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3 Issues for Crafting Defecting Customer Recapture Strategies

Recapturing lost customers is like recooping lost sheep. We can help you save departing customers.

Picking up where we left off discussing Kumar and his associates’ research on recapturing lost customers, let’s look at their three main questions of interest. When you are crafting a recapture strategy, you must consider the following:

How likely is a given customer to come back?

Trying to regain every lost customer can sap your marketing resources. It’s better to be more efficient and effective by focusing on people whose prior behavior suggests they can be more easily convinced to return. Has the departing customer referred others and never complained or only had complaints that were satisfactorily resolved? These are your best bets. Has this customer canceled because of price alone? If so, that customer is more likely to come back than one who left because of poor service. If a departing customer claims your prices are just as bad as your service, don’t bother knocking on their door again. Such types are the least likely of all to return.

How long will a reacquired customer stay, and how much will he or she spend?

You should consider the returning lifetime value of each lost customer. This is usually based on that customers average historical spend multiplied out over the number of years you expect the reacquired customer to stay. You’d probably be surprised to find someone who departs will be more loyal their second time around. In fact, recaptured customers generally stay recaptured longer, and customers who defect because of price and come back for a better deal stay the longest of all. This shows the important upside of win-back strategies.

Which people should get which saving offers?

You should consider the specifics of each customer in relation to your historical experience with others. Don’t use one-size-fits-all “new-deal” incentives. Who gets what recapture offer varies based on your company’s specific facts and circumstances and the reasons the customer left and is willing to consider returning.

 

You will have to study your customers to work strategically when bringing back your own lost customers. Simply identifying those who are the most likely to sign up again, rather than appealing to every defector, can increase your win-back rates. Considering each lost customer’s average lifetime value can drive how big an offer to make to get them back.

 

A lot of this data can also be used to develop initial customer acquisition strategies, but that is a topic for another day.

 

[reminder]What do you know about your own new customer prospects and lost customers and have you thought of hiring us to help you learn more?[/reminder]

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3 Great Things for Crafting Defecting Customer Recapture Strategies

Recapturing lost customers is like recooping lost sheep. We can help you save departing customers.

Have you ever had a customer leave you and just said to yourself, “Big deal, so what, and who cares? New customers are a dime a dozen.” Yeah, me, too – long ago. But let me tell you why we’re both wrong and why we should almost always work hard but be selective about keeping defecting customers.

First, it usually costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to recapture a departing one. Second, departing customers tell exponential numbers of friends why you stink, but those whom you tempt back into your fold tell even more people what a deal they conned you out of, most of whom will be new customers. Third, who needs a third reason? The first two are more than enough, but there are more discussed below.

But, how do you get defectors to rejoin your tribe? And how hard should you work and how much bling should you toss at them to get them back? Like most things common business owners take for granted, however, there is a good deal of science behind winning back lost customers.

Some folks who appear to know a lot about this stuff are V. Kumar, a professor at Georgia State University; Yashoda Bhagwat, a doctoral student there; and Xi (Alan) Zhang, another doctoral student there, who studied the issue for seven years and published an article in the Journal of Marketing in 2015, which got a lot of press including an article in the Harvard Business Journal. Regaining “Lost” Customers: The Predictive Power of First-Lifetime Behavior, the Reason for Defection, and the Nature of the Win-Back Offer. Journal of Marketing: July 2015, Vol. 79, No. 4, pp. 34-55, (http://journals.ama.org/doi/10.1509/jm.14.0107) discussed in the Harvard Business Journal, March 2016 pp. 22-23 (https://hbr.org/2016/03/winning-back-lost-customers).

The upshot of Kumar and Co’s research is reacquiring customers who leave may help businesses not only regain their lost profits but also usurp profits from competitors. Nonetheless, not all lost customers are worth the investment in reacquisition and not all of them will remain profitable if reacquired. These guys studied (1) the lost customers’ first-lifetime experiences and behaviors, (2) the reason for defection, and (3) the nature of the win-back offer made to lost customers are all related to the likelihood of their reacquisition, their second-lifetime duration, and their second-lifetime profitability per month. Their study shows that the stronger the first-lifetime relationship with the firm, the more likely a customer is to accept the win-back offer.

Come back tomorrow and find out some answers to vital questions you need to consider when crafting your own “customer saving strategy.”

[reminder]Do you even care about recooping your lost sheep and recouping their profits?[/reminder]

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10 + 1 Things An SEO Expert Should Be Doing For Your Website

Do you ever wish you had even an inkling about what search engine optimization is and how you can use it to make your website get you more business? Yeah, me, too. Today’s guest post by my recently acquired Baltimore friend, Adam Singer, should give you a leg up on this topic. So, sit back, relax, pop open a nice beverage and enjoy ….

