You have two kinds of customers
Business wisdom from Friendship Day Camp
Growing up in LA I went to Friendship Day Camp every summer. FDC served up the best summer camp offerings. Arts and crafts (made some wicked multi-layered sand candles), games (Red Rover), fishing (crawdads in the LA river) and music (camp songs galore). FDC was in Griffith Park which is the big urban park in LA just east of Hollywood bordered by the LA River. FDC culminated each summer with a sleepover so for one night it was also Friendship Night Camp and that was pretty special because campfires and s’mores.
Friendship Day Camp’s logo was two hands - one white and one green shaking. Alas this pre-dates the internets so I cant find a pic but I'm confident you can visualize this. Friendship Day Camp also had a theme song and to this day I hear it loud and clear. We sang/yelled it as we went to and fro on crawdad catching, candle making and Red Rover running excursions:
🎵 Make new Friends, but keep the old.
One is Silver and the other Gold. 🎵
Same with customers! Customers you have are Gold, customers you want are Silver.
Gold
If Friendship Day Camp was still around today they would replace Gold with Rhodium because that’s apparently the most valuable precious metal today and also it’s a fun word to rhyme.
Sit down and build a retention plan for customers that have done business with you! These are your people - nurture them, love them, lavish attention on them. Not only will they provide repeat business there are your best source for referrals and the advertising no amount of money can buy - word of mouth.
Loads of studies have been done on this and while the numbers vary depending on your business it’s at least 5X as much work/money/resources to get a new customer versus sustaining one you already have. I hear these guys are pretty reputable - The Value of Keeping the Right Customers.
Perhaps its our tendency to covet the new that too often we focus on how to get new customers and take the ones we have for granted. Before you spend a dime on advertising, lead gen etc. for new customers, lock in a plan to nourish your current customer base and keep them happy. How you keep your customers coming back for more will vary according to your business - this is something I'm happy to brainstorm with you - but here are a few things tech can do to help in almost all business':
Stay in touch. Once a transaction is done be sure you have a way to stay connected with your customers. Email is a must; phone numbers for SMS/texts is even better. If you have customers that you do a traditional postal mail campaign with, see how you can re-engage to get email/txt. Remember to get permission to add them a mailing list or sign up for text notifications.
As you build and maintain that contact list - and guard it with your most precious business secrets - figure out a strategy to keep them up-to-date on your latest, there are lots of ways:
Newsletter - is there info on your products or services you can share out regularly to keep customers engaged to buy more / do more?
Sales - everyone loves a sale. Bi-annually, regularly depending on product, quantity or clearance discounts, no losers here.
Loyalty - tried-and-true. You can go low tech with a punch card. I have one in my wallet now for my favorite bakery - buy 9 loaves, get the 10th free! I asked them how popular this is and the quote was 'everyone loves them.' Glad I'm not the only sucker. You can uplevel loyalty programs today with POS systems that key off mobile number and track points per sale or another measure to earn awards with with a free this or a discounted that - it's a real draw back in the store or online.
How about a referral discount? Old/Gold customer get's you a new/Silver customer and they both get a one time discount. If you sell online, it’s easy to pull this off with discount codes
I bet you're already thinking up strategies that'll work for you customer base.
Silver
For new customers think of your acquisition process as a funnel. Above the funnel lives the sea of potential customers. You need to entice a bunch to swim into the top of your funnel where you progressively build their intent to buy from you and ultimately some will the swim out of the bottom as a customer. Then your Gold/Rhodium retention strategies kick in to keep them around.
How you get customers into the funnel, how you get them to build intent to progress down the funnel and the velocity of that progression are all highly variable depending on your product/services so we'd have to talk. However, there are a couple of things I see routinely that are missed opportunities:
If you have an online store there are lots of analytics and tricks to know your customers and accelerate them through the funnel. My fave no-brainer is a reminder if you left something in your cart. That is a nascent customer right at the bottom of the funnel. They found your site, they liked your stuff enough to add it to the cart - make sure they come back and complete that transaction! Let me get a plug in here for online stores in general - don't be scared to sell your stuff online; ecommerce services are really solid now and post-pandemic norms mean customers want to be able to not only find you online but also buy from you online.
Don’t let a customer leave your store or leave your website without getting at least their email! Just like you say hi👋🏽 when someone comes into your store - do the same when they come into your virtual store (website). Makes no sense for you to invest in building a site, getting it found (SEO) and then let folks wander in and out willy nilly. Look at your stats - where are visitors coming from and are there other trends? Wire up a popup window on a timer and ask them to leave their email before they click away.
Use Chat to engage customers directly on the site - how can you help them, can you answer any questions, what's a good email to keep in touch? I love Chat - it's become the most established and natural way to communicate online. What about those contact forms I know you have on your website? I bet you get very few decent leads out of those. I was talking to a guy who runs a local heating/AC business and he confirmed my skepticism about them - he said the only folks who fill those out are bored-out-of their-gourd Looky Lous and they just don't yield any closed business.
But you know what the simplest thing you should do is? Go count your Gold. Where did your current and prior customers come from? Deconstruct your recent and past wins - how did they find you, what made them transact with you versus the competition? That informs your strategy to find new Silver.
It all starts with the Gold err Rhodium. Turns out Rhodium is used to plate other precious metals (like Gold!) to make them more attractive and more resilient. Mine that gold baby and grow your business.