Benefits of Leveraging New Customers and Repeat Business

There are two kinds of customers; old ones who give you repeat business and new customers who took forever to convert – well sometimes. However, as entrepreneurs and digital marketers, we try to love both as unconditionally as possible providing the best service that we can.

We also know that according to numerous findings – and practical experience – that it costs more money and energy get new customers, as opposed to getting your existing customer base to make repeat purchases. But, we still need to bring in new customers to maintain the growth of a business.

In this article, we will be exploring the benefits of leveraging both new customers and repeat business to maximize the growth potential of your entrepreneurial and marketing activities.

Customers for Life?

Once you get a new customer on board for some time, usually your next step is to get them to make repeat purchases. This is typically the case for most companies, if not all. However, there is no such thing as customers for life.

Let’s face it; you’ll have one-time customers who will just be trying out your product or service. They do not have the intention of buying anything from you ever again, and they’ll be there once.

Other customers will find a different product or service – although these might not technically be superior to yours – but will offer them the specific product or service for their particular needs.

Some will decide to stop purchasing altogether for no apparent reasons. So although having repeat sales from your customers is a great thing, they will not always be there for you. This is why new customers are essential.

New Customers All Day Every Day

Your business has to be continuously growing; it’s one of the fundamental tenets of business. One of the ways that your company can continue to grow is to acquire new customers on a regular basis to drive revenue.

Getting new customers into your business also opens the door for your expansion as you start dealing with different markets that overlap, but more on that later.

The Real Cost of Getting New Customers

It’s a given that getting new customers is significantly more expensive than selling to customers that have been your customers already. So what do we do here? Here is where the math gets tricky, why would you want to spend valuable time and resources on something that is more expensive?

This is the time where you have to take a step back from the original equation and look at it as a whole. If your goal is to continually get new customers and to get your existing customers to keep buying from you, then start looking at this way, it’s okay to spend on new customers because you also aim to make them repeat customers in the future.

Don’t look at it as a difference in spending for these two different groups, but for customers in general. You will want to compute how much you will spend on one customer for him to make his first and repeat purchases.

Now doesn’t this drive down the price of getting customers in general? This will allow you to have the best of both worlds because you are allocating a specific budget for each customer the moment he makes a purchase plus the addition of their repeat purchases in the future.

What Happens When You Run Out of Customers?

Well as much as we would love to tell everyone that this will never happen, sometimes the feeling itself happens, and you could very well see yourself in a weird kind of rut.

This is where you can use your previous customers and leverage a new market out of them; you can do this by either analyzing nuances in the attitudes or characteristics of your former customers, leading you to explore new niches. You could also create another product or service altogether for this.

Sometimes you can create new products or services by taking apart your current ones. Say you have a fully-fledged service that costs a thousand dollars per month to subscribe to, why don’t you trim it down and offer a basic package for less or vice-versa. The opportunities are limitless in this department.

Your USP matters

Remember that at the end of the day your unique selling proposition matters to everyone that you are trying to appeal to, and this is the only way you can attract new customers and generate repeat business.

You have to provide something that people need or want to have and make sure that there is always a “reason” for them to keep coming back for more, whether they’re new or they want to go back for the hundredth time.