Businesses Failing To Plan Right Around The Corner!
Todd Schnick, Intrepid, LLC

If you are like most businesses, you are probably saying something to the effect of "well I guess we are having fun, cuz time is just flying. I can't believe it is already October!"

What you should be doing, since it is now the FOURTH QUARTER, is be well along with your strategic marketing planning for 2009.

What about you? Answer honestly.

I thought so. Most of us are trying to get through 2008 - trying to survive what has been a long and difficult year.

You owe it to yourself - and your business - to plan ahead this year. And while you are at it - plan to add a whole new dimension to your 2009 marketing plan: BUILDING CUSTOMER LOYALTY!

I am amazed at how many business people I work with have never really gone into the New Year with a plan in place to succeed. They are merely surging ahead full speed ahead - and headed right into a blind curve.

Sure, they may make it and survive. But they are setting themselves up to wipe out in a blaze of glory…

When I do work with clients to help them strategize for the coming year, they often want to focus on two main themes with their planning: their need to find more prospects, and their desire to convert more of those prospects into customers.

Those are certainly important things to think about. But they are missing a very important element: keeping their existing customers - and increasing their purchase frequency.

But what does that really mean? It means building customer LOYALTY. Without it, your business will stay in neutral, or it will ultimately fade away and die.

And customer loyalty isn't just satisfying your customers. And it isn't about getting them to buy from you once or twice more. It is about having a concentrated effort - a concrete plan and process - to get your existing customers to buy from you again and again on a regular basis. And not just for the next calendar year - but for years.

Sit back for a moment, and think about what that would really mean to your business. What does that mean in terms of long-term revenue for your business?

So why aren't you planning for it? Hopefully you have an up-to-date database of your existing customers - which contains the service or product offering they purchased from you. And hopefully you know why they purchased from you - or what problem your product or service helped them solve.

From this information you can determine how best to reach out to these customers. Is it telemarketing? Is it one-to-one marketing campaign? Or is your customer base large enough to warrant a precision-targeted direct response program?

With this program you can send targeted mail - or email - or a telemarketing program - that touches your customer and encourages them to buy more of the same product - or entices them to buy a new product or service offering that further helps them with their need or problem.

So what have you accomplished? You have made more sales - and you have helped your existing customers by offering additional solutions to their problems. And by doing that, you have more than satisfied your customer, you have delighted them. And a delighted customer will buy from you again.

But none of this happens without building this into your marketing plan for 2009. You should make a concentrated effort to build this into your program. If you plan appropriately, you will likely find that there is more revenue to be gained from this type of program than the strenuous effort of finding and converting new prospects.

And the road ahead will be straight, downhill, and easy to navigate - without any blind curves…

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