Much of the marketing advice today focuses on marketing to obtain new customers, which is full of excitement and challenges. While you should always be seeking new customers, what about your existing ones? What is most effective?
New customers: It is especially important to market to new customers when you are just starting up and also when trying to grow your business. The benefits are new customers to develop and grow your customer base, to replace ex-customers (there is always natural attrition that is not your fault), and increase cash flows.
There are also several downsides to marketing to new customers. The first downside is that it is much more expensive and time-consuming to obtain new customers. Some studies show that it is about five times more expensive to obtain a new customer than to retain an existing customer. Additionally, depending upon your business, a new customer may be less profitable than an existing customer, which means that your profits will not keep up with your sales growth.
Existing: There are two types of marketing that should be performed for your existing customers. The first should be to develop stronger relationships, loyalty, and ultimately higher customer retention. Unfortunately, many small businesses and professionals greatly lack a plan to keep in touch with their customers and wait until they are contacted by their customers for an urgent need. The second type of marketing should be to increase sales of existing products or services, and also to provide additional products and services to their existing customer base. Studies also show that existing customers are much more likely to purchase from you vs. new customers.
When I was in high school I learned this lesson from my dad after finding out that I needed to sell magazines as a fundraiser. He told me to go see the customers from my old paper route that I had several years back, which I reluctantly did even though I thought that he was wrong. It turns out that I was the one who was wrong and met the sales quota with very little effort.
Hybrid: The older and greyer I become I realize that most things in life are not either or, but are a combination of both. The wisest approach is to market to new customers, make efforts to retain your existing customers, and to offer new products or services to your existing customers.
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