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How to get new business from old clients

Many businesses are so focused on bringing in new clients that they forget about the old ones, and potentially cost themselves repeat sales.

So here are four ways to maintain relationships with your existing clients and get more business from them:

1. Track client behaviour and buying patterns

What problem did you solve for your client that made them use your services?

When you know what help your clients need, you can customise your marketing to directly address those pain points. If you’re a mortgage broker or real estate agent, you may think this is unnecessary, because you don’t get a lot of repeat business. But you can still make a lot of money from clients who return every five years. And, in the meantime, they can give you a lot of referral business. Your clients might not use your services again for a few years, but if you’re able to remind them of the problem you solved, they might recommend your services to someone else with the same problem. In case you’re wondering what problem we solve for our clients, business owners come to Hunter & Scribe because we:

Save them time by researching their industries and writing educational blogs and social media posts for them
Help them attract clients by providing them with enticing content marketing
Enhance their reputations because our expert writers make them sound professional

2. Market to old clients, not just new ones

Marketers agree that It costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer, with estimates ranging from five times more to 25 times more.

Take an accountant offering payroll services to a successful small business. At the start, the accountant may be handling payroll for five employees, but a few years later they could be doing payroll for 25 employees. And every one of those employees is both a potential client (if they need their tax returns done) or someone who could potentially refer the accountant to new clients. If the small business owner was happy with the payroll service and the accountant kept marketing their other services to that business owner, the accountant could end up doing bookkeeping, business activity statements, financial statements and tax returns for the business as well. In this case, the only marketing the accountant would’ve needed was a regular phone call or a newsletter, instead of investing in an advertising campaign to attract new clients.

3. Engage with unhappy clients

If your clients are unhappy with your service, it’s often a good idea to accept responsibility, even if your business isn’t at fault.

For example, if a client pays a credit repair agency to fix their credit, they will expect to have a higher credit score afterwards. But if there are no mistakes on the client’s credit report, the credit repair agency may be unable to help. If the credit repair agency does not explain the situation to the unhappy client, they may leave a negative review. So it might be better for the credit repair agency to apologise and offer a solution. For example: “We’re sorry we couldn’t repair your credit and we know how disappointed you are. Our consultants are willing to suggest ways to improve your credit score over time. “We would also like to offer you a complimentary copy of our ebook, ‘How to improve your credit score’. “Could we perhaps touch base in six months’ time and see if there’s more that can be done?” Of course, there’s no guarantee this strategy will work, but if you succeed, you might gain a loyal client who’ll tell others of their experience.

4. Keep in touch with your clients

Maintain regular contact with your clients by writing newsletters, social media posts and blogs. Content marketing is a great way to remind clients you’re still in business and just as knowledgeable as ever. Your content can be a mix of interesting news stories, valuable tips and information about your business. For example, if a buyer’s agent specialising in Sydney wrote a newsletter, they could include:

An article on the pros and cons of buying a unit instead of a house in Sydney
An article on Sydney’s vacancy rate and how it affects investors
An article explaining why they buy only in certain parts of Sydney
A special offer

Even if a reader didn’t intend to buy another property soon and so couldn’t use the special offer, the other information would be valuable enough for them to keep subscribing. This gives the buyer’s agent a low-cost opportunity to keep marketing their services until the investor decides to buy another property. It also increases the chances of the buyer’s agent getting referral business – which means the buyer’s agent gets free marketing.

These client nurturing tactics require a lot of written content. Fortunately, you can outsource that to a specialist content writer like Hunter & Scribe. We’re experts in property, finance and accounting. Contact us for content marketing ideas.

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