The Sin of Neglect: Retention Vs. Acquisition

As the new saying goes, “Retention is the new acquisition.” Businesses can no longer depend on (or afford to market toward) constantly gaining more and more clients, so it becomes even more important to cater to your existing clients. Companies that spend too much time and too many resources on gaining new clients and all but ignore current clients commit a major marketing offense, more commonly known as “the sin of neglect.” To avoid this deadly marketing sin, use these 7 tips:

7 Tips to Avoid the “Sin of Neglect”

1) Create VIP Status

Do not give new clients the same or better offers before offering them to existing clients. Instead give existing clients a VIP status, which allows them to know about new offers before new clients. This shows existing clients that you appreciate their business. Offering the best promotions only to new clients makes your existing clients feel compelled to leave you for a competitor’s “new client offer”. You should treat your clients so well that they’d turn down any “new client offer” because they’re so happy with you they feel they’d be missing out on something by leaving you.

2) Avoid Online Neglect

Remember to maintain a web page primarily used by existing clients and do not put all of your time and effort into creating and maintaining websites catering to new clients. New clients are important, but it’s your existing clients who will use you as a resource and provide you with steady traffic to your site! Make your site informative, and if possible, provide a “members only” area where your clients can log in and view information or get access to deals that only they can see as an existing client.

3) Save the Best for the Existing Clients

Remember to put equal amounts of time and effort into campaigns for existing clients and campaigns for new clients. Do not allow your best creative people to only be involved in campaigns for new clients while leaving the existing client campaigns stuck with the poor or inexperienced creative minds.

4) Quality, Never Quantity

Do not value quantity of clients over quality of customer service. Always focus on your existing clients’ quality of service before worrying about response rates of potential new clients. Good customer service is vital to retaining existing clients. If your client experience is lacking, you have what I affectionately call “Leaky Bucket Syndrome”. It doesn’t do any good to run water into a leaky bucket, and bringing new clients into a system that makes them feel neglected or un-appreciated doesn’t help your business one bit, either! It’s the old “bad news travels 10x faster than good news” adage. Plug the holes in your customer service bucket before you spend money trying to fill it with new clients!

5) Show Client Appreciation

Never devote all of your money to trying to gain new clients. Instead of investing money in a new client promotion, try hosting a client appreciation event. If your existing clients feel valued and appreciated, they will give you the most coveted method of advertising out there – word of mouth!

6) Listen and Learn

Remember to listen to existing clients and respond to what they want. Do not try to force feed what you are selling to existing clients just because they have bought from you before. Your clients are a gold mine of information. They have said “yes” to you before, and that gives them some amount of loyalty to you. Take advantage of that opportunity to learn from them how to improve your business and their experience. Offer several opportunities for them to evaluate your systems – including surveys, response cards, etc. Give them an incentive or Thank You for turning in the survey, and you’ll have priceless information about your business.

6.5) Don’t Be Arrogant

When you get feedback from clients, be prepared for some of it to be negative or even painful! Don’t be arrogant and ignore this information – this kind of honest response is one of the most valuable pieces of information you can get about your business. It doesn’t matter if this person is hard to please. You should be in the business of pleasing every client you have to the point that they can’t help but tell everyone about their wonderful experience! Are you THAT good at what you do? Shouldn’t you be?

7) Break out of the routine

Always mix things up with existing clients. Do not allow your business with existing clients to become old and boring and do not use all the new tricks on gaining clients. The only reason people get tired of receiving marketing messages from a company is when they get the same old tired message in the same old tired format. Use marketing to entertain and inform your clients, and they will be more open to your communications. They may even LOOK FORWARD to hearing from you – what a novel concept!