Do you know how to figure out who are your most profitable customers?
In business, we shouldn’t treat our customers like parents treat their children. We absolutely SHOULD love some customers more than others!
Let me explain. And in the process, I’ll give you some insight into your customers, and explain how to build your business around your best buyers.
Here’s how to identify your most profitable customers
Why you should play favourites with your customers
Those of you who know me know that caffeine practically runs in my veins. I’ve been a coffee lover for as long as I can remember. (Starting out with decaf iced coffees that I made as a little kid!)
Many years ago I bought my beloved Italian-made espresso machine. I called her my 3rd child – until she had a fatal heart attack when her boiler blew up! (Luckily coffee machines are replaceable…)
Since then, I’ve bought a lot of coffee products: coffee grinders, brushes, tampers, beautiful coffee cups and jars – the list goes on. I even bought a professional coffee-making course!
But I didn’t buy all this at once. It was a process.
The place I bought all my products from educated me about coffee using engaging content – I would read their emails, watch their videos, sometimes I would visit them in-store, and I would buy. And buy. And buy.
I became what’s called a hyper-consumer. And these are the people who drive your sales forwards. They are the backbone of your business.
Use the 80/20 principle to identify your hyper-consumers
In my own product-based business, we had about 20% of our customers who were responsible for over 50% of our revenue. They were regular repeat-buyers who spent a good amount with us with each transaction.
Which is why it’s so important to have multiple and/or consumable products. So that people who buy from you – and love your products and your brand – can buy again. Because they will!
So it is your responsibility to build your business around your hyper-consumers. Figure out what they would love to see and how you can improve their experience.
Learn your hyper-consumer’s buying journey
One of the best ways to learn such insights from your repeat customers is to survey them. A special survey just for those customers who have bought from you twice or more, making sure to ask an open-ended question about their original need, frustration or pain-point that led them to buy from you in the first place.
By listening to what they say, you’ll extend the lifetime value of your best customers and keep them coming back for more, again and again.
And then you can take that a step further.
Use your insights to attract, convert and retain highly profitable customers
By understanding your most profitable customers’ buyer journey, you can use this knowledge to make the right product offers to your best customers at the right time.
Here are three ways to use the insights you gain from your survey in your marketing:
1. Create specific marketing automation campaigns that are triggered by specific product purchases.
That means, sending automated email campaigns after a customer has bought, timed to make specific offers at the time intervals you know your best customers are likely to be ready to buy.
2. Include the right products in your product range.
By mapping out your most profitable customers’ buyer journey, you’ll see what repeat purchases they make over time. Use this to inform decisions around which new products you add to your range.
The goal is to increase the frequency of repeat purchases AND to extend the overall lifetime of your customer.
3. Tailor your newsletter marketing to suit your most profitable customers.
This one should be pretty simple really. You can use what you know about the buying habits of your most profitable customers to drive your newsletter marketing.
That means, creating content and running promotions designed to appeal to your hyper-consumers.
Treat your best customers like royalty and you’ll skyrocket your profits!
The benefits to your bottom line of having loyal, repeat customers is irrefutable.
I talk more about this and how to build loyalty and encourage repeat sales in my previous blog, “The Secret Sauce for a Profitable eCommerce Business”.
Need help growing sales and profits in your own business?
Then you might find my FREE implementation guide, ‘How To Double The Number Of Customers Who Buy From You’, helpful.
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Great blog post. Good insight but what about the consumer product businesses that is usually a 1x purchase? Unfortunately the life cycle of my customers is short so not sure how to build in “repeat” business.
Tu-Hien yes I can appreciate that with your particular product! There’s two ways you can get around this – one is to sell wholesale, and two is to create a really solid referral program. Hope all is well at your end – let me know if you’d like to re-schedule our chat (though I know it’s hard with the time difference!)
So true – I have lots of people who’ve bought one thing, but a small percentage have come back 2 or 3 times in a year to buy kids clothes, (some 7 or 8!) which is well beyond my initial expectations. They comment on my posts, answer my emails and I love them!!
That’s awesome Keneena!