Jim's Marketing Blog

Here are 2 ideas, to help you increase the lifetime value of your clients or customers.

To start, you need to understand what their current, average lifetime value is. It’s relatively simple.

For example: If your average client is worth £1000 a year to you in profits and they remain a customer for an average of 5 years, a client’s average lifetime value to you is £5000.

Once you figure out the average value of your clients, consider the following question:

How can you increase their lifetime value, by increasing what they spend with you and the length of time you retain their custom?

1. Increasing what they spend with you

Look for additional, extremely valuable services or products for your clients. Your clients have an existing trading relationship with you. You have earned their trust. They know you. They are also far more likely to buy an additional product or service from you, than from a stranger.

A great place to start is to think of the challenges your clients or customers face. Now, consider how you can help them with these problems, with additional services or products.  Yes, it will take time and a little creativity, but the rewards for getting this right are huge.

A wonderful, additional benefit of this approach, is that the more your clients or customers rely on you for a number of services, the less likely they are to switch to another provider. This leads on nicely to the next point.

2. Retaining their custom

Very few small business owners have a structured client or customer retention plan. Your clients are being targeted by your competitors all the time. A well designed client retention plan can help you keep your clients, regardless of what the other guys are doing.

Finding ways to retain, and improve the financial value of your clients or customers, is one of the smartest things a business owner can do.

It makes your business massively more robust, as your client base has no desire to switch from you to another provider. That allows you to plan ahead with greater confidence.

Bonus: By finding products for your customers, rather than customers for your products, you also tap into the fastest way to boost sales and profits.

This approach to marketing works every time. It isn’t easy, which is why so few people do it. However, it comes with a 100% success rate.

Here it is: Be so good that they can’t ignore you.

If your product or service is THAT good, people will hire you, buy from you AND tell everyone about you. So, if you show just 10 people what you do, each one will tell another 10 people, who will each get you another 10… repeat.

The opposite is also true

Average products or services are everywhere. They fail to stand out. We forget them within minutes. Very few people talk about them. They need to be pushed constantly. Networking groups were created for this type of average business.

I was prompted to write about this for you, after remembering a wonderful example of how to get it right.

An example from the rear end of a computer!

When Steve Jobs announced the first iMac computer, he showed people the rear of the machine and said the following:

“The back of our computer looks better than the front of the other guy’s”.

That was an amazingly powerful statement, which attracted people’s attention, got everybody talking and generated record breaking sales.

Why?

Because it made the iMac impossible to ignore. Computers at the time were dull, beige boxes. Here was an amazing, multicoloured range of machines, which looked better from the back than anything on the market did from the front.

One detail, which other computer manufacturers at the time totally neglected, gave the marketplace an amazing Apple story to share. It made Apple and the iMac too good to ignore.

Push or Attract?

Ultimately, business owners have a decision to make. They can:

• Push a good, but predictable business on the marketplace.
• Attract attention, by being too good to ignore.

Pushing a predictable product or service is expensive and places a very low ceiling on your potential. If you want 100 people to know about what you do, you have to pester 100 people with some kind of marketing AND pay to reach all of them.

Attracting attention is inexpensive and offers limitless potential. It scales to infinity. If you want a million people to know about what you do, just tell 10 people… and keep delivering on being too good to ignore.

Easy? No.

Worth it? Absolutely.

Here’s some free advice to get you on the right track.

To grow your business successfully, you need all 3 of the following:

1. A substantial number of prospective clients, who you can locate and connect with.
2. These prospective clients need to have a problem, which your service provides the answer to.
3. Finally, they need to be willing and able to pay you for solving their problem.

That’s what you need for a successful business. And for most people, that’s all they want.

However, if you want even more from your business, something exceptional, you need to know the following.

Truly exceptional businesses are a little different

Exceptional businesses do 1 thing differently. To be exceptional, you need to change number 2 on that list, to this:

These prospective clients need to have a problem, which ONLY your service provides the answer to.

Yes, it takes more effort to develop a uniquely valuable product or service, but the rewards are disproportionately high. For example, you no longer have to compete for business based on fees. Also, by deliberately choosing the type of problem to solve, you can predetermine the quality of clients you work with.

Here’s a suggestion

Think about gaps in the market — problems that are currently not being solved by existing providers. Dig deep. Stick with it until you get some answers. Keep working on it. Give it the time and energy it needs.

Why? Because you only need to get this right once, for your whole world to change!

Tip: This will help you get started.