 3-step process from above.
Develop systems for contact follow-through, quality control standards, and customer service.
Keep lines of communication open with customers and build on your current relationship, possibly increasing future purchases.

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” — Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company.

I hope this lesson helps you put together a start-up marketing plan that can sustain and grow your business far into the future. The tools offered in our free training videos offer more of these strategies.

Educate your customers

Posted on April 17, 2019May 27, 2021 by Amanda Bedell

You may be thinking to yourself, “Educate them about what?”

Entrepreneur and documentary filmmaker, Jia Wertz, says it better than I ever could in the opening sentence of her Forbes article, “Majority of customers visit your website or your brick-and-mortar only one time. Think about that.”

She goes on to explain that we’re spending all that money to get people in and we get one shot. Consider this, many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers, but I encourage you to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current and former customers. I know it feels like a no-brainer but so few businesses create a system to bring back people who already know you and have bought from you.

Take the time to market and sell new products to your old customers and less time trying to sell old products to new customers and you will see a drastic change in your sales, customer quality, and branding position.

Here are key elements to use to retain your current customers:

Stay in contact: This means by phone, email, e-newsletter, in-person, and by carrier pigeon if you have must (lol)!
Post-Purchase Assurance: This means you need to follow up with customers. They need to feel supported for what they purchased. How many times have you purchased a product, then felt completely abandoned? Something as simple as a ‘Thank You’ note with your contact or customer service information can go a long way in retaining a great customer.
Deals & Guarantees: Always offer your current customers the best deals and guarantees you have. Show them you appreciate their business or even come up with a club specifically to reward loyal customers. You can also do this with a preferred pricing option.
Integrity: Using good business practices and simply upholding integrity, dignity, and honesty go a long way with customers. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of swindling with substandard product out there, and the safer and more confident you make your customers feel, the more they will trust you. That makes for an amazingly supportive and loyal customer.

There are three cornerstone ideas to a successful business:

Quality product/service
Offering useful products/services that solve a problem for or enhance the life of a customer
Offer content your customers find interesting

Use this approach of educating your customers and offering them real information and insight and you will be rewarded with loyalty and success.

Stop wasting all your time on new prospects while your current customers fall by the wayside.

Legendary business strategist, Jay Abraham says, “Your best prospects are your existing customers. If you’ve been putting all your marketing efforts into acquiring new customers, stop and diverts some of your resources into reselling, upselling, cross-selling to those same customers. In every way possible – through package inserts, regular mailings, special offers – stay in touch with those customers and get them used to buying from you.”

Remember, you can access free support by signing up for our training videos. The videos can help you harness techniques to educate your customers and watch their lifetime value go up and your revenues pay off many-fold.