Do you do retention marketing? You already know that for any business to grow, people have to know about it. After all, if someone doesn’t know a business exists, there’s very little chance they’ll interact with it, let alone purchase from it. And the process for letting people know about a business is called Marketing. When it comes to marketing, there are hundreds and hundreds of strategies you can choose for promoting a business. But, when narrowed down to its two fundamental principals, There are only two forms of marketing. Growth marketing, which is all about attracting new customers. Retention Marketing, which is all about retaining existing customers. Today we're looking at that second one, retention marketing. As a designer, people must know about your design business before there’s any chance they’ll hire you. Don't you agree? That's why companies put so much effort into growth marketing. They want to attract new clients. However, while most businesses are marketing to attracting new clients, only 16% of them make any effort at marketing to their existing clients. They ignore the people who are already familiar with their services. A study published in the Harvard Business Reviewstates that acquiring a new client requires a minimum of five times more effort than retaining an existing one. And research done by Bain & Company says that if you can increase the number of returning clients by 5%, your profits will go up by at least 25%. Therefore, marketing to your existing clients is a valuable strategy when it comes to growing your design business. Your current client base is a priceless treasure trove of future opportunities. That’s why you need to focus effort on retention marketing, meaning marketing to your existing clients for them to bring new projects to you. You may be thinking "my clients already know what I do. They were happy with the last project I did for them. The next time they need my design services, they'll know how to get a hold of me." Don’t be so sure of that. Clients who "spread the wealth." I've designed dozens of things for a local jewellery store over the past fifteen years. They keep telling me how much they love my work. And yet, in all that time, only once did they contacted me to initiate the project. Almost every project I’ve designed for this client was initiated by me when I contacted the client to see how things were going. During those conversations, the owner would sometimes ask me if I was interested in working on a design project for him. I guarantee you, if I had not initiated those conversations, I wouldn’t have gotten those projects. I know this because every time I go into his store, I see things that I didn’t design for him. And everything I inquire about was created by a different local designer. You see, this particular client likes to spread the wealth amongst local designers. He wants to make everyone happy, so he gives his next design project to the next designer he sees. That’s why part of my retention marketing strategy when it comes to this client is making sure I reach out to him regularly. You snooze, you lose. Taking “the client will contact me when they need my help” approach could hurt you. I lost a long-standing website client last year. This client was in bad need of a website refresh, and he knew it, but he didn't have the money in his budget. I understood and asked him to contact me when he was ready to proceed. The client knew my services; he knew I was familiar with his business and eager to work with him on their new site. Plus, I manage his domain name for him. So I had nothing to worry about. The client would contact me when he was ready. Or so I thought. Then one day, out of the blue, I received an email from someone asking me to change the nameservers for the client’s domain. Confused, I called my client, asking what was going on, and he told me he had hired a different local firm to design his new website. When I asked if there were any issues with the