You should know who your top ten clients are. If you're listening to this, you don't know who your top ten clients are. Meaning look at your revenue for the past year, for example. Who are the company and who are the type of person who purchased with you the most. Mmm. That's good. And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett Dyster. And always just please subscribe to this podcast. Really just help and leave a five star review.
But anyways, we're talking about customer attention. R I o. It's just one of those things that really is like the focus in the forefront of a lot of businesses right now just because of inflation and everything else. And all businesses are trying to figure out what they can use and what they can't use. We're talking about that. We're going to get into it with Swire right now.
And he is just a person that has helped customers for the growth with sales, retain employees, and just helps with customers in general. He's been an entrepreneur business owner for 2000 in 2003. But he's based in Los Angeles and he's just specifically about custom branded products. But we're going to get into it. So welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on our show, Brad. It's nice to be here. Yes. The first question is all. My guest is, are you a coffee or tea drinker? Coffee.
I have you here any like specific brews that you like? Dark, medium light? I like the Pete's coffee, the one that they now carry at Costco. I have that every morning. Ah, got you. But I gave a brief explanation about your expertise. But can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do and your business as well? Thank you. My name is Swire. Ho. People also call me the promo guy. I'm in the promotional product industry.
When people think about our industry, they normally use the work swag. We stand for stuff we all get. Since we have this conversation that I'm not for giving away to everyone. So I help my client to grow sales, to retain their client, to give people a meaning, to be loyal to their brand. I'm sure that you have a lot of questions for me, Brad, and let's go from there. All right.
And the first thing is just the current economy right now, like interest rates are high and everything is just, everything's up. Let's just say that food's up, everything's up. So like in the business sector right now, how can you retain that customer loyalty in the economy? Where no one's really sure where it's going and everybody's really just like waiting for the ball to drop. That's a tough question to answer. And then you could do your part, I think.
Bye. Understand your customer because think about your own experience. When is the last time that you order from a company, big or small, that they ever contact you after the sale? Chances are none of us have or they might send an email survey, things like that. But really when is the last time that they try to reach out to you asking you are you happy with the service?
And then if you are, and if you are a smart sales person, then if you know that your customer happy, then you will probably ask this follow up question. Do you happen to know other friends or colleagues that can also use our product and services? Would you mind to introduce me to them? So not only you are checking in, sometimes they will give you their concern or sometimes they complain you have to address it. And once you address those concern, then you're actually asking for more referral.
Maybe you ask for the review. So we actually using this time to connect with your client, building the relationship. At the same time you're driving up the referral for your business. It's more about the personal touch because like I said, I use services and all. They just give me an email like thank you for signing up. And I'm like, hey, whatever. I get a lot of those. So I see them but I don't really open them.
Yeah, because a lot of time when we call, we trying to, let's say we try to track our package, right? We call the call center. They're a big company. Then you know that whatever nice things that they say to you are nothing really going to translate to actual action.
But if you are listening to this and if you can make changes or make updates for things that you do, when people call you for concern, that's how you be able to build that relationship and bring that loyalty because wow, I address my concern, they take notes to it and they change it. When is the last time you see any company do that? Not very many. They ask for like reviews, but they all want the five star reviews. They don't want the bad reviews.
But when you ask for reviews, the majority of the reviews you're going to get are usually all bad because people are upset of you. And they were like, I want to make sure that people know I don't like you. So how do you actually get those better reviews? That's the first step. You should reach out to the client or people who purchase from you and then just check in. Are you happy with how the product was delivered or how the service were performed? Sometimes you do get the angry people, right?
Do you leave the one star review then maybe they just want to vent. Maybe they just want you to show up at a different time or maybe do things a little differently. So if you actually address that so you already eliminate those one side review.
But because sometimes people want to complain and maybe they are upset a little bit, but when no one is really listening to them, then it escalates and then they want to let everyone know on the Internet, on the forum knows that I really hate this company and don't work with them ever again. So for like the PR person, is it up to them to figure out how they can work with customer service, to at least give that personal or pr touch to it?
Because it is about awareness, but also customer retention as well. So should the PR people be like not micromanaging but at least understanding like what customer service or the call centers. Are going through depending on the size of your company, right? So if you're a smaller company, obviously the sales rep or the owner itself can do that call.
But if you are talking about a bigger organization, the product specialist, specialists or teams should be dedicated to those follow up calls because you want to have customers that are happy. Think about this, right? When I work with customer, they spend a lot of money trying to acquire customer. They spend a lot of money, sometimes millions, right? To get people indoor. But when I ask them how much do you spend on retaining your customer, a lot of them actually don't have any budget.