How to Use Your Website to Generate Leads and Customers:

There are three steps do use your website to generate leads and customers:

  1. Get Found
  2. Offer Content of Value in exchange for an opt-in
  3. Deliver value and continue delivering value

This article will focus on step 1: How to get found online.  In other words, how to get Google to deliver traffic to your website.

For the sake of this article, I am going to divide the three tasks into 11  parts (10 + 1).  For a really great overview of how to do SEO I recommend the free ebooks on Moz.com (https://moz.com/learn/seo).

  1. Website Analytics

What cannot be measured, cannot be managed or improved (adaptation of a quote from Peter Drucker, Management Guru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker)

You cannot understand or begin to optimize your website for search results until you have a way to measure how much traffic and/or authority your website has.  Google offers a free product call Google Analytics to measure traffic and lots of other stuff for your website.  You can get it http://analytics.google.com .  If you are not very technical, you’ll probably need some help adding the code to your site.  You should be able to find someone to do this for you on http://fiverr.com for about $5.

Google analytics will show you how much traffic goes to your site, but it won’t show how your website compares with the websites of other companies offering similar services.  I recommend http://Moz.com or http://Spyfu.com for tools to understand how your website compares to your competitors.  Both Moz and Spyfu have free and paid versions of their products.  I have used the free and paid versions of both companies and can say that the free versions have value, but the paid versions are well worth the investment.

However, if you are not planning to spend at least 2 hours or more of work on your SEO per month, you are probably better off staying with the free version and using the difference to hire someone to do the work for you. In other words, don’t pay for the software if you’re not planning to spend the time to use it and follow the recommendations it generates.  Stay with Google Analytics.

  1. Keyword Research

“Keywords” are the terms people type into Google when they want to find the services you are offering.  There are lots of ways to research these terms.  My favorite free way is here: https://moz.com/products/pro/keyword-explorer.  It is the Moz keyword explorer.  You type in the word(s) you think describe your business.  Moz will respond with a long list of terms people are using on Google to find business like yours.  The list will also include an estimate of how many times each term is entered into Google per month.

You’ll want to choose somewhere between 10 and 1,000 keyword terms.  I know that’s a big range, but it really depends on how much time/money have to put into this project.  If you have less than 10, you’re not focused enough.  If you have more than 1,000 you will need to put a lot of work into making use of those all of those terms.

  1. Competitor Analysis

No need to reinvent the wheel.  You should have a good working understanding of what terms your competition is targeting.  Spyfu (http://spyfu.com) enables you to have some understanding of what keywords are delivering traffic to your competition and what factors may be contributing to their success in ranking for those terms (usually backlinks; see #10)

  1. On Page Website Optimization

Once you know what keywords are most important for your business you will need to make sure that they are present in pages on your website.  They should appear in the title https://blog.insideview.com/2010/08/19/what-is-a-title-tag/, meta description https://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description , url https://kb.iu.edu/d/adnz, header tags http://pearanalytics.com/blog/2014/how-to-write-a-header-tag-h1-for-seo/, and body (regular text) of your website.  There is a hyperlink to each of these terms to give your more information about each of these things.

  1. Social Media Integration

Company pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are free.  To set them up you will need 2 good images (one for your profile, one for your cover).  Once you have those it should take about 15 minutes to setup each page.   It’s good for SEO, and it’s a way for you to share helpful content online.  I also recommend using paid boosts and other promotions on Facebook.  You can often get a lot of exposure on Facebook for just $10 or $15.

  1. Blog

If you have a business, you know more about something than your clients do.  Maybe you know more about how to use your product, why to use your product.  Whatever it is, use your knowledge to help people before, during, and after they purchase from you.  Your blog is a great place to do this.  Teach people and they will share your information and help you get more business.

  1. Press Releases

Have an eye out for what is newsworthy in your business: a new hire, an important new project, new development in your company.  Share your news with the media outlets in your area and your industry.  This encourages traffic to your site and invites links from important media websites in your area.

  1. Article Submission

Share useful information on other people’s websites.  This improves your reputation and increases links to your website.

  1. Directory Submission

Google uses information from many, many, many other websites to get information about your website and your business.   Directories are places on the web that store and organize large amounts of information about businesses and organizations.  Your area chamber of commerce is an example of this, but there are many many more (thousands? Millions? Lots!) .  There are services from http://yext.com and http://moz.com that help with these submitting your information to these directories.  You can do it yourself, but it can be very time consuming.  You can check how well you are listed in directories by submitting your business information on my website here:  http://www.ajsingerstudios.com/free-seo-tool

This will also generate links that will enable you to update your information on 70+ of the most important directories.

