7 steps to reduce your costs of customer acquisition

So, it seems the only way to get the attention of the key people in any company in order to institute a change always comes down to cost.

Over the many articles that I've written, I've covered a lot of these points but have never put them all together in what I hope is a cohesive whole.

The fact is, sales and marketing have radically changed forever. This is due to the change in buyer behaviors brought about by our new online reality combined with technology.

This change is irreversible and is accelerating!

So, let's start from the beginning.

Your organization makes the best widgets ever made and or provides the best service for widgets ever provided!

Now what.

1)   Website

•         You need a website and it should go without saying but it needs to be mobile-friendly, sadly many companies still have not done this and they have effectively shut themselves out of most of their customer markets. Most online searches are done on a mobile device in 2019
•         It used to be that your website was the number one entrance and portal for your customers and potential customers to see and learn about your company, No More.
•         Organizations and companies spent a great deal of money on the look, the layout, the user-friendliness and of course the SEO of their sites
•         Add to that, the cost of branding everything as coordinated from this site could be very costly. In fact, the website is one of the largest costs most companies have in their marketing budgets. So much so that rarely is this done but once every few years, sometimes longer.
•         This then becomes your first area of opportunity as it relates to lowering your costs
•         Today your website no longer rules the world. In fact, your website while still being important is simply nowhere near as critical as it once was
•         Today your website is no longer the main portal but rather is the archive from which all your content is accessed by all the other social portals. These are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter etc., from which you should be communicating with all your customers but likely not...
•         Add to this that website templates are easily and very cheaply available to anyone willing to look. Let’s be honest, do we really care what a website looks like?? Or do we simply need it to be user friendly, easy to navigate and informative?? Not the language of most Website development companies!!
•         Now you still need some basic SEO, BUT this needs to be market tuned and updated almost daily based on the content that you will be creating and putting on your website consistently and regularly. Therefore, having this outsourced is not only costly but highly inefficient and ineffective
•         Not to say that there are not other website-based applications still critical to your company’s success such as e-commerce or even service platforms, but even these are likely assessed from your online profiles or queries
•         Ask yourself, how do people find you? They find you (hopefully) by googling their question or need. If you do not come up, you don’t exist, it’s that simple
•         So, your first area of significant cost reduction is the ongoing cost maintenance and development of your website which is now a fraction of what it was based in large part in it’s fall from grace!
•         For many of our clients this can be a cost reduction of well over 50%, I leave the math to you. 

2)   Content 

•         This is where the rubber really hits the road, and this is also where a lot of your ongoing costs have been to this point
•         Brochures, pamphlets even to a certain degree white papers of old are simply no longer needed. More importantly they are simply ineffective with today’s buyers.
•         Customers no longer want to read your corporate propaganda
•         From a cost perspective this is a great thing but from a “get over yourself” perspective this is a tough thing. We are all so used to talking about our companies and how great they are!
•         You need to understand that customers are interested and how you can help them, not in how great you or your brands are!
•         This is another potential area of big cost savings because the only people who can really explain to a customer what you do, are your people, heck maybe even you
•         This is not to say that from a branding perspective, your value proposition and or your unique selling positions are not still important. They are, but here again nowhere near to the extent they used to be
•         It always amazes me how companies will pay somebody to tell their stories and explain to customers what they do when the only ones who can really do this is their people! How can an outsourced company really know what you do for your customers? Further how can they know or tell your stories like you can? Have you ever told someone a story only to hear them butcher it and lose the meaning when they repeat it?
•         Content in today's world (2019!) is about online videos, articles, blogs, podcasts, interviews, customer testimonials, customer reviews etc. etc.
•         All these live in the online world on a whole myriad of different potential channels depending on where, you guessed it, your customers are 
•         If you don't yet know where your customers are online, stop everything until you do. This is not a suggestion, “STOP”, until you know where your customers are online.
•         So, now you can save a great deal of money by no longer having to spend on others to create content for you. However, you must realize that you will now need much more time and energy from your own team to do this properly and consistently
•         So, while there is a great deal of cost savings by not outsourcing there is cost in the form of additional time internal resources will need to apply to consistently create and support this content
•         Further, both you and your people need to be trained. Universities and colleges are not yet training and educating on these critical skills, so you need to find organizations who can help you train your teams, lucky for you, that's what we do!
•         The cost of your own people creating and managing content is vastly lower than a 3rd party with much better results
•         No longer will you need the cost of interruptive advertising
•         This means much less if any pay per click display advertising or any other disruptive style marketing. No billboards, radio ads, magazine ads, display ads etc.
•         That said, “Influencer Marketing” can become a very important new element for you to consider, but that’s a topic for another day!
•         So overall your costs will be significantly lower while the amount of time and focus from your team will be significantly increased. Imagine that, fully engaged employees!
•         PEOPLE buy from PEOPLE, not corporate propaganda
•         Again, your cost savings on this category alone, along with a very short payback time make for a powerful ROI

