It’s really easy, if you suddenly realise that you need to find new customers, to feel that you’ve got to be on every platform and have got to be doing every form of marketing.

In this situation what you actually need is ‘laser focus’.

Why do you need it? How do you find it? It’s all here for you, in the latest episode of BaranovTV…

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another episode of BaranovTV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

I thought in this episode, it’d be really helpful to relay a conversation that I had earlier today with an existing client.

They’re in the tech sector and they have customers of their own that are normally with them for a long period of time, and who have a high-lifetime value to them. Sadly, because of coronavirus, a lot of these big businesses have been told they cannot spend any money unless it’s absolutely business-critical.

So regardless of the fact that our client is saving their customers and their clients a huge amount of money, those customers are having to walk away As a result, our client has just lost four of their big customers.

That may not sound like a lot but it’s worth quite a lot of money to them.

So they were having a conversation with Chris the other day about what they could do and they were talking finance. They’ve started down that route and sorting that side of things out to extend the cashflow they’ve got.

But I’ve had a conversation with them today around marketing because they were in a little bit of a tailspin because they don’t lose customers. Consequently, when they pick up new customers here and there, it’s great because they’ve already got quite a solid, consistent client base as it is.

They now need to replace those four customers quite quickly to make sure that they don’t develop too much of a hole in their cashflow.

As a result, we were discussing the best options for them.

And so I thought I’d share that generally, because it’s really easy if you’re in that situation where you suddenly realise that you need to find new business to feel that you’ve got to be on every platform, you’ve got to be doing every form of marketing and actually you lose the focus that you actually need!

So the conversation that we had was quite specific.

We discussed how they usually find their customers and where they normally come from.  Their new customers tend to come from referrals where somebody has moved companies and realises that their new company doesn’t have that service in place.

New customers can come from people that they already know where they’ve built relationships, where they’ve been talking to somebody over a period of time that they’ve met at an exhibition or a trade show and they finally got to the point where it’s right for them and the timing is right.

It’s all about relationships for them.

We also discussed how many new customers they actually need. They were thinking about LinkedIn advertising, Facebook advertising, all sorts of different activities. They actually only need, realistically, to replace those four customers.

• They don’t need to be all over Facebook.
• They don’t need to be all over LinkedIn.

Yes, it would be good to raise their awareness and to raise their profile and to start to do some of those things, but that isn’t going to bring customers on board quickly.

The best approach for them is to look at the lifetime value of a customer, and the characteristics of a typical customer. They can use that information to create a target list of potential customers and from, say, fifteen names aim to get four.

We decided that they would concentrate on trying to get in touch and in front of those people. They know that if they can reach those people and have the right conversations and to explain the value that their system offers, then there’s a really good chance that they will get their four new customers.

We also discussed niches because they’ve got one in particular that they serve a lot of.

Our client should be leaning against an open door with this industry. If their prospect realises that they don’t have what their competition essentially has then they should be able to quite quickly convert them.

Our discussions revolved around being really focused and making sure that their spend in terms of cost, but also their time and their attention, is aimed in the right direction.

With everything that’s going on at the moment, with a lot of businesses being affected by their own customers’ reduced budgets, increased decision times and all of those sorts of things, this might be helpful to share.

We all need to be really focused on what we’re actually putting our activity into and our attention to.

If you’re looking to increase your customer base, think about what type of customer you need, what volume of customers you need.

You need to know where those people are hanging out. Facebook isn’t necessarily going to enable you to have conversation with somebody you have no relationship with who’s going to quickly agree to spend a lot of money with you.

You need to speak to them in the right environment and in the right way.

BUT if you know what your target market is, and you know how to reach those people, then you can target your activity appropriately and proportionately.

And having some of those figures like lifetime value and those sorts of numbers to hand can help you make that really focused decision. You can decide how much you want to spend to get in touch with them, or to catch their attention.

So that’s really pretty much all I wanted to say is that, you know, it’s around being targeted, it’s around building relationships because when people trust you and they know the service or the product you’ve got is absolutely going to make a huge difference to them and you’re talking benefits, then it’s a much easier conversation to have.

If you need to use us as a sounding board for anything like that, whether it’s the numbers or your approach, then please do get in touch.

I am not a marketing expert, but I do know bits and I know what’s worked for us and I know what’s worked for other businesses that we’ve acted for in the past. I’m very happy to share that and act as a sounding board if it’s useful and just help you get some focus and some clarity.

I hope that’s helpful and I’ll see you all very soon.