But think about this, people already purchased from you, they already trusted you, right? To interact, to pay for the transaction the first time. Why not keep them happy so they will actually do more reorders for you. Do the review that you're hoping to do or really get them to turn into a mini ambassador what I call and to tell other people their experience. So to spread the word, we talk about user generated content, lots, you know, by a user.
Actually sometimes when you go to YouTube review, they're not paying, they're just people buying that product. They use the product or services and then they just tell their followers what their thoughts about that product and services. So you can actually encourage those content if you're in touch with your customer base and actually you could guide them or coach them a little bit. If you're really happy with what we do, would you willing to share experience with others?
So that's how you actually build up your loyalties and build fans that are like to share your work with others. So let's say like a business, maybe it's more likely a small business hasn't really created that type of user generated content program. How would they start? Would they start just start like googling YouTube videos or LinkedIn or whatever and finding those people that actually like their products?
Or should they already know through like their email list and everything, or even from how long their customers have been using their product? Should they know through there, like how they be able to build this out? That's a great question. So if you're a small business, let's go into a small business example. So you should know who your top ten clients are. If you're listening to this, you don't know who your top ten clients are. Meaning look at your revenue for the past year, for example.
Who are the company and who are the type of person who purchased with you the most. Really dive deep off why they purchased from you. How was the transaction? Do you know that actually they're happy or not? If you don't know, you should actually dial, pick up the phone and call the customer. So what you want to do is you wanted to find out what demographics, what target clients you are more engaged with versus other. And don't try to go for I want to target everyone approach.
If these clients are paying you the most, these are top ten. Their similarity, maybe a job title, maybe their demographics or maybe their company size, they are similar. So then you know that you are more, you're better in that sector. And then if you build a relationship and you really ask that question, are you happy with what we have done for you?
And granted, if they are you able to connect us with other people or maybe other departments that could also benefit from our product and services, you'd be surprised that without glowing a single customer, you can actually build on your current client the way to almost double your business. At least would this be different from b two b and b two c? Because obviously b two b may actually be on more LinkedIn and then b two c you could probably find on YouTube.
Or have you seen like there really is no difference with user generated content from b two b to b two c? For b two b, it would make sense because if, for example, if you provide services to a large organization, chances are there are other departments who could also benefit from you. But if you use b two c, going back to our example earlier for users generated content, if you know that youre top ten client, they always buy from you, obviously they like you, right?
If not, they won't be buying from you. Are you willing to get on maybe on a call or maybe do a short video? We all have our cell phones, right? It's easy for us to do a quick video or record something that you want. So you're actually encouraging your top ten client if you b two c for generated content. Because we care more about what others say about your company than what you're saying about your company on ads. And would this tie into like retention and loyalty as well?
Because every business wants that loyalty. Loyal customer. Because with a loyal customer, they're more willing to buy. And then that also allows for them to do word of mouth because we all know word of mouth is king. It's always been king. There's nothing you could do to make it to do anything better than word of mouth. Word of mouth is just like the top end of marketing because you have to do the least amount of work, but you get the most impact out of it.
Yeah. Happy customers are a loyal customer. It starts from the top, right? You have to make sure that your customers are happy so they will keep coming back and they might have a chance to tell their friends or spread the words for you. And ultimately, if you do everything right, you can actually turn them into a mini ambassador. There are brands that we are connected. Like when you ask me what coffee I drink, pizzas don't pay me nothing, right? I pay money to buy my own coffee.
But since I like it so much, right? And I talk about it on the podcast. So in a way it might spark curiosity. If you haven't tried pizza coffees that are on sale at Costco, they might actually try. These are way that you could coach your client and then to make sure, first make sure that they're happy and then I for ways that they can share how good you are. These are something that takes time to plan, but it will be beneficial to a company you don't always want to go for.
Look for a new customer. Keep your current client happy and keep them engaged and keep and build more repeat customer. So you'll be surprised that you could grow your business faster that way. It's true, it's easier or it's cost effective to keep existing customers than it is to buy new customers. Because you gotta do a lot of marketing, you gotta convince them. I think it takes an average about like seven different points of interaction to get a new customer.
It's just a lot of extra work to get new customers and to keep the existing ones happy? Yeah. It's a lot cheaper to keep a current client than to spend money. Always prospecting, which you should be doing. But think about, always think about your current client too and ask them this question. And people don't do that much often with all the choices that you have, why did you decided you wanted to purchase from you? So that's like the golden question. These are paying customers.
I don't really care what industry that you're in. If you're in business then you have competitors and people have choices. Either your competitor or they can choose not to buy. They can never, always choose what to buy. They decided to spend money with you. Don't you want to know and get into the mindset what you have done? Right. So you'll be in for a treat.
