Are You Neglecting This Most Important Target Market Segment?

Are you neglecting the most important segment of your target market? First off, who are they? Well they are your clients of course! The people who have been buying from you all along and providing you with your sustenance that 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 found a lot of times most of the gold lies in getting those existing clients that you have to buy more from you and to buy more often from you. You also want to stop losing those clients to attrition. So you market and you 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 aimed specifically at your existing clients. To continue to deepen the relationship and the trust level, to educate them further so that they understand the importance of the relationship  It’s a very important 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 you come home from a long day of work and you walk in the door and they’re sitting on the couch and you just walk past them and neglect them. You don’t talk to them or maybe you just 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 just ignoring or not truly giving the love and respect that the person deserves. what’s going to happen?  Someone is going to swoop in and woo them a little bit and next thing you know they are gone.

This is what happens with our clients when we ignore them or treat them less than stellar or if we’re not showing them the love that they truly deserve. They don’t have to buy from you. I hate to be the one to tell you that. They could buy from someone else. 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. A reason to 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 to 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 the love and nurturing? Some of this is customer service and that’s great, but what are we doing to continually 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? One of the things I tell clients all the time is to have an “about” page that shows some of your team with a little bio of each so that people understand a little bit about the people they are dealing with and 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 me or the core members of my team 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 as well. I’m a huge Yankees fan or that I’m a dad of two awesome kids. I’ll tell them some personal things about myself so that they can see if there is a connection points between us. This just 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 the relationship the more chance you’re going to have of maintaining and keeping 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?