Reaching Your Customers

A while back I had a question regarding a Microsoft product which I had purchased earlier and for which I had sent in the registration card. I had the disks but no longer had the box and the software was not installed on my computer. When I called Microsoft, they wanted the number from the box or, alternatively, the number the program displayed under the "Help" menu before giving me free support. Since I had neither, I asked them to look me up in their database since I was a registered user but they said they weren't able to do that and eventually gave me free support anyway.

While I'm not sure, I suspect that Microsoft doesn't have a comprehensive user database or, if they do, they don't use it for technical support or for marketing. This makes sense because keeping a 100 million record database and using it to reach customers is probably more expensive and less effective than buying ads and putting inserts into major daily newspapers around the world.

For small businesses, the reverse is true. It is less expensive and more effective to keep a database of several hundred or even thousand customers and use it to regularly reach them than to buy ads in your market.

Otherwise, the same rules apply as for any advertising - you need good product presentation, good copy, a unique selling proposition, good product quality and good added value.

Next, the key is frequency. You should contact your customer or prospect nine times over eighteen months and then watch your business increase.

FIRST PUBLISHED AT SUITE101.COM