Sometimes they'll tell you things that you have not thought of and if you're doing that thing, maybe if you wanted to add more to it, that's why you should double down. Let's say there is a customer and they've been buying from you, but then you start to see that maybe they don't want to buy you anymore or like they canceled it and we all get those things like why you canceled it. I don't really want to answer questions. I just don't like your product. How do you get them to come back?
Because like I said, you want to keep your returning customers. But let's say they just aren't satisfied anymore. How would you go about keeping them. Or gaining them back depending on the industry? We're speaking on a very broad question. I think the best customer who can do the best retention. Let's talk about DSLR camera, Canon. They have a big following. People who are professional, who are amateur like myself, buy cannons. But how do they keep people keep buying the new camera?
They have different education seminars, they have magazines, they have forums. If I ever run into any questions with my canon camera that I'm using I could hop onto a forum and search any database that I need. Think about how you can educate people. They might not engage with you if you call them. That's the society we live in. We don't want to be on the phone. But if I'm learning something, if I'm learning from others how I'm able to improve my use of my cameras, I am engaged.
So think about when people walk away from you. Are they engaging with you? Do you see them engaging you with social media? Are you sending them news about your upcoming products? Or do you just call them at your annual renewal? So those are something that will contribute why people are leaving your company. And how do you convince, just let's say because you have to do both.
You have to keep your regular customers, but you have to convince new customers because you always, every business is looking for new customers. It's just you have to balance it out. So how do you, how do you get that? Or how do you convince new customers about your return on investment? Because that's the big question is like how do we get people to come over?
Let's say they're using competitor, but we need to figure out our Rio and we need to convince them that our return on investment is better than theirs. So how do you get, how do you figure that part out? That's a million dollar question, right? So if we can answer that, then we can solve a lot of problems. I would say if it was me to do that, I will go back to what I talked about. Find out who your top ten customers are. So look at these ten businesses or ten individual.
If you're b, two, c, look at if you could find any pattern in there. So then who to go after if you target, if those your top ten fits the criteria of the new prospect that you are going after. So then your highly likely chances to get that. If you're a talking about small business, you shouldn't focus everyone everywhere. It's okay to focus on a niche and you have to be comfortable about where you are.
So your marketing message are more clear because you're talking to a specific type of audience. And you don't just blast it out to everyone in the universe or on social media because not everyone can relate it to the message or the product and services that you offer. What's if a small business doesn't understand their niche, how would they go about figuring that part out? Because a lot of people who start businesses are like, I'm going to do this.
Or even podcasts for example, they're like, I'm going to. Basically my pockets would be for everybody. And you're like, that's not really the most prudent thing to do. So how do you like figure that part out? Because I think a lot of businesses think they figured it out and then they go, no, that actually is very wrong. I would still stick with sticking to your revenue, right? Or if you're newer business, think about who engaged with your content the most.
Or if you are brand new in the business, talk to people and see who like to engage with you more than you build out on your list. But if you have been in business for a little bit. It won't go wrong by going back to your paying customer because they have their choices. They choose to work with you. Do you know why they work with you? A lot of business don't know that. So it's about figuring out from your return customers and your loyal return customers.
Let's say five years or maybe two or three years or some type of longevity, like what they like about the product and them doing pr and branding that out be like, this is why people love us. It could go on to a lot of business because, you know, there are people who think buying a camera at dollar 500 is expensive, but there are professional who not even look at $500 camera.
So you might think that your product and services might be expensive or obscure, weird, whatever that it is because you're not talking to the right audience. If you are finding the right audience who are willing engaged with your content. I know you're a gamer yourself, Brad. Like if I am playing a different game than you are, if you're really enthusiastic about your game, since I don't play your game, I won't be listening to you. So it's your job to connect with gaming industry.
For example, there are hardcore fans playing a certain game. They won't play other games at all, right? So it's the job for the company or for content creator to find those people within the community and to speak the language and to speak to them. What do they really like? Then you can actually answer a lot of your own question. How do I market? Which platform do I use? Do I use ad? Do I use social media? Am I going to be on Twitch or YouTube?
This can be answered if you really can think of that question. And if you have zero customers starting in day one, think of a dream customer who have unlimited budget, who are willing to buy what you sell, who are they? What income level or what title or what demographics they go be in? And then you can actually build your own target audience based on that from your dream. Dang. If someone's selling a $500 camera and thinks that's expensive, please talk to me, because it's not expensive at all.
