The 80/20 Rule of Marketing
If you want to make big profits running a big or small business, then it is important to remember one of the golden rules of customer relationship marketing—the 80/20 Rule. This rule proclaims that you should spend at least 80 percent of your marketing budget persuading customers you already have successfully sold to once to come back for a second helping. Only 20 percent of your business should be spent on outreaching efforts to new customers, because studies have shown that finding new customers provides less return on your investment then marketing to old customers.
Perhaps the most effective way to get your customers back for repeat business is to convince them to subscribe to your newsletter. Then you will likely have grabbed them as subscribers to whatever you decide to e-mail them for life. Furthermore, you will be assured that you have attracted only buyers and not people who are “just looking.”
It is also a good idea to lavish funds on design and text, and to make a concentrated effort to impress customers who are already turned on to your business with a polished flyer. This reminds them that you are always in business and that you operate in a credible and profitable way. A sloppy looking flyer with badly reproduced photographs, wacky fonts or text with spelling mistakes simply tells customers that you are a sloppy, fly-by-night operation.
You should try to get every visitor to your “real-life” store to sign your guest book. You should also make the giving of the address and phone number the quasi-condition of each sale that you make. That way you can send them good old-fashioned direct mailings that are jam-packed with details and quality information. Sending out these types of customer newsletters is a time-proven, effective way of assuring that you will get repeat and referral business to your store whether you garner their home addresses as leads online or offline.