  1. Quality Link Building

Create good content that helps people and is valuable to them for its own sake. Share it on social media.  Make real connections to with real people who have the same goals as you and similar clients.  Encourage and invite them to mention your articles on their website.

Historically, Google has considered has given preference to websites that are referenced by other websites (allow me to explain).  You may have heard of the term “link” or “hyperlink” (I’ll call them links here).  Links are most often in bright blue, though they can be any color.  When you click on a link on webpage, you will be taken to a different webpage.  A link from someone else’s website to your website is called a “backlink”.  Generally speaking, a site with more backlinks is more authoritative than one with less backlinks.  In other words, if lots of websites are sending their visitors to your website (through links), Google is likely interpret this to mean that lots of websites think well of your website.

HOWEVER, not all links are equal and some can be harmful to your website’s rank on Google.  Google is VERY touchy about what it calls “web spam”.  “Web spam” is when websites try to get authority they don’t deserve.  Often this comes from getting links from websites that were setup only for the purpose of linking to other websites.  It sounds confusing, and it is.  Suffice it to say, spend your time creating good content they helps people and is valuable to them for its own sake, share it on social media, and make real connections to with real people who have the same mission and you will not have to worry about link spam.

  1. Monthly Report

As stated in the beginning, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.  For SEO, the main key performance indicator is “organic traffic”.  Organic traffic means how many people came to your website because they found it through a search on Google or similar search engine.  Google Analytics, Moz, and Spyfu will all generate reports on your website traffic.  Google Analytics is probably the best for this, and it’s free.

In addition to “organic traffic”, you will probably also want to know how your ranks are getting better or worse for your targeted keywords.  Moz and Spyfu are pretty much the only options when it comes to knowing how you rank for particular keywords.  Google Analytics has pretty much stopped sharing this information and running Google searches on these terms can be inaccurate and incredibly time consuming.   The searches are inaccurate because Google constantly tries to deliver personalized search results that reflect your location and past searches.  So the ranks you see on your device may be different than the results your consumers see.

One Last Thing

If you do nothing else but this, I think it will make a big difference in your site’s success online: Go to https://www.google.com/business/ and fill out your information.  Then ask satisfied customers to Google your business name and leave a review.  It makes a BIG difference.  Good Luck!

About Me

Adam Singer is the CEO of Ability SEO Inc. (http://www.abilityseo.com)  Most clients working with Ability SEO see an increase in web traffic of 400% or more in the first 12 months of service. Adam has been online since the 1980s and has been running his own web/SEO companies since 2011.  You can follow his blog at AbilitySEO.com and download a free eBook 25 Website Must Haves (http://www.ajsingerstudios.com/25-things-every-new-websites-must-have) Follow him on twitter @AbilitySEO.

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The First 21 Questions Any Prospective New Small Business Owner Should Ask

Have you ever played 20 Questions with yourself about a new business venture? Yeah, me, too.

Do you still think you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur and start a new business? Great! Now, ask yourself these 21 Questions to make sure you’re thinking about the right key business decisions:

1.     Why am I starting a business?

2.     Am I prepared to invest the require amounts of my life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people needed to get my business started?

3.     What kind of business do I want?

4.     Where will my business be located?

5.     What products or services will my business provide?

6.     Who is my ideal customer?

7.     Who is my competition?

8.     What differentiates my business idea and the products or services I will provide from others in the market?

9.     How will I brand, market, and advertise my business?

10.  How many employees will I need?

11.  What types of suppliers do I need?

12.  How much money do I need to get started?

13.  Where will I get my startup capital?

14.  How soon will it take before my products or services are available?

15.  How long do I have until I start making a profit?

16.  How will I price my product compared to my competition?

17.  How will I set up the legal structure of my business?

18.  What licenses do I need to obtain?

19.  What taxes do I need to pay?

20.  What kind of insurance do I need?

21.  How will I run my business?

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Do You Have What It Takes To Start Your Own Business?

Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to start your own business? Yeah, me, too.

Starting your own business can be an exciting and rewarding experience. It can offer numerous advantages such as being your own boss, setting your own schedule, and making a living doing something you truly enjoy. But, becoming a successful entrepreneur requires many things.

Consider whether you have the following characteristics and skills commonly associated with successful entrepreneurs:

Are You a “Smart Creative”? Are you able to think of new ideas? Can you imagine new ways to solve problems? Entrepreneurs must be able to think creatively. If you have insights on how to take advantage of new opportunities, entrepreneurship may be a good fit.

