In my 2009 book Don’t Lose Your Home Over It! -Recession Strategy Secrets for Small Businesses I shared some statistics from a survey on why people no longer did business with a company.
- 1% of those that stopped doing business had died.
- 3% Moved away from the business’ geographic region.
- 5% Switched to a competitor at the urging of a friend or colleague.
- 9% Switched to a competitor for a better price or product/service.
- 14% Switched to a competitor due to dissatisfaction, or a bad experience with the business or with the product/service.
Now the first couple of items you can’t do anything about, but they only represent the reason 4% of the people leave. The following three reasons you should be able to impact, but combined they are the reason just 28% of people are leaving the business.
Your big opportunity is in 6th reason people leave, that accounted for a whopping 68% of defections from the average business.
That reason boiled down to Indifference of the Business.
Leaving dissatisfied…
These people felt that the company didn’t value them, didn’t appreciate them, and so there was absolutely no loyalty when a competitor’s offer was put in front of them. They were easily swayed by the promises of a company that ‘might’ value them.
Just to make sure we are on the same wavelength here, I am sure that you have heard that generating a new customer costs around 8x the cost of keeping a customer. So retention for your business is a major impact on profitability.
This is why smart businesses in the past have had newsletters. It keeps you in touch with your client base, is perceived as something of value and builds loyalty over time. Even the Hubbards newsletter in the cereal boxes created this effect.
But today people are not as keen to read a newsletter. People don’t have time to read, and it is no longer the modality of the consumers under 35. Smart businesses of today are connecting to their clients, and adding value through audio and video. Video being the most impactful.
If your business is growing chances are that you won’t have time to visit every one of your clients every month. While it is a good problem to have, it is a problem. But if you can pop into a studio once a month for an hour or two and have a professional video recorded of you talking to your clients, it will go a long way to building the loyalty that adds real profit to your business.
This video newsletter is fairly simple, you would have prepared segments.
- Some valuable information that your listeners can use, a gem or tip that makes them feel they are getting value from watching.
- Welcoming new clients on board by name.
- Featuring a client profile (particularly if your clients are businesses)
- Possibly a monthly prize promotion or giveaway
- Updates on products or services being developed
- Referrer of the month giveaway
- Upcoming events
You, the business owner, don’t need to do all of this, you can get staff to front some or all of the sections. But I would urge you to at least share the valuable information yourself. This is a chance to build your brand and connect via video.
Often TV stars comment that people come up to them and start chatting to them as if they are good friends, even though they have never met. This is the power of video, and something you can replicate in your business that builds loyalty and positively impacts the bottom line in your business.
