Let’s take that Walmart example and apply it to your business. Are you making steady sales like Walmart or are you getting sales few and far between? Are you sitting at your computer or phone, waiting for a new order? If your sales are not steady, it is probably because you either focus more on new customers than old customers or you do not interact with your existing customers as well as you should.
If you want to build your business, you need a steady flow of traffic and the majority of that traffic should come from existing customers that continue to want what you are selling. The reason why you want return visits as opposed to new visits is simple, you don’t have to pay to marketing costs to find your old customers because you already have them. Client Retention is actually something I learned from entrepreneur and marketing expert, Richelle Shaw. As Richelle points out in her Recession Proof Your Business Plan, by focusing on existing customers you reduce your marketing costs and increase the revenue you generate from return sales.
If you are an internet entrepreneur like me, the best tool that you can use to build and track your list of customers is an email marketing solution. It’s funny how times change; email marketing has gotten a bad rap for years, because most entrepreneurs did it the wrong way. They sold lists, bought lists, and randomly sold to anyone with an email address, which created the SPAM epidemic that we all hate. I hated statistics in high school, which is why I never saw the value in buying huge lists and thinking there was a high probability that I would get a few good leads. While some entrepreneurs were losing money because they opted to buy lists, others figured out how to use email marketing as an effective tool. If you create a list from scratch, with your existing happy customers and interested potential customers, you will essentially create a list of people who you know will open your emails and buy what you are selling.
Don’t you think it’s better to have a list of 500 loyal customers than a list of 50,000 strangers who don’t care about what you are selling? I believe that the key to effective email marking is as follows:
- Build Your List from Scratch
- More People Isn’t Necessarily Better: Don’t Add People Who Don’t Opt into Yourself
- Don’t Buy Lists in the hope of getting Fast Leads
- Don’t try to Sell to Your List every day or all the time
- Don’t devalue your list buy selling them things they don’t want
Discover the Power of List Building Click here to Download: Internet Marketing Power as art of my collection of eBooks on 'How to Sell Online'
After countless conversations with entrepreneurs who have difficulty driving traffic to their business, I've come to realize most of them would say yes. When asked the question, "Does picking a target market hurt your pocket?" most folks either come out and say "yes" or something like, "I don't want to focus on one group and look like I'm turning anyone away." (Sound Familiar) They (maybe you) are afraid to pick a target market out of fear of losing customers. To that response I have to ask, "When you market to everybody and nobody is listening, don't you still lose?"
The thing that really hurts your pocket is this fear, which is in turn preventing you from achieving your true objective of getting customers and building your own business. I talk about the 3 things blocking your business in my (
Let me start off by saying if you leave me a funky comment (lol), I’m going to assume you just read the title GOT really offended and decided to go OFF on me before I put You On to some things I’ve heard, learned, and experienced as far as working with black women online.
Now before I go any further, let me be clear (as I’m sure you already know this), I am a black women entrepreneur / blogger who works mainly with black women, but what a LOT of black women are telling me is that folks tell them “Don’t Work With Black Women (Period).” Sistas you know this, you’ve heard it, and maybe you believe it …. point being that’s what folks are saying.
The rub or the kicker here is THAT many black women that I work with, myself included feel compelled to work with other black women or women of color in general. While there is a stigma around it and not much money in it (on the surface it seems) we are driven to do it. The fact is that as black women we know that we aren’t as targeted by mainstream media as much as we would like, so many of us with visions of changing the world feel compelled to do our part to put black women in the forefront of the conversation. The only problem here is that we as all know words DON’T pay the bills, so while we are trying to DO PRO-BLACK WOMAN Things online that make us feel like our destinies are being fulfilled we are coming up against the whispers, worries, and the realities surrounding the idea ‘Don’t Work With Black Women (Period)’.
So what is the REAL Problem here and what is my point? I’m about to air out our dirty laundry y’all, so excuse me while I open the windows (because it’s going to get funky lol). With the recession and even a few years before it, we have seen a growing number of black women entrepreneurs (especially online). Many black women entrepreneurs online see the net as a space where we can afford to create our visions in the form of blogs, coaching, books, movies, fashion, etc. BUT many of us are having a hard time getting the job done. Either the large companies don’t see our market as a market that pays (so we can't get big sponsors and ad contracts like well let's be real - white bloggers online) OR we aren’t buying black amongst ourselves for an exhausting list of reasons. You’ve heard it before, everybody wants to work with you or be on your website BUT they can’t afford to pay or don’t THINK they need what you’re offering. SO in the end we just have a growing number of black women online with amazing ideas and absolutely no profit generators. A small group of us figure out how to rise above the pack, stick in there for years and keep going while the rest quietly fade away, because no one was really looking at them in the first place.
I had to get that out because that my friends is the truth. We groan about it in our homes, write about it on our blogs, vent about it amongst each other, but that’s how it is which is why folks keep screaming, ‘Don’t Work With Black Women !’ and you know what I do …. (lol) I work with black women. I am determined to work with this group on my terms because I know if I do anything else… if I fake it and focus on white women or just everybody so I’m more main stream, I’ll get frustrated like many of my sista bloggers and feel like I’m selling out. I know if I force it and just pitch to black women with corporate gigs and nice pocket books, I’ll look fake because that isn’t who I am. I know I’ll lose it all if I try to be anything other than who I am because in the end all the posers trying to sell things and be who they aren’t STILL aren’t making money so in the end isn’t it better to be happy by my own standards than try to live up to or fall into everyone else’s?
Yes! I say yes, because it’s working for me. No, I’m not a six figure sister yet and I won’t lie to you and say that I am. No, I am not getting even everyone on board, even with all my buzz. As a matter of fact, I started 