Are You a Calculated Risk Taker? Being your own boss also means you’re the one making tough decisions. Entrepreneurship involves uncertainty. Do you avoid uncertainty in life at all costs? If yes, then entrepreneurship may not be the best fit for you. Do you enjoy learning about the opportunities available and obstacles you might have to overcome so you can enjoy the thrill of taking calculated risks? Then read on.

Are You Independent? Entrepreneurs make a lot of decisions on their own. If you find you can trust your instincts — and you’re not afraid of rejection every now and then — you could be on your way to being an entrepreneur.

Are You Personable and Socially Persuasive? You may have the greatest idea in the world, but if you cannot persuade customers, employees and potential lenders or partners, you may find entrepreneurship to be challenging. If you enjoy public speaking, engage new people with ease, and find you make compelling arguments grounded in facts, it’s likely you’re poised to make your own new business succeed.

Are You an Effective Negotiator? As a small business owner, you will need to negotiate everything from leases to contract terms to rates to getting employees and others to do what you want when, where, why, and how you want it done. Polished negotiation skills will help you save money and keep your business running smoothly.

Are You Open To Being Supported By Others? Before you start a business, it’s important to have a strong support system in place. You’ll be forced to make many important decisions, especially in the first months of opening your business. If you do not have a support network of people to help you, consider finding a business mentor or consultant. A business mentor is someone who is experienced, successful, and willing to provide advice and guidance. Business consultants do the same thing professionally, meaning they expect to be paid for their services. If you are buying a franchise in order to start your own business, then your franchisor should be a major component of your support team.

Do you think you have what it takes to start your own business?

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Why Turnkey Processes Yield The Best Results

Have you ever wondered, “How can I go big in my business without a technological breakthrough?” Yeah, me, too.

In his book Discipline Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup, Bill Aulet, Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, posits only two distinct types of entrepreneurship exist. Aulet’s first type includes small and medium enterprises usually started by one person to serve a local market seeking the rewards of personal independence and cash flow from the business.

The MIT professor’s second type, innovation-driven enterprise (IDE) entrepreneurship, involves more risk-taking and more ambitious as entrepreneurs, working in teams build a business off some technology, process, business model, or other innovation that will give them a significant competitive advantage over existing competitors. IDE entrepreneurs seek to create wealth through exponential growth more than to remain in control of their companies as they drive to become big and fast-growing to serve global markets with the help of venture capital from a limited number of new part-owner-investors who insist on seizing control of the enterprise.

There is, however, a third type of entrepreneurial enterprise that blends these two extremes. This third type, which is achievable by every small and medium enterprise owner, is to start, buy, run, and grow a turnkey business in order either to sell it for profit or sell duplicates of it as franchises.

Rather than being based on a technological breakthrough, turnkey businesses based on quality management improvements drive the success of the clear majority of small businesses in America and around the world today. Quality management improvement drives better businesses to be more effective, more efficient, and, therefore, much more profitable than their competitors in many ways.

Unlike Aulet’s SME model, the turnkey model blends the best of both entrepreneurial worlds. It begins with a focus on local, then regional markets, but has the end game of letting others rent the business process the turnkey entrepreneur innovates. The turnkey quality management system innovated allows for duplicable jobs, instead of tradable jobs, which multiply employment instead of merely relocating employees. And, most importantly, it grows exponentially with the franchisor staying in control of his or her business model and operations, while each franchisee begins with and maintains control of his or her own personal risk, reward, and destiny.

Whether you want to be a small business owner, an IDE entrepreneur, or an owner/franchisor, if you want to truly own your own business and get the biggest return on your investment of your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people in your business, then you must use the P10 Principle to start, buy, run, grow, and sell your business as a turnkey operation and begin with one location and let other people rent your business processes as franchisees.

[reminder]What are you doing to turnkey your business?[/reminder]

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40 Years of Doing It, Doing It, Doing It

Running a successful small business takes the majority of your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people. The responsibility is great at the least and even more so when all your golden eggs come from this one goose. That’s why it is critical to have develop a relationship with a business consultant that has been where you’ve been and done what you’ve done.

Over my two score years owning or running a variety of small businesses (and a few large ones along the way), I have served many small business owners who have built their wealth over years of long hours and hard work. So, I’m well aware of the challenges small business owners face. That is why I take a multi-focal, integrated approach to advising my clients.

I work with my clients and their other various advisors — lawyers, accountants, insurance agents, and many other types of professionals. My goal is to coach my clients and  complement both their and their advisors’ strengths and accommodate their and their advisors’ weaknesses. That way, I can help my client, the client’s business’s coach, drive his team to their collective success for my client’s business.

