The customers that have been powering your growth in the good times have the highest potential for being the source of future growth. What can be done in terms of customer retention now to maximize revenue in the tough times and prepare for recovery?
Archive for the ‘Connecting with the Customer’ Category
7 Keys To Customer Retention In Tough Times
Wednesday, May 6th, 200921 Signs That Your Company Is Not Customer-Driven
Monday, April 27th, 2009
Companies talk a lot about being more customer-driven, but it mostly remains just talk. It makes for good PR internally and externally. The question is whether a transition has really been made away from being mostly product-driven. Here is a selection of practical signs that indicate that a focus on products is preventing your company from unlocking real value for customers.
Six Reasons Why The Future Belongs to Content
Monday, March 30th, 2009
There seems to be a growing concern that the importance of content will wane because technology now enables everyone to be a content creator, and consequently, that there will be too much content for any particular piece to be noticed. While the situation is certainly changing fast and will remain very fluid, it is doubtful that we are moving to a reduced role for content. Here are six reasons why: (more…)
Video is Hot! So What’s Holding You Back?
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Moving images have been used for marketing since the dawn of cinema. What’s different now is that everyone can do it. Digital cameras are everywhere, prosumer video editing software is now affordable, broadband is widespread, and YouTube - now part of Google – is the perfect video publishing platform, and it’s free! All this amounts to faster production and lower costs. Studies show that half of all teenagers check YouTube at least once a day. The world is learning to get information in video format. So what’s holding you back?
Customers Have No Vision for You
Thursday, February 19th, 2009This may come as somewhat of a surprise to those who have stayed with the conventional wisdom that “the customer is always right“. But satisfying the request of every customer with the hope that the firm’s reputation for excellence will spread and be the key to riches is a noble but ultimately losing proposition.
Although customers as a group have requests, ideas, suggestions, and legitimate problems that need solutions, only the company’s management and the CEO can have a Vision. Only the company’s leadership (more…)
The Simple Truth Behind the “Call to Action”
Sunday, February 15th, 2009The purpose of the Call to Action (CTA) is to push the prospect further down on the road to becoming a customer. It is the operative component of any piece of external marketing because if the prospect does not perform an action at some point, no sale ever takes place.
As such, the CTA generates as much passion from people in the revenue generation functions as almost any other single component of a customer-facing deliverable. Actually, everyone in the company has an opinion for a CTA, not unlike the flurry of suggestions elicited by the choice of the website’s color scheme.
There are simple rules to follow to maximize the effectiveness of CTAs in email, direct mail, web pages, etc: (more…)
