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What Marketing Strategy Should You Use for Your Business to Attract Long-Term Loyal Paying Customers and Clients??
By admin | August 8, 2008
Of course, that’s what we all want: Long Term Loyal Customers who love us so much that they return again and again. But to do that, you have to build loyalty, and that takes time, so how do you make money in the mean time?
The challenge here, especially when your business is in its infancy, is to find and attract paying customers quickly. But making a quick sale doesn’t necessarily lead to long-term clients. So, how do we bridge the gap and get some serious Client Attraction going on?
The answer lies… in how you attract those first customers. Creative marketing may bring them in, but that alone won’t build loyalty right off the bat. In order to do that, you’ve got to give a little first…
Empowered Women in Business know this (and that means you…!
Nobody likes to work for free (nor should they long-term), but demonstrating the value of your products or services up front will go a long ways towards bringing in long-term clients and customers. After all, people won’t invest large sums of money in you or your company until they know what kind of value they’re going to get from it.
So, how do you demonstrate value?
Free Samples!!
How do you think Mrs. Fields Cookies got so big?
When Debbie Fields talks about how she got the word out on just how good her cookies were, this is what she had to say,
“I learned how important what I call ‘try and buy’ was,” says Fields. “I didn’t want to advertise and say my cookies are the world’s best. It would be presumptuous of me to say that. Instead I wanted people to actually experience the product, try the product, and if they thought it was worthy, if they liked it, then they could buy it.”
And she hit the nail squarely on the head (or on the taste-buds, in her case).
So, you’ve got to find out a way to give out “Free Samples.” And not your cheapest, barely-good samples… the really good stuff!
Okay, so what if you don’t have warm-and-gooey rich and decadent chocolate chunk cookies that say “Heaven!” when you bite into them to give out… what can you give?
Most of you reading this post are all-too-familiar with “info-preneuring” and know that there’s a TON of information out there- both for free and for sale (like E-Books, Newsletters, Audios and more!).
If you’re an infopreneur, one thing that you don’t want to do is to give out a cheap and mostly-worthless e-book as your “freebie.”
True- that won’t cost you a dime, but it probably won’t make you a dime either.
Some of my clients, when I ask them what they can give away in their business in order to get people into their Marketing Funnel, are silent… or come up with an e-book or “special report” that’s been passed around by everybody and their grandmother that has little to do with their business. They want to save “the good stuff” for paying clients.
What they don’t understand, is that they’re not likely to get paying clients, if their first sample is something cheap and relatively worthless.
Would Mrs. Fields be as big as she got to be by giving out samples that were old stale plain cookies because that was the cheapest thing to do??
Absolutely not!!
She gave away The Good Stuff!
So ask yourself: What “Good Stuff” can you give away, that will cause people to want to come back for More and More of “The Good Stuff” from you again and again?
What, in your inventory, represents the “warm-and-gooey rich and decadent chocolate chunk cookies?”
What, when you share it with your customers, will have them saying,
“Man! (or woman!…) If she gave that for free, I can only imagine what her paid services (products etc.) will do for me!”
Assuming that you have a good idea of the major challenges and needs of your target market, take one of those really prime-and-juicy issues, and give your clients some real solutions.
Give them something that will allow them to see and experience some real results.
You don’t have to give All of the Answers… but let them experience some success!
Once you do that, you’ll start getting customers more quickly than you can imagine.
I can’t tell you how excited I was when I started implementing this approach and seeing it work!
Now, as a nice person, I’m all for giving out advice, and when I found people needing some of my expertise (if they weren’t specifically customers) I would give advice. Usually, it just ended up being free advice. But sometimes, just sometimes, people were so pleased with what I had given for free, that they wanted to know how to get more. And sometimes that then lead to a sale… But I was too dense at the time to link it with making more sales…
It wasn’t until sometime later when I heard of “giving to receive” as an actual business practice (and more than just something heard in Sunday school), that it started to click.
“Could it actually work for me?”
‘Nothing to lose but give it a try…
What could I do? As a business and speaking coach, I could give people a free consultation, or a free strategy session. Maybe I could give away some business plans…
What I ended up doing was giving Free Consultations that helped people take their goals and dreams and have a concrete “getting started” (or getting expanded, as the case may be) plan.
This works Miraculously for me! Much Better than any of the advertising that I have out there. Now, of course, you need to advertise (and I do!), but it’s what I do when I get them into the top of my marketing funnel that gets them to be paying clients.
So, give it a try. Whether you’re using online marketing or offline marketing strategies:
To attract Long-Term Loyal Paying Customers that will return again and again:
* Ask what your market and clients top needs and wants really are
* Figure out what you can give away as a free sample that will give them real value in the sample
* Once they’ve sampled some of your good stuff, you can offer more and upsell to your increasingly-higher price points (and you’ll have good, more highly-targeted customers in your database!).
For a really good example of somebody who gives some Great Content as a “Free Sample,” check out Gina Gaudio-Grave’s IM University. Gina is known affectionately through the internet marketing world as “The JV Queen,” but as I’ve come to know and love, she’s so much more than that!
When you go to the IM University, check out her “30 Day IM Challenge.”
It is one of The Most Powerful “Free Samples” I’ve ever seen.
When you go through Gina’s free 30-Day Challenge, you’ll learn how to build and expand your business using the power of the internet. It’s a “Nuts and Bolts” course that from a strategic point of view, among other things, will help you to make tremendous strides towards building a profitable list of customers.
It’s a really good course that’s surprisingly-complete! Among other great strategies, you’ll also learn how to attract loyal customers. I made tremendous strides by going through her free course (and of course, I became a paying customer!).
I also know that Gina does extremely well in attracting paying customers after going through her 30 Day Challenge at the IM University. Furthermore, her vast customer list returns to her to buy again and again, because they can always count on getting real value from her, as demonstrated by her “Free Samples.”
As a Marketing Strategy, this has worked really well for me to get customers into my “marketing funnel” and convert them into Long Term Loyal Paying Customers, and it will work for you too!
Go out and give it a try, and then write to me and let me know how this has worked for you!
Topics: Client Attraction, Marketing |
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
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