Supplyant

The new year is always a great time to refocus your efforts and polish up your marketing plan. I spent a lot of time over Christmas pondering what e-tailers must do in order to have a successful project. Here’s my thoughts:

Do every one of these 4 things well and you cannot fail

• Have a truly great product,  unique service,  or a notable offer (the last resort is lowest price).
• Provide good quality listings and a simple checkout. Good enough to not put people off.
• Get found. Don’t wait for customers, go and find them.
• Provide awesome customer service whatever the cost.

To be clear, if you mess up any one of these you will fail. Do these right and you will win.

Are you covering each of these rules?

I hate losing customers because it makes me sad. Winning new customers is an expensive game too. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of advertising, a lot of permission building and too much of your precious time.

The top reasons why people leave your company and start using another are;

1% – Death
3% – Change email / Lose favourites
5% – Buy from a friend
9% – Sold by a competitor
14% – Better product / Better price
68% – Perceived Indifference

As Guerrilla marketeer guru Jay Levenson says, you should be spending over 75% of your marketing resource talking to your old customers instead of wasting time on new ones.

68% of your customers will leave you if you don’t talk to them. So stop reading this and start figuring out ways to talk to your customers.