There’s Gold In Them There … Customers!
By Bigg Success Staff
02-13-08
Bigg on Small Business
One of the biggest assets in your business doesn’t show up on your Balance Sheet. It’s your prospects and customers. Do you have a system in place to mine the gold in your database?
Panning for Gold
You have to know what you’re looking for. After all, you don’t want “fool’s gold”! You want to find nuggets of information that you can turn into money!
To find those nuggets, you have to develop an information-gathering system. What you use will depend on your business.
For example, think about a car dealership. Customers bring their cars in for service. They park their cars and turn over their keys. One of the employees of the dealership pulls the car into the garage when they’re ready to service it.
Is there gold in that process? At least one car dealer we know of found some!
The employees paid attention to what radio station was playing when they turned on the car. They developed a system to record this information.
With that information in hand, they could look for the bands of gold!
Bands of Gold
What do your customers have in common? In the example of the car dealership mentioned above, they found what radio stations their customers commonly listened to. Now they knew where to advertise!
As you get good at gathering and systematizing information, you may find a number of “bands”.
For instance, let’s assume that you have a business that appeals equally to males and females. You may find that the men tend to buy certain products of your business and the women buy a different set of products.
Some customers may only respond to special offers, whereas others always buy “the best” – your most expensive product or service.
The specifics will depend on your business. The key is to develop a system that helps you find common elements within your contact list.
Gold Mining
Now that you’ve discovered the gold, you have to mine it. It doesn’t do you any good otherwise!
Your marketing efforts are likely to be much-more cost effective now. For example, if you have customers who always respond to special-offers, offer them something special! If you have customers that only buy the best, show them more of the best!
If the men buy certain types of products and the women buy a different set, promote the respective products only to that target.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s a simple idea that’s not necessarily easy to execute.
However, mining your contact database will likely be much more productive than mass-marketing. Consider getting professionals involved to help you design the right campaign to get the most gold!
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