(And What You Must Do To Avoid It Happening To You!)
So what exactly, or how does your -semi- to severely cash and resourced strapped small business and or service do, to go about systematically generating leads and brand new first time customers, patients and or clients etc.
And is your current process easily scale- able? And if it’s not, why bother implementing the strategy and or tactic in the first place?
For most semi to severely cash strapped small business owners and or service providers, the answer is pretty simple.
They really have a sort of one track mind approach to initial lead generation and eventual conversion.
And it’s that particular type of tunnel vision, which potentially puts business/services at risk. Because the owners are not fully aware of how their limited understanding of total lifetime customer value calculations, can and will help make their businesses and or services far more profitable.
So What Is This Major Marketing Mistake Which Is Constantly Hurting Aspiring Small Business Owners And Or Service Providers?
Lots of severely cash strapped small business owners and or service providers, can waste outrageous sums of money, on conventional advertising mediums, like fancy Pay Per Click (PPC), display, classified and or banner ads etc.
And offline, they can and do spend a fortune on snail mail post cards, local radio, TV and or magazine or newspaper ads etc.
But the main reason any of these all too common advertising strategies ultimately fail, is because the owners either don’t properly consider, and or they totally ignore their customers and or clients total lifetime customer values.
Let me illustrate with a rather straight forward example or two. Your typical small business owner/service provider, especially since they have no real clue what their ideal customer/clients total lifetime value is.
They are unable to honestly determine, if it really makes more sense, to spend more per click, or to spend more for a market tested display and or solo ad, because they have no idea, how many additional customers (referrals) each customer they acquire, will actually generate for them, and over what period of time.(The situation already sounds a little shaky, does it not? )
Part Of The Reason Your Small Business Stays Small Is Because Your Marketing Budget Doesn’t Allow You To Scale!
Let’s try and put the previous paragraph into better context.Let’s say you run a fairly successful,local hair or nail salon.And your best (ideal) customer, will stick with you at least five years, and spend about $2,800 dollars, and you net about $2,500 dollars off them.Over that period of time.
And they will refer at least two brand new referral customers, who will stick around and bring you an additional $2,500 dollars each, over the next five years.
My friend, now that you at least have some semi realistic idea what your ideal customer is truly worth to your business/service, can you now appreciate why it makes more sense, to spend more on the front end of your sales funnel, on a market tested Pay Per Click,display and or snail mail post card ad campaign.
Or why it definitely makes more sense, to mail your best customers, snail mail-reminders to come to come back to your business/store- post card campaigns more often.
Where as, if you or your major competitors, don’t totally understand how to properly evaluate the real mathematics of your business/service, you’re literally forced to try and be as profitable as you possibly can, on the initial front end of your sales funnel, simply because if you’re not, you won’t be able to afford, to continue spending ad dollars on the front end.Right?
Once You Examine The Numbers Of Your Business Strategic Lead Generation Becomes Even More Crucial!
Looking at the last example, since you know each new customer is worth approximately $7,500 dollars worth of accumulative business over the next five years,(give or take.)
You can and definitely should, offer some of your cross promotional and or potential joint venture (JV) partners, even more of your gross front end profits, (as ethical bribes) to help you consistently gain more back end referral customers and or clients.(You can see that right?)
Simply by strategically delaying some of your gross front end profits, once you know and understand your ideal customers total lifetime value calculations, you (and or) your major competitors, are now in a much better financial position, to decide how much you can and should invest, in your front end advertising, promotions and or marketing campaigns.
Or how much you can or should ethically bribe your best cross promotional partners, in order to create more high profit margin referral customers.
So the rub here is this, far too many cash and resourced starved small business owners, and or service providers thwart their businesses potential long term growth, simply because they don’t understand how much they can actually afford to invest in businesses growth!Don’t you agree?
P.S. Now as is customary during this part of our show.
Please share your extremely valuable comments (in the comments section below)
that you can apply to your business, product or service in the next 30 days or less!
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One of the best posts I’ve read till now about marketing for small business. I’ve seen so many successful businesses who started with the good amount of investment with a unsucessful end.
Thanks for your extremely kind words Dhaval!
And just like you, I too (unfortunately) have sen, more
than my fair share, of extremely well financed businesses fail!
And for any number of reasons as well!Thanks so much for stopping by
and sharing your thoughts!I truly appreciate it!
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