Fact 1: It's much easier - and cheaper - to make sales to someone who has already bought from you and experienced what you do, than it is to find a brand new customer.

Fact 2: Most business owners know this ... but completely ignore it.

Fact 3: Most businesses spend most of their marketing budget trying to get brand new customers.

Building and refining your database is critical if you are to be effective at reselling to your existing customers. Apart from the obvious, fields that you need to include are:

• First and second names separately - personalisation in letters, emails or print is powerful and you'll tie both hands behind your back if you record the name in one solo field.
• Mobile number - SMS marketing is also very powerful used sparingly. Think of a restaurant wanting to fill tables on a mid-week night, a shop promoting a sale starting today. B2B promotions that are for one day only, and so forth.
• Purchase history - it makes is SO much easier to target likely future purchases if you know what they have bought previously.
• Communications history - there are so many 'CRM' systems around these days this aspect is easy to manage, although you do need to put in the effort to set it up optimally for your purposes. Time, not money.

And finally, specifics relevant to your business ...

• shoe size, if you are a shoe seller / maker
• kids names, if you run parties, sell toys or kids clothes
• anniversary and birthday dates - if you are a restaurant, hairdresser or florist
• system type and spec, if you are a computer support business

The more tailored, relevant and 'niche', you make your communications, the better they will work for you. People often get bogged down with 'frequency' as being the big issue in regular marketing programmes when, in truth, recipients won’t worry about frequency if the content is useful and relevant. And your database will help you achieve that.

Fact 4: Communicating regularly - and frequently - with your existing customers and prospects will be the easiest and cheapest way for most established businesses to double their sales.

Fact 5: Using multiple media - well! - will have a dramatic impact on your response.

Fact 6: The More you communicate, the more you will sell.

Use a combination of:

• Email - it may be cheap, but don't overdo it
• Post (good opportunities here now less people use it)
• Telephone (HUGELY under-used)
• SMS
• Social Media
• and, of course, Face to Face (time consuming but very effective).

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