Are You Neglecting Your Most Valuable Business Asset?

While not doing so intentionally, most online and offline business owners and entrepreneurs tend to neglect what should be considered your most valuable business asset – your customers and subscribers.

In an effort to continually gain market share, new customers and sales, the vast majority of businesses spend the vast majority of their marketing and advertising budgets and efforts at gaining new business. While these efforts are certainly an important aspect of growing any business, failing to continually and consistently connect with your current list of subscribers and especially your customers will prove costly in the long-run.

Ask yourself this question: What is required for you to gain a new customer? If you answered you need to be able to get them to know, like and trust you, you hit the bullseye.

Now its time to do a little cost analysis. How much is it costing you in time and marketing/advertising dollars to gain the know, like and trust you factors? This is referred to as cost per acquisition and if you don’t know what this figure is, I can state with confidence you are spending a significant amount – its normally the most costly expense a business has.

Let’s take a look at the other side – your customers and/or subscribers. You have already established to some degree the know, like and trust you factors as they either subscribed to your information or have made a purchase. You’ve overcome this enormous hurdle. Yet, more than likely, this is where your marketing ended – with a sale.

How much would it really cost you to market and grow this relationship with your current customers as opposed to gaining new customers? This is where the vast majority of businesses fall grossly short of the mark. Want proof? How many businesses that you have recently made purchases from continually follow up and communicate with you to strengthen their relationship with you?

How much business do you think is lost from businesses losing their customers that they spent all that time and effort on acquiring to their competition because they neglected their relationship with their customers? I think the answer is obvious.

If you’ve fallen into the customer neglect trap, here are a few suggestions to get you started on the right path to improving your relationship with your customers:

1. Apologize! Acknowledge that you haven’t communicated with them the way you should have and make an offer to make things right. This one step alone will do wonders!

2. Make it up to them and do yourself a favor. As a way of saying sorry, offer to do something for them that you aren’t offering anyone else – a special limited time discount on your products or services, coupon for their next purchase or a gift certificate to say thank you for being your customer. Structured correctly, this will not only solidify your relationship it will generate extra sales for you as well.

3. Automate Your Communication Process. Once you’ve reconnected, its time to make sure this doesn’t happen again. When I mention this, I usually get resistance. I hear; “Won’t this take a large amount of time and effort to constantly communicate with my customers?” Not if you are using the technology offered through the use of an autoresponder.

As long as you are acquiring your customers email addresses, you can program an autoresponder to send a series of pre-written messages to your customers on a regularly scheduled basis to include specials your running, valuable content they can use to make their purchase better or more useful etc. Structured correctly, with very little effort, you will in effect, be communicating with and keeping your customers.

Is it worth the effort? Take a few moments and ask yourself this: Can I afford not to? What’s the value of a lifetime customer to your business? Don’t neglect the most valuable asset your business has – your customers.