I just love the illustration in this post called, "Why marketing should make the user manuals." It’s a very interesting assessment of the difference between how we seduce customers and how we treat them once they’re ours. (What I refer to as "Blowing the Delivery," mistake #12 of fourteen in my report on "Unenlightened Marketing Mistakes.") I can’t stand reading manuals for anything, but I wonder if a nice marketing-ified version would keep me involved long enough to figure out how something works.
As small business owners, most of us don’t deal with this issue literally. But, we still can look for ways to make our materials speak more effectively to customers, even after the sale. I usually refer to this as "reminding clients how smart they were to do business with us in the first place." Examples of this are having a nice-looking invoice with your value statement written on it, including self-addressed envelopes with a bill and continuing the communication flow with useful information and support for … well, forever. So that even after you sell them a house, or an outfit, or some advice, you keep reminding them of ways to benefit from knowing you.
If you invest all your resources in customer acquisition, you won’t have any left for retention. As many of us know, the best source of future business is past customers. Keep them happy by anticipating and providing for their needs, and you’ll probably do business with them again in the future.
