attract customers

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11 Ways to Attract and Retain Your Ideal Customer

Do you measure the results of your business building tactics?

When you tot up your expenses, including sales costs, your marketing probably accounts for around 10% of your operating budget – if not more. But many business owners and managers don’t have much idea as to where all this money is going to, let alone the results that are being achieved. In other words they spend money on brochures, advertisements, web sites and so forth with no real way to link specific results to specific actions.

Knowing which marketing tactics pay dividends will save you time, money and effort by allowing you to focus your marketing budget on activities that work. This means that you should learn how to measure the effect of your marketing efforts to increase revenue and profit.

Create your dashboard
Think of it like this. You are flying your personal Learjet to the Caribbean for a well earned break. You’re flying at night at 30,000 feet and your only help are the instruments on the dashboard. Similarly, can a business guide its flight towards its objectives without a set of dashboard dials? Of course not!

Every business needs a set of dials or controls – or metrics as they are now called. We can have the best of plans but metrics are the things that drive them. The most important of course is profit. But what if I asked you to name a couple metrics that are fundamental to business success? Could you name them?

Two of the most important metrics for growing business are;

1. Cost Per Acquisition
2. Lifetime customer Value

These metrics are so robust that just knowing their values will give you a pretty clear idea of how well your business is doing – and what’s more how to make it even more successful. Just to make sure we are really clear about this let me explain what these metrics will do for you:

Metrics will allow you to measure your marketing and business results, eliminate unproductive marketing tactics and they will help you save money and make more money, by showing you which marketing tactics you should reinvest in.

Points To Remember Are:

• Marketing planning should concentrate on tactics to attract customers and tactics to keep, reward and make the most of your customers’ loyalty.

• Optimise the way you measure your business activities and results in order to grow your business.

So once you have found your HUNGRY CROWD …WHAT next?

The trick is to find a distinguishing benefit that conveys the problem you will solve or the “want” you’re trying to satisfy that sets you apart from your competitors. This benefit – or unique selling point (usp) is the foundation for your business for it defines what you do or say. In short it helps you:

• Attract and keep customers
• Accelerate market diffusion
• Create a point of difference
• Fill a perceived gap in the market place
• Motivate prospects and customers to act

There are many examples of this type of ‘selling point.’ Only the other day I overheard a major financial institution marketing its high interest bearing ISAs with the message; ‘finding ideas for your money!”

How to come up with a winning offer
The challenge is to explain or to present in conversation and in literature, COMPELLINGLY, what you do to provide a major advantage to your customers that your competitors don’t, or can’t offer and turn this into a few words that offer the means to GRAB your prospects’ attention.

Here’s one way – a 5 step USP generator …

1. Find the problem people have most trouble with …
2. Identify the implications of the problem … ’which means …’
3. Define your solution … ’well, what we do is …’
4. Describe the benefit of your solution …
5. Distil the results down and find the few compelling words that make the difference.

So use the USP generator, it will help you find in a WORD; the solution customers want most and it will help you to stand your business head and shoulders above its rivals.

Points To Remember Are:

• Build a business around a HUNGRY CROWD for whom you offer value with a pipeline of products.

• Prospects and customers have got to see and understand why they should buy from you and how you are different from your competitors, so find the COMPELLING WORDS that will do this for you.