Rule 1: Educate your customers on the value of your product / service:

Why? Quite simply on a cynical note you will make more sales and retain more customers. The caveat is that for longevity in business, you must offer superior value to your customers, so that you can encourage to keep buying from you.

Customers quite simply forget! OR may not be sure of your offering.

They can forget what you sell and what value it can bring them. It is your job as a business owner to consistently remind them.

At the end of the day, customers are people, right? So, within their busy lives they are focused on a multiplicity of activities, their lives are action packed AND they receive a range of marketing communications through social media, TV, newspapers, billboards, radio, email, brochures, leaflets……. and so on, in fact, the average person is bombarded with on average over 3,500 advertising messages A DAY!!! It is no wonder, that customers become confused and or simply forget about your specific product / service.

What does any sane person do with all these marketing messages? Well, thankfully our human brains are designed to filter out IRRELEVANT material in our lives, be it marketing or otherwise.

This means that YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST understand your customers, so that you can convey the right message that will cut through the debris of marketing messages they receive every day.

Your ad copy and text on your advertising and social media campaigns needs to ‘speak’ to your prospective customers in a way that speaks to their minds and most especially to their hearts. This is a necessity as otherwise, your prospective customers just filter you out!

Rule 2: You must continually educate your customers:

Prospective customers need to have enormous clarity around the benefits to them in buying your product / service. It must be immediately clear to them WHY they should buy on the basis of how it will help your prospective customer change their lives for the better.

Your product / service must be better than the competition (analyze your competitors first) and your customers should know WHY. This is your unique selling proposition and will draw potential and interested customers towards you.

Your next job is to be absolutely crystal clear in conveying to your prospective customers HOW their lives will be better from buying your product / service. The degree of resistance to buying is matched by the degree of confusion that your customers experience on your offering.

Clarity in your marketing communications to your customers is key to greater business success.

Again, customers are human and in the busyness of their lives, forget, gasp, or partially forget all about your product / service. This is why you need to CONSISTENTLY market your ‘clear marketing message’, as a reminder to consumers that may need or be searching for your product / service.

Continuing marketing education IE marketing effectively to your customers will result in greater sales and in greater client retention.

There is also an argument here for putting a bigger emphasis on a customer’s lifetime value. You may initially sell a $39 item to a customer, however once satisfied with your product / service, that customer is more likely to come back and buy more products at a similar and higher price levels. Over a period of years it can be surprising how much cash a customer leaves with a  business, even when they are buying low value items.

In terms of encouraging a customer to revisit and re buy from you on a regular basis you must keep educating and reminding customers about the value that you consistently deliver to them.

It can be tedious but is totally worth the effort!

The biggest mistake I see with clients is that they do really well and become complacent, resulting in a reduction in marketing. The simple fact is that over time competitors become top of mind.

This is why you must keep educating customers in a clear manner on the benefits of your product in addition to consistently educating your customers on a regular basis, so that they don’t forget you!