Your best new customers are your existing customers.

Far too much focus in business is on new customer acquisition, with too little on the existing customer base.

The better you do with the customers you have, the more you can afford to invest in acquiring ones.

Be sure you are getting everything you can out of all you've got, before you take on 'more' and 'new' from which you won't get everything they can yield.

One of the most important keys to maximum customer value is in retention and repeat business.

It's a result of careful, strategic marketing, which includes continuing to market to them in a systematic way, not taking them for granted and communicating again and again.

This requires frequently having and presenting a good answer to "What's new?"

If you don't have a good answer to "What's new?" they go looking for it somewhere else. A bored customer goes elsewhere. They forget about you. They don't talk about you.

You create new by frequently creating new offerings.

At least once a month, if not more often, they are hearing from you and they are getting a new offering.

That will keep customers interested and engaged, allowing you to sell to them more frequently, and having more customers refer more often.

Your marketing system should incorporate Front-end and back-end.

Front-end: Outreach to attract and acquire new leads, new potential customers and new customers.

Back-end: Developing and retaining those customers, increasing the frequency of repeat business you do with them, cross selling different products and services, putting fresh offers in front of them frequently, staying interesting to them so they stay with you and tell others about you.

Every business should have some kind of customer newsletter that, at a minimum, is sent once a month.

Your monthly client newsletter should include:

→ Content that re-affirms your Unique Selling Proposition and authority in your business area of expertise. But keep this minimal, as little as absolutely necessary.

Do NOT make your entire newsletter about your industry. Instead, you want to continue to talk about the pain points you know that they have.

→ In line with "what's new?" some kind of call to action for your latest offering. You want to constantly remind customers that you offer valuable goods and services that will make their lives better. This is a great place to offer your newest information on a newsworthy topic that is plaguing them.

→ When you create a bond with your customers, they are less likely to choose another provider over you, because you have become a friend. Your newsletter allows you to continue your relationships. By telling stories and sharing what is happening in your business, you let your customers bond with you.

Investing in reducing attrition is every bit as useful, potentially profitable, and valid as is investing in acquiring new customers.

Ways to monetize your current customers…

Increase Transaction Size
Upselling and cross-selling are the two best ways to bump up transaction size.

Increase Transaction Frequency
The frequency of purchasing has a lot to do with your frequency of friendly, interesting, informative communication.

Decrease Division of Spending
The customer with the least divided spending is most likely to stay with you forever and is more likely to refer others to you. Conversely, the customer engaging in the most divided spending is most susceptible to being seduced away and is less likely to refer. When you reduce divided spending, you automatically boost retention and referral likelihood.

Implement a good loyalty rewards program then constantly market it to customers. Show them the distance to the next reward or reward level. Have perks triggered by frequency.

Increase Retention
You need an alarm that goes off, loud and clear, just as a customer is straying.

Look out for…
Non Email openers.
They ask when your agreement is up.
They ask for information related to their services.
They’re late on payments.

Increase Profits from Each Customer
Direct each customer into purchasing higher profit items.

Recover Lost Customers
Not all customers are irretrievably lost. Not all broken relationships are irreparably damaged.

Don't write them off without a fight.

The best lost customer campaigns include the following:

Acknowledgement, if not apology, that something must have gone awry causing them to wander off

Reminding of core reasons they were a customer

Introducing "Exciting News" about how you are "New and Improved"

Presenting an exclusive, extremely generous, irresistible offer(s) and/or

Offer of a VERY appealing FREE gift just for stopping in, calling, etc., to see all the "New and Improved" firsthand.

Imposing deadlines on the offers.

Introduce “New” Products
It is easier to sell more to customers who know you, like you, and trust you than it is to get more new customers.

The first sale is the toughest; the established customer is predisposed to purchase from you.

If a product or service is new to the customer, it's new, period. Make sure they know about it.

Reduce Refunds
Someone may buy something on impulse, then a day or two later begin to feel bad about the purchase.

Right after their purchase, deliver a message to your customer that reassures them that this is the product for them.

Retention by Ascension
Customers stay longer when they are climbing or rising from level to level, by design and aspiration, rather than static in a transactional way.

One of the most productive extenders of customer tenure is their climbing from one level (of perks: of involvement; of recognition and status) to another, then another, then another.

If they are moving up toward a goal, they are less likely to exit. The costs attached to creating and fulfilling these higher levels are usually not proportionate to the added spend by the customers over time.

The customer essentially becomes more valuable the longer he remains climbing and at higher levels, because all the original acquisition cost is amortized over more and more months or years AND the margin on higher levels' goods and services is greater than that of the initial or early or basic purchasing.

If you get a customer engaged with and committed to getting to a goal that requires him staying and spending, you can dramatically improve the staying and spending by length, by frequency, by dollar amounts.

There should never be an end to any road you place a customer on. Always a next, Next. Back door to front door, exit ramp to (choice of) next on ramp(s), extension(s), upward mobility and ascension, etc.

Rigorously inspect your business for roads with dead-ends.