Whether you want to start, buy, run, grow, or sell your small business, I can help you take your good ideas and enhance them with our better plans to obtain for you the best results possible in your collection of facts and circumstances.

Consider the idea of teaming up with me.

[reminder]How can I help you?[/reminder]

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R U 2-1-2?

Are you steaming along on your path to Greatness! or just treading in hot water? Yeah, me, too’ but only sometimes.

And when I find myself just treading in hot water, I pop open a book my young friends at the Granville T. Woods Academy gave me last spring titled, 212 The Extra Degree, by Sam Parker and Mac Anderson, and it really keeps me motivated just when I need it.

The difference between water at 211 degrees and 212 degrees is that the former is only hot water and the later can power a locomotive straight down the railway to Greatness! and the difference is just one degree, less than 1% of the difference between ice and steam (we’re talking Fahrenheit here, friends; this is America).

So, when you find yourself lacking some gumption, be 2-1-2 and make the extra effort needed to get out of the hot water and steaming on down the rails.

I’ll be sharing more of this book and its philosophy with you over the rest of the year.

[reminder]What have you done to move from 211 to 212 degrees?[/reminder]

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10 Reasons Why You Can Hire Us

Here are the top 10 reasons business owners hire us:

1. You can hire us because of our expertise.

2. You can hire us to identify problems. Sometimes you are too close to a problem inside your business to identify it. That’s when we ride in on our white horses to save the day.

3. You can hire us to supplement your staff. Sometimes you discover you can save thousands of dollars a week by hiring consultants like us when we are needed, rather than hiring full-time employees. You realize you can save additional money by not having to pay benefits for consultants like us. Even though fees are generally higher than your employee’s salary, over the long haul, it simply makes good economic sense to hire us as consultants.

4. You can hire us to act as a catalyst. Let’s face it. No one likes change, especially small businesses. But sometimes change is needed, and we may be brought in to “get the ball rolling.” In other words, we can do things without worrying about the corporate culture, employee morale, or other issues that get in the way when an organization is trying to institute change.

5. You can hire us to provide much-needed objectivity. Who else is more qualified to identify a problem than a consultant? A good consultant provides an objective, fresh viewpoint–without worrying about what people in the organization might think about the results and how they were achieved.

6. You can hire us to teach. We canteach employees any number of different skills. We keep up with new discoveries in our fields of expertise–and are ready to teach new clients what they need to stay competitive.

7. You can hire us to do the “dirty work.” Let’s face it: No one wants to be the person who has to make cuts in the staff or to eliminate an entire division.

8. You can hire us to bring new life to your business. If you are good at coming up with new ideas that work, then you won’t have any trouble finding clients. At one time or another, however, most businesses need someone to administer “first aid” to get things rolling again.

9. You can hire us to create a new business. We have great experience in this field. Not everyone has the ability to conceive an idea and develop a game plan. We do.

10. You can hire us to influence other people. We can get your message in places you cannot send it yourself.

 [reminder]What’s holding you back from getting our help?[/reminder]

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A Little Recognition Can Have a Big Impact

Have you ever toiled forever in silence crying for just a little love and affection? Yeah, me too. But love is strange. The more you give it away, the more you get in return. For example,  …

I was getting a bowl of cereal this morning for my darling wife at a hotel breakfast buffet. I noticed that the young lady tending the breakfast bar  was being both effective and efficient and quietly proficient  at keeping all of the items and serving dishes full, need, and clean. But instead of a smile, she had a rather stoic loil.

After she talked herself back into the kitchen behind the door, I knocked and pushed it open and  asked, “Can I ask you a question?”

She took the two  steps between us toward me and bracing her face replied, “Sure.”

I asked, ” Don’t you wish people would recognize how nicely and neatly you maintain your breakfast bar? ”

She gulped and replied, “Yes.”

“Don’t you wish someone, anyone, would just take a second to say thank you?”

“Yes.”

So I splurged and smiled and said, “So thank you for a practically perfect breakfast.”

Tears welled just a touch in hers eyes as we briefly as she replied, “Thank you. You don’t know how much I needed that. I was having a bad day, but you’ve just made my day good.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied, “but don’t settle for just one good day. Go out there and be Great! All the time!”

People don’t need constant praise, though more is always better than less. But everyone needs and deserves just a little recognition for what they do in their jobs moment to moment for others.

Here’s challenge for you. Try to recognize someone positively just twice on the day you read this.  It will make you feel so good you will want to do it twice an hour.