Turning Customers into Clients
A big thanks to Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips for publishing a guest post of mine today titled, How Much Does A New Customer Cost?
Daily Blog Tips is one of the world’s premier web development blogs and Daniel is also a faculty writer at the excellent website Online Profits.
I approached Daniel about writing the post because as an active reader of various web development websites and blogs I find there can be a lack of focus on key business fundamentals that impact a bloggers or website owners’ ability to make money and be successful.
Any business, whether online or not, sells a product or service to someone. The application of a business principle may be slightly different, but at its core the fundamental is still important and can be often overlooked.
I wrote a similar post back in July of 2007 titled, Attracting a $1 Customer, that discussed the concept of turning a customer into a client. This principle is the central focus of CRM (customer relationship management) which focuses on the interactions of customers with your business. Basically a customer costs you something to initiate a purchase (most often advertising) so the $1.00 they spend is not really a full $1.00 received in sales. A client, a customer who returns to your business time and time again, needs very little motivation to initiate a repeat purchase if managed properly.
The post also discusses the concept of CLV (customer lifetime value) which in my opinion is something rarely examined by most small business owners and website owners. By simply turning a customer into a client you may be creating a predictable revenue stream that can last 5, 10 or 15 years long.
What sort of strategies do you use to turn Customers into Clients?
