Marketing and Customer Rentention

In this time of economic uncertainty many, many small business owners are hurting. I was in a meeting last week with some small business owners and they were asked how much is their Marketing budget this year. Can you believe the consensus was that most of them had cut all money for Marketing this year. How can this be?

I can understand how many small businesses are not seeing many new customers, but there are a small percentage that are. Could these be your customers? If you don’t have a plan to retain your customer base, it might be walking across the street or turning to another website to do their business.

These days it doesn’t take much to show your customers you still care about them. A simple phone call once a quarter could work. Like I’ve mentioned a dozen or so time, it is all about personal communications and making people feel appreciated, not another mass mailing or flyer about the next great sale.

Just think back to the stories our parents and grandparents talk about. They use to have their doctor over for dinner or had a bake sale for someone down the street who just lost their job. It is easy to sit in front of your computer and put a mass email together and sends it to your customers. I don’t know about you, but I delete over 100 of them a day. Most do nothing to get to know me, but have everything to do about promoting their company and why I need what they are selling.

These days what is wrong with a phone call or a greeting card put in the mail to celebrate your customer’s birthday? Let’s get back to basics and help each other through this “economic uncertainty”.