When you are setting up your business you may be thinking only in terms of getting orders in and getting your deliveries sent out in order to generate a reliable income. But what about all of the information that you are collecting in the process? In order to make use of all of this information and have it available when you need it, you need to create an information database. You need this database as you want to be able to draw more customers towards your business. By imputing any sales leads that you have into your database you are building up a collective amount of customers who are not only interested in what your business is offering, but also likely to be return customers in the future.
In your business planning you will have discovered that it costs more money in advertising and marketing in order to generate new customers for your business than it does to keep hold of the customers that you already have. In order to increase your customer database you are going to have to not only invest financially, but also in time and effort to ensure that you succeed.
Why a Database?
Of course there are other ways, less expensive ways of maintaining links with all of your customers. You could choose just to keep in touch via emails or mail shots, or encourage them with loyalty bonuses, but in reality you are still going to need some kind of database in order to keep all of this information together. There are a number of different methods that you can utilise when it comes to creating your first database, all of them are easy to implement and are relatively inexpensive compared to investing in tailor made database software.
Building Your Database
One simple but effective way of gathering information for your database is to hold an event. Make it an event where the people that participate have the chance of winning something that they want, or have the chance of buying your goods or services at a discounted price. This is how you can collect a lot of important information from a lot of possible customers in one fell swoop. If people know that you are a business that offers promotions on a regular basis they are more likely to want to keep up to date with what you are doing. Another way, for example if you run a restaurant or a retail business, would be to have a fishbowl or large jar near to the tills or checkout where people can deposit their information such as business cards etc.
With regards to keeping in touch with your existing customers – try running a survey relating to the products or services that they bought from you. Make sure that the information section on the survey asks them for certain pieces of contact information that you don’t already have such as email addresses. This exercise will also provide you with feedback relating to your business that could prove useful.
You could also send out a regular automated email to all of your existing customers either on a weekly or monthly basis keeping them up to date with any new products or deals that you are running. If you have the available cash then you could also purchase leads from information management companies that are already tailored to meet your niche market, all you would need to do would be to follow them up in order to make a sale. Building up your database does not have to be a difficult process, you just have to put the effort into it to get the results that you want.
Once you have the database that you want you need to keep it up to date, one way to do this is with Data 8. As a regular blogger Claire knows that Data cleansing from Data 8 is a great way to keep your information up to date.
Originally posted on April 23, 2013 @ 7:42 pm