The Importance Of A Customer Database To Business Survival

Are you thinking about starting or buying your own Spa?

Do you know the most important thing to focus on during your first year of ownership?

Well if you don't know, it is customers. You need to be thinking about how to acquire new customers and keep current customers happy.  

Anyone who has been in business for more than 5 years will tell you that it is far easier and cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to obtain a new one.

So the most successful companies in the world integrate customer acquisition and satisfaction into their daily business routines. So what are some of the things that you can do that will help you get and keep customers?

I believe it all starts with having a solid customer database.

A database is a file that allows you to store information about whatever you may want to analyze at a later date. The best businesses are always combing through the information in their customer database in order to see where the trends are that can help them get in front of customer demand.

For example, if you go out to eat regularly you'll notice that the largest restaurant franchises want you to enter your information into a birthday club or a VIP Club. The reason they do this is to be able to reach out to you in the future to entice you to come in for your birthday or anniversary. This simple action adds additional revenue to their income without additional advertising spending.

A VIP Club also just makes customers feel better about the business which often increases loyalty and makes them want to come back more often.

You can use a customer database to find other ways to keep in touch with customers such as creating a monthly specials specifically tied to your previous customer's purchases.

If you have the customers telephone number and have the ability to text them, then you have yet another way that you can encourage them to come back to your business, perhaps with a coupon.

Another thing that you can do with a customer database is determine which of your customers are your cream-of-the-crop. Your cream-of-the-crop customers are the ones that have the ability to give you even more sales and are the ones most likely to respond to your deals pitches and coupons.

By focusing on your cream customers, you can spend time talking with them, give them surveys, or figure out other ways to analyze their behavior. With this information you are now armed with perfect data for advertising and marketing that will target, appeal to, and find even more versions of your perfect customers.

Imagine your life if your business was made up of close to 100% awesome customers. Do you think that your business would struggle even in a recession? Do you think it would be easy to sell this business in the future for multiples much higher than average?

This is the power of having a customer database and understanding exactly how it is supposed to be used.

There are plenty of solutions available for a small business owners to be able to capture customer information and also reach out to them. However it is up to the business owner to deem this activity important enough to put it high on the to do list and put it into action.

Technology today is very powerful, and now allows us to make each customer feel as if we are thinking about them on a weekly basis. If you can figure out a way to make your customers feel more special you are well on your way to having a crazy successful business that will grow based on word-of-mouth.

One of the best things that you can do when customers come into your establishment is to have a system that sends a text to them and captures their information in your database.

By doing this, your business can become a much more familiar brand to your customer and you will get to know the customers far better than you have in the past. And by knowing the customer better, you can serve them better.

One way to expand your knowledge of your customer and most efficiently build your relationship with them is to practice the ASK Method.

The ASK Method is a way of surveying custoemrs that is designed to draw out their most emotion driven wants and needs. The ASK Method was created by Ryan Leveque who used the method to start successful venture after successful venture.  

He credits his success to being able to draw out the language that his best, most rabid customers used to describe what they wanted from their interactions with the business. Then, armed with that information he was able to create ads that attracted people just like his most enthusiastic, engaged customers, even though they had never been a customer previously.

Knowing exactly what they were needing and being able to talk their language through his ads was similar to a fragrant flower drawing honey bees in.  

When you can connect with people like this through your marketing, you cannot help but grow your business larger and faster than you ever thought before.

Once again, the key is to be able to mine for the gold in their deepest needs and desires, then communicate it back to them.  You can only do this if you keep and track your customers and take action to dig deeply through the information they provide you to find the gold.