Marketing is All About Finding New Customers

This is very prevalent. Just look at the number of Brand-New Customers Only promotions that you're bombarded with. Marketing needs to do three things:

These are really three separate things that require different strategies.

Here is a key rule, no matter what you do, you must collect customer data. This is a must if you are to do (2) and (3). You need to know who your existing and lost customers are and how to contact them.

You could have a goldfish bowl for business cards by your till. Or ask customers to complete feedback surveys for the chance to win a prize. These are all ways to get people’s contact data and without it you aren’t going to be able to do (2) and (3).

Existing Customers

So how do you keep existing customers? You must keep the relationship alive. If you keep reminding them that you're there, the chances are they won't wonder elsewhere.

The easiest way to do this is through regular contact. Newsletters are a great tool, as are blogs, Twitter, Linked-In and Facebook updates.

All of these are free and serve to remind the customer that you're there.

Another free option is press releases. These are good as they are free, third party endorsed and once again remind your existing customers that you're there.

Recovering Lost Customers

If you don't have a record of your existing customers then you won't know when they've been lost. Research has shown that over 65% of customers leave because they don’t feel appreciated by the company. As a note less than 10% of your customers will be lured away by a better deal from your competitors.

So how do you recover lost customers? The easiest way is to send them a "We haven't seen you in a while" e-mail or postcard which gives them an incentive to come in. This could be a discount, a free consultation, a gift or a free event such as a wine tasting.

For a bar, this may run like this:

Long time, no see. We haven't seen you in some time. We hope you're OK and we're just writing to say that we miss your company.

The bar has been buzzing recently and it'd be great to see you and your mates back in here. Come in before xxxx and I've negotiated with the boss to give you a xxxxx.

All the best,Xxx

This could easily be printed on the back of a postcard which could then double as a voucher.

The other way of dealing lost customers is the "Have we done something wrong?" e-mail or postcard. This has two purposes:

1. It reminds the customer that you're there in a caring manner.
2. Gives them the chance to provide feedback so that you can look at resolving any issues they may have.

This strategy does occasionally guilt someone into coming back, if they felt that they had a good relationship with you. It would be similar to a friend who rang you up to see if they had done anything wrong as you hadn’t phoned them for some time.