Metaphorical Marketing

Once you bag your perfect business client you'll want to try and keep that client for as long as possible, because...

• Obtaining new customers is the most expensive part of your marketing expenditure
• Selling to existing customers is the easiest and cheapest way to make more sales
• If you slack off and lose a customer, then that customer might not be too happy with you, and will probably tell a bunch of people
• Conversely, the longer a client stays with you, the longer the referral window stays open

So how do we keep our business relationships blissfully happy and productive? Its all about maintaining a positive mindset towards your customers, but before I talk about how you're going to treat your clients, let me touch on clients that just aren't a good match with you... so to speak.

When I say customer and client relationships that aren't a good match, I'm talking about problem clients. Clients who haggle over price, constantly drain your time with niggling unfounded complaints, and who generally drive you up the wall. If you haven't ever thought of dismissing a client before, then tell me what business you're in and I'll join you! Most of us have clients that take our time and energy away from more deserving clients, and you owe it to yourself to politely let your problem customer know they're no longer welcome.

Back to the customers you have rosy and warm relationships with -- we need to make sure we don't fall into the same traps that marriages seem to breed in our relationships. We don't want to:

• Take our customers for granted
• Neglect them
• Stop talking to them
• Stop serving them the way you said you would at the beginning
• Avoid them
• Talk rudely to them, and
• We simply don't want to give them a good reason to leave us

So to keep your clients, just take my list above and flip it.

Make sure your customers feel loved and appreciated, lavish them with attention (that you can afford), talk to them often about their fears, hopes, dreams, frustrations and concerns, serve them better than you said you would, keep in regular touch with them so they don't forget you, always talk politely and respectfully towards them, and find out every way you can to keep them enraptured and in love with you and your company.

There's a lot of common sense ways we can achieve that, and I'll clue you in on a few of those soon... but I'm sure you can come up with a few in the mean time, right?

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In the great wide world of prospects, its likely that your future relationship with them relies strongly on a few vital points. But before we move onto those points, I thought I'd share with you an analogy. It builds upon the interesting dating angle I've been speaking about the last few days, and it goes a little like this. 

Approaching your best prospect is like approaching the hottest guy or girl in a night club. Their world is clouded by the smoke, the alcohol and the roar of hundreds of voices around them- and from that smoke and deafening music, your perfect date is accosted by potential suitors almost as frequently as the bass drums out a beat.

This is a lot like our average client in the real world of business. Their perceptions are clouded by their own beliefs, fears and worries, not to mention pressing needs, like a screaming child or a bill that needs to be paid by 5 o'clock. The constant stream of hopefuls approaching your perfect date is like the advertising we're bombarded with every day. And your prospects, like the hot date, just tend to get sick and tired of being propositioned every moment of every day, and will begin to tune everything out... even if doing so means they might miss something great now and then.

And like dating, if you can get the hot date's friend to introduce you, you're way, WAY ahead of the pack. Or maybe you can approach her friends, her influence group or network, and start to make friends there. If someone else thinks you're normal, then down go your hot date's defenses, and you're ahead.

And much like a smoke filled pub, if you can get in early, before every other drunk guy and girl turns up, you're also head of the pack. I'm talking here about creating your own category (read Positioning by Trout/Ries), or being the first to create a new product, or being the first to service an existing group in a new and better way. When you're there first, and you take action to secure your prospect's loyalty, you're way ahead (just act fast!).

Or perhaps you're a thinker, and you ask the bartender what your hot date is into. When you understand your prospects better you can establish strong relationships with them, and you can keep your finger on their pulse. You may find something interesting as you go about understanding them better. For example, I've recently become interested in straight bladed razors so I can define my beard better- but what I've found is that men don't use straight razors to get the best, closest shave, they use them because its a ritual, a tradition, and an experience that grounds them, relaxes them and makes them feel special, unique. Is there something that you're missing about your customers that could really fire up your marketing activities to them? Are you selling water that quenches thirst when its water that maintains optimal health that they're after? Are you selling shoes that are the popular fashion when your customers view them as an statement of uniqueness?

Are you trying to buy the hottest prospect in the room a drink, like everyone else does? Doug D'Anna sent an email to his list today boldly titled "Why Free Doesn't Work Anymore", and I think this applies so well to trying to get that hot date. When that hot guy or girl has had a hundred drinks bought for them, they begin to realize something very important- the person buying the drinks wants something in return! And further up go the walls of resistance. The same goes for your business (especially selling online where information is so easily given away), are you offering the 100th free drink to your prospect? They're wise to you already!

Hey- they might take the drink, but are they going to go home with you?

Next time- how to maintain a healthy (marketing) relationship. 

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Have you ever been in a bar or club and the date of your dreams walked in... with someone else hanging off their arm? You wanted that person so much more when you saw the competition, right?

People are naturally more attracted to the opposite sex when they already have a partner. Some of us can likely recount being accosted from all sides by potential mates while we were in a relationship, but as soon as it ended, so did the stream of interested candidates.

Why does this happen? Its a perfect case of "social proof". If someone else thinks the good looking guy or girl is worth dating, then so do we. If someone's gazing lovingly into another person's eyes,  then we immediately get the feeling that they must be a worthy mate.

How can you use this phenomenon?

Hitch a date to your businesses arm by working testimonials into your marketing communications - get them in your brochures, in your emails, and into your webpages. Testimonials are businesses "social proof", and they work because we aren't tooting our own horn- someone else is doing it for us... they're practically bursting to tell your perfect clients how fantastic your last "date" was and what you did for them.

The principle of social proof also says that the more people are interested, the more interested we are. Look at websites like www.digg.com - digg is the perfect example of how social proof works; as soon as a group of people start "digging" a website, the digging process keeps accelerating on an ever increasing curve. Why? Because hundreds or thousands of people are giving the "dugg" website their thumbs up, and the more people that digg it...  the more people digg it!

The same happens in dating, and the same happens in your business- the more testimonials, and testimonial like marketing you're engaged in, the better.

Here's a quick list of what I call social proof marketing:

1. Testimonials
2. Publicity of any kind
3. Referrals
4. Alignment (with celebrities, gurus, charity groups)
5. Visual proofing (full stores/packed seminar rooms)
6. Scarcity (if there's not much left, everyone else must have it)

The best thing about marketing involving social proof is that its generally cheap, and very effective. The only obvious exception here is celebrity endorsement.

No matter what social proof you use in your business, testimonials and referrals are an absolute, iron-clad, chain yourself to a tree necessity- do it. 

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