3) Additional Marketing activities

•         Email marketing is no longer effective for most industries, products and services.
•         In fact, in many countries spam is now illegal just as many forms of telemarketing are
•         This is not a fad but rather a change in how people prefer to be communicated with
•       Spam and call blockers are among the fastest growing software applications for our phones and devices whether mobile or otherwise, why do you think that is?
•         In fact, the days of emails, email marketing and cold calling are numbered. They have served us well for many years, but alas, it’s over. Take the hint.
•         Slack technologies and others like it including “InMail” from all social channels are quickly and completely taking over what we used to do with emails
•         I can't speak for your in Inbox, but I can tell you that most are full of spam and very few people respond to emails in a timely fashion, much less read them!
•         Therefore, purchasing and using sometimes expensive software applications for the purposes of email marketing is a cost you no longer need. You can now get that “monkey” off your back for real! Pun intended
•         Again, this does not mean that you no longer need marketing not even close, this simply means that marketing needs to be retooled
•         Trade shows are no longer as effective as they used to be in fact for many companies they've already suspended this activity, and this cost entirely
•         This does not mean that trade-shows no longer have their place for very specific reasons but rather that for most these reasons can be much better done online
•         For example, many trade-shows can now be replaced with much more effectively run and attended online events 

4) Sales activities & process

•         Gone are the days when you needed to have an outside sales rep roaming the country looking for doors they can knock on
•         This expense can be completely eradicated using the online world properly
•         This is not to say that we don't need to meet & shake hands to build a relationship with our customers and prospective customers
•         This is to say that unless and until an opportunity is at the closing stage and or are already qualified customers, that often-overused corporate expense card is not needed!
•         The entire sales process has changed
•         Everything from compensation, the number of people, the position of these people hold, to the way they communicate has been turned on its head.
•         Much of the traditional costs with traditional sales is simply no longer needed.
•         Sales should now be much more efficient and productive being in the online world.
•         The difference now is that everybody in the company is effectively in sales!
•         That said, your customer service and inside sales teams can be creating 95% of your corporate revenue for both existing and new customers at a fraction of the cost
•         Sales skills and the new skills of the online world are mandatory for this too work
•         This then is an additional cost, i.e., social training and transformation
•         Online sales and customer development begin with a customer who is already 50 to 60% complete in their decision-making process.
•         This of course has changed everything and if you don't yet understand why, your costs will remain very high until you do. Hopefully this article begins to help in that understanding!
•         Of course, every company, every industry and every customer are different but don't be fooled! All traditional sales and the processes we've come to know are no longer effective, so don’t spend another dime on them!

5) Customer growth

•  The days of phoning one contact in one account once per month are over!
•  The days of being continuously in contact with multiple people at all your accounts have begun
•   Further your contact with all your accounts and all their people will now be in real time, all the time.
•   If this is not yet happening with your customers and your team your competitors may be beating, you to it
•   This is not optional, this is not something you can wait and see on, this is already happening, and you are in fact losing your customers as we speak.
•   The days of using a large clunky unresponsive CRM systems (customer relationship management) are also over
•   If your team is not living and I mean living on your CRM, then you might as well not have one
•   Most companies have a CRM, but it is estimated that less than 30% are used by their people!
•   your CRM needs to be as finely tuned to your people as it does your customers as well as being completely and totally integrated with your online channels
•   With all of this in place you can expect 20 and 30% growth from your customer accounts and much higher growth with new accounts based upon many more referrals
•   Further your attrition rates will vastly improve along with your own product development as you will be communicating with your customers constantly and in real time.

6) Recruiting

•   The people you need to be effectively implementing all these recommendations will now begin to find you
•   You see once you truly begin to develop your online presence the talented people you seek will have already found you
•   Your recruiting costs will be dramatically cut
•   We see this repeatedly with all our clients to the point that this becomes one of the key cost savings for many of them

7) Corporate culture

•   There is nothing more powerful for your corporate culture then to have everybody on your teams connected and communicating in real-time all the time
•   Not only will your recruiting be simple, but you will keep your best people and will not have to worry about losing them to your competitors
•   One additional caveat here is that your ongoing training costs will in fact be higher then what you may have had in the past
•  On-boarding is something talked about a great deal but not often implemented in most companies
•   Because the skills we are talking about are new, on-boarding will be a very important element required to ensure your success. This will add some additional cost to your process.
•   However, the return on this cost will far outweigh the cost of replacing and hiring people that you need today and lose tomorrow

In summary

•   The ROI of taking your company into the online future is so strong you'll wonder how you have missed this for so long.
•   Its so much easier to do things the way we always did, until it’s too late!
•   On average we see a 30% increase in revenue from joining the online world
•   Couple this with the cost reductions we have just reviewed, and you can quickly see how critically important it is for your company to become on online success story ASAP!

Lastly, just as with any other evolving industries there are many traditional training, coaching and mentoring companies who continue to recommend traditional methodologies. These companies just like you to this point are simply ignoring the facts. 

Change has come, and you have not yet understood this.

There are many industries who have come and gone for the same reason, don't let your company end up being the next "Kodak"

If you would like to learn what your potential savings are, just drop me a note online!

We have a ROI calculator that will give you some idea what the potential savings and more importantly what your revenue potential can really become.

** An overwhelming number of companies are still stuck in the mindset that social media is the domain of marketing rather than sales. As buying patterns continue to evolve this is an increasingly dangerous position to take. More and more every day, buyers are reaching out via social channels rather than phone or email, and your sales team needs to be equipped to properly follow-up with these leads. **

Want to read more? Follow me on twitter, take a look at our Webpage, or just send me a message!

@TRsocialselling || @ExpoSalesLtd