I have been asked a lot by my clients on what are the best ways to reactivate old customers and the best ways to get referrals from your existing customers. I’d say there are many different ways but what I want to share with you are four marketing strategies that are simple but it can guarantee you extra 10 to 100 new customers each month. Since the information I will be sharing with you is information heavy, I decided to make it a two-part series so that you won’t be overwhelmed with too much information in one sitting.

But before I get into the crux of this blog post, if you are serious in your business, you will build the marketing systems first. Building the system is critical in the implementation of the marketing strategies I will share with you today. Otherwise, your strategies will not work because consistency is key, duplicity by your staff is important and the sustainability of these strategies in the long run will make it more cost-effective and efficient.

Here’s why:

1. How to reactivate people to come back to you more often

It is important to remind clients that they have a need for your service. It’s a simple step wherein you write a letter reminding people that it’s nearly 6 months since they availed of your service. You write the same letter on the 12th and 18th month. The letter only needs to be 1 to 2 pages long giving them an offer why they should avail of your service. In fact, you don’t need to have three different letters for each month. All you need to do is tweak it a little by changing the month. If they don’t respond, you send them a voice broadcast on the 10th day. This is applicable to all the months. If on the 19th month, they have not responded, send them a letter as a last-ditch effort to try to reactivate them with your special offer. If you don’t hear from them, it’s a good indication that they are not interested in your service and your offer.

This is a good and effective lead generation tool without having you rack your brain in order for you to generate leads. What I love about this system is it may take you 3 days to put the system together but once it is in place, it is going to take you or your staff about 3 hours a month to maintain. I’ll show you how to automate this process and make it simpler later on.

2. How to use media to fill up the cancellation forms

One of the biggest problems with cancellation is – clients generally give you a 24-hour notice if you’re lucky. Sometimes, you have everything ready only to find out your client has cancelled on you. There are two problems with this, not only have you lost the sale, but more importantly you now have a big gap in your day. What do you do? You can go back to your office and do some filing. Or you can apply a simple and yet powerful strategy. The strategy is for you to contact all the people on your database who haven’t availed of your service for the past 12 months. Do not include on your list clients who recently availed of your service because it won’t work.

Use a voice broadcast to inform the list on your database. The script can go this way, “Hi, I am David from Media Solutions. The reason I’m calling you is we have a cancellation in the next couple of days. To get our staff moving, we are giving a special offer to the first person to call and will take that booking. If you are prepared to do that, we will reward you with 25% off. You may ring this number. Thank you for filling the gap.”

Generally with this strategy, you will receive 2 to 3 phone calls. Sometimes, you don’t always get an immediate response but in a few weeks you will be receiving phone enquiries because you reminded them of your service and your name. The problem here is when the slot is already filled and you still have people calling you, what do you do? There are 2 things you can do: 1) you can tell the person that it has already been filled and lose a potential customer; or 2) you can still accommodate them by saying, “The cancellation has been filled. However, because you have responded I’m happy to try and fit you in and I will still give you the offer in the next two days. If you are up to it, we can fit you in on Thursday afternoon at 4:00PM or we can do it 8:00AM on Friday, which one would suit you best?”

This is a great reactivation program and it is great for filling the gaps due to cancellation. Moreover, this is the beauty of voice broadcast. It is cheaper and more effective because you have people acting on your call.

Next week, you will learn the other two strategies that will blow you away because it’s right under your nose and yet you have not been able to implement it.