It just depends on who you talk to, right? So maybe things that you would like to spend. But if you're talking about people that are not in that industry, so they will think you're ridiculous, but you're talking about the right audience, people who are engaged with those content, then it's a meaningful conversation and they want more. How do I get more from you? Brett? As a company, it's your job to find out who you really cater to. And then if not, dream up a dream client. What should they be?
What should they be doing? Like where did they go to consume the content? With that you can answer, actually answer a lot of the question and avoid yourself going in circle and wasting your money in marketing and pr. And then for your loyal customers, should you do a specific like email newsletter and stuff and like specific promos, maybe for the longevity of whoever the customer is?
Should you have like specific things for your really loyal customers because they may be your early adapters, that may be the ones that are like shouting from the rooftops. Should you have a specific thing for them to make them feel like that you care about them? Because you really should. But a lot of times businesses are just like, yeah, they're paying, they're buying from us, we don't really care. As long as they're buying from us, we don't really have to do much.
Yeah, in my line of work, you know what I think really powerful is turn your customer into media ambassador for your brand so you don't really have to spend too much. Going back to the gaming community again, Brad, let's say if I am a game manufacturer and I just create that special t shirts for 150 of my best creator, so if you're able to create content for our upcoming game, for example, then I will send you that brand new t shirt. We'll send to you.
The t shirt itself doesn't cut that cost that much, but by you doing that, you actually encouraging people to do use the generator content for your upcoming release. And then that people like to brag about I'm special, right? I'm wearing that t shirt now saying that I'm the content creator because I win that 150 creator special, for example, then they actually become ambassador, so to speak, for your brand. They will be wearing your t shirts.
And if other people ask them who did you get that t shirt from? What do you think they're going to say? I got it for creating content for this company and they gave me a shirt because of how I created the content. But I also love the game too because from your example from gamers, if we do not love the game, we will let you know how much we do not love your game. So we can substitute that with different products and different campaign, right? So we actually get people first to engage with us.
They give us the usage generated content, all for the cost for printing 150 t shirts. Think about that as a cost savings and return on investment standpoint you're actually using. Sometimes you don't even have to use physical product. You could give people a batch or a skin in certain game. Then you get people go crazy giving you all kinds of content. So smart company knows how to engage with their community and different industry have different engagement they want to do.
Maybe we're talking about moms that have kids in school. So that would be a different approach than gamers. And when we talk about maybe b two b only CEO with respond there are different approach. That's why I don't like the work swag. I like to be focused and ask really deep dive question who are target audience? Who are they? Tell me more about who they are.
Then when we pick the right promotional product for them, then we could be really specific and create something that they like and they will want to use it every single day of their life. And even going back to your camera thing, like maybe an exclusive Luthen for them as well to use for video or their picture taking depending on how they use your camera. Yeah. So there are a lot of creative ways. Even if you say I don't have thousands of dollar budget, I have $300, right.
So I'll tell you a good one. You could do $300 on one product. And then assuming that you already have a small social media following, do a sweepstakes. Say you tag a friend, do all the call to action that you want, sign up for a newsletter, maybe visit a new website, tag a friend. I can't tell you how many times that I did that just to try to win something that is $5. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you with the goal on the sweepstakes is have one defined goal.
So if it's like new people on your newsletter, have that defined goal. If it's getting people to buy more of your product, then have that one goal. If it's more social media following, have that one goal. But yeah, if you have five different ones, people are like, wait, what am I doing again? Yeah, I agree. And people listen to this podcast, they're like, man, you've got a lot of great knowledge and advice. How do they find you online to learn more?
Thank you, Brad. If they wanted to talk business, Google me. Swahili hashtag the promo guy. They'll see some of the work that I've done. And for your listener, I will also create a backlink that they can actually book me for consultation meeting. I'll run you through all these scenario questions and then drill down to a proposal. Who your target audience that we could create a custom, ideal profile for them and find the right product that can engage with you on the campaign that you want.
I will send that link to you for your listeners. All right, any final thoughts for listeners? I think we talk about a lot of stuff, Brad. I think if we drill down to one of that really should you have to answer for yourself before you're spending any marketing dollar. Who are your target audience? If you answer the questions, you solve a lot of questions and stop wasting your money and things that you don't need to do. That's even good advice for podcasters. Who your ideal listeners.
And thank you for joining this podcast. We really appreciate what you didn't share. So just thank you for joining. Thank you, Brad. And thank you. As always, please subscribe to the podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps with five star review. Lewis, help with the podcast and those know how we're doing better for you and join us next week as we talk to another great father in the pr marketing pr marketing industry. All right, guys, stay safe.
Get to understanding your target audience, your loyal customers customers and your retention of those loyal customers. Next week later.