Are You Neglecting This Most Important Target Market Segment?

Are you neglecting the most critical segment of your target market? First off, who are they? Well, they are your clients, of course! People who buy from you and provide you with the sustenance you need to survive and thrive. How are you nurturing them?

Most businesses we come into contact with are always concerned with getting new clients, and they might look to procure our services to help them do that, and that’s great.  You do need that new influx of clients. However, we often found that most of the gold lies in getting those existing clients that you have to buy more from you and buy more often from you. You also want to stop losing those clients to attrition. So you market and get new clients, and then wow, your back door is wide open! We’re losing them as fast as we get them. That’s not a good place to be.

So when I talk about nurturing that audience, I’m talking about have you developed marketing explicitly aimed at your existing clients. To continue to deepen the relationship and the trust level, educate them further to understand the importance of the relationship. It’s a fundamental concept here. We’re often aiming all of our marketing towards new clients, but here we’ve got these folks who already know, like, and trust us to some degree or another. How do we nurture them? How do we establish ourselves deeper with them?

Let me give you an example. If you’re married or have a partner in your life and come home from a long day of work, you walk in the door, sit on the couch, and walk past them and neglect them. You don’t talk to them or give them a little “oh hi” kind of thing. How do you think that relationship is going to work out over time? Think about it, if that’s what is going on day in, day out, where you are ignoring or not genuinely giving the love and respect that the person deserves. What’s going to happen?  Someone will swoop in and woo them a little bit, and next thing you know, they are gone.

When we treat our clients less than stellar, ignore them, or do not show them the love they deserve, they don’t buy from you. I hate to be the one to tell you that. They could buy from someone else. But, chances are, you’re not the only one on the planet who offers what you do.

Give your clients a reason to stay with you. Give them a reason to buy more and more often from you. I often hear my clients say that they can’t seem to get their clients or customers to refer to them or write a testimonial for them. But are we earning those? Are we earning that level of relationship that would get them to stop what they are doing (because they’ve got lives too and stuff going on) and write us a testimonial or give us a referral?

If we want more out of that relationship, are we doing our part, showing love and nurturing? Some of this is customer service, which is excellent, but what are we doing to nurture the relationship?

Let’s say someone calls into your office. Do they know your office staff? Do they know what they look like? Can they associate a name with a face? I tell clients to have an “About” page that shows some of your team with a bio of each. It lets people understand a bit about the people they are interacting with when they call your office and do business with you. I like to give a little about myself personally and then professionally so that people can learn about the core members of my team or me to find out if they resonate with us on any level. 

In my description of myself, I’ll say things like, “Hey, I’m an Internet marketing coach and consultant, and I’m a number one best-selling author, and then I’ll say some personal things. For example, I’m a huge Yankees fan or a dad of two awesome kids. I’ll tell them some personal things about myself to see if there is a connection point between us. This allows the relationship to get deeper.

Who are you going to look to connect with? Someone, that you resonate with on a personal level or someone that you don’t? When push comes to shove, the deeper you dig into the relationship, the more chance you will maintain and keep that relationship over time.

Relationships take work. That’s the marketing here that we’re talking about. What are you doing to deepen your relationship with your current client base?