Dominate Your Local Market!

What is the lifetime value of a customer (CLV) to your business? And why is it important to know?

If nothing else, knowing a customer’s value over time quantifies the point that keeping a current customer is a whole lot less expensive than finding a new one.

There are some industry standards for average numbers on a national basis. Whether you make a few big sales or a large number of small sales, you can determine the lifetime value of a customer.

For instance, the lifetime value of a Chiropractic patient is $7,500 according to Billing Precision, LLC. The figure is derived from an annual patient value of $1,500 and the current average of 5 years that a patient remains with the practice.

For a Dental practice, the lifetime value of a patient is $22,000. That is according to Derek Naylor, a consultant on Dental Practice profitability.

A supermarket customer’s lifetime value runs from $179,665 to $318,831 (source: Customer Lifetime Value, V. Kumar, University of Connecticut). Any wonder why they are so eager to have you carry one of those “customer loyalty” cards that give you discounts for shopping with them?

And while lifetime CLV is important, that data gathered for that purpose can tell you other useful things, like…

What is a customer’s annual value?

If your average sale is $20 and those customers average 2 visits per month, the annual value of the customer is $480. You can do the math for your business by dividing monthly or yearly revenue by the number of customers who make have made purchases in that period.

What does a new customer cost?

Cost of acquisition of a new customer is a critical factor in your success. For instance, it costs Amazon.com over $30 for each new customer they cultivate. The average sale at Amazon is $17 so if they relied on “one-time” customers, they would soon be out of business. But Amazon’s customer retention rate is one of the best and there break-even point come at just 1.9 purchases.

So Amazon can count on repeat purchases by newly acquired customers and that is what makes their customer cost of acquisition work for them. Do you know what it costs to acquire a new customer for your business?

This measure can give you an indication of what you can afford to pay to acquire a new customer. Customer acquisition cost certainly shouldn’t exceed the lifetime value of that customer and ideally, it should cost a fraction of the the customers lifetime value, thereby insuring your long-term profitablity.

It is MUCH less costly to keep the customers you have instead of always having to cultivate new ones. Loyal customers are the backbone of any business. You still have to pursue new customers, but the income generated by the repeat business of your loyal customers can offset that cost.

Which brings us the the graphic at the left. Email is a great way to stay in touch with your customers, remember them on special days and make them feel special by inviting them to “customers only” sales and events.

A well-designed email “Customer Retention Program” can keep your business viable during down times and increase profits during good times. Notice that I said “well-designed” email program. A poorly designed campaign can radically reduce the effectiveness of an email program.

Talk to us today about building your email “Customer Retention Program” and profit from it for years to come. Call Bob at 859.544.9005, email or use our fast response form.

OrangeCat.com is having a Summer Sale on new websites, website updates and blog installations. Here is your chance to get updated and ready for the upcoming fall and holiday seasons with a website that works FOR you.

Get a new website or blog – or update that old site NOW for just $495!!!

And that’s for a full WordPress-powered, Search Engine Friendly, Secure, Easy-to-Edit website that can grow over time with minimal effort on your part.

And Google, Bing, Yahoo and all the other search engines L-O-V-E websites that gradually grow over time.

All you have to do to get this special price (it’s 50% off our regular price) is call Bob at 859.544.9005, email Bob or use the Contact Form and we’ll take it from there.

This offer is good for any 3-5 page WordPress website order booked on or before August 31, 2010. Call us today.

Also ask about our “Put You on Google Page 1″ SEO Program (even if you already have a website).

Here are some recent OrangeCat.com projects:

• Sutton’s Italian restaurant – Lexington, KY
• Premier Limousine – Danville, KY
• TimBidwell.com (Accounting) – Danville, KY
• KY Land Sales for Kentucky’s Finest Properties – Danville, KY
• Your Kentucky Home – Danville, KY
• Bluegrass Biz Net – Danville, KY
• and of course:
• The Manufactured Housing Industry’s Premier Online Trade Publication – Northfield, IL

More info about the OrangeCat.com Summer Sale.

First I want to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July and Happy Birthday to this wonderful country we call home. Too often, we take the blessings we have been born into or chose by immigration for granted. Take a few moments today to express some gratitude (silent or otherwise) for the gift of freedom.

What does “independence” mean on a personal level to you? When asked that question in a survey done some years ago, the overwhelming answer was to make enough money to do what I want and the time to enjoy it.

Tall order. And it’s gotten taller in recent years as we’ve all tried to squeeze more from less.

For my own business, Orange Cat Productions, we have captured the #1, #1b, #2 and #3 positions
on page 1 for this keyword. What is not showing is that we also have #7.

An often overused (some might say clichéd) expression is “work smarter, not harder.” I recently read a thread in a forum where a member was complaining that the phrase is often used with no explanation of what the user means, making matters worse instead of better.

Taking that complaint to heart, I am going to explain what I mean when using the cliché “work smarter, not harder.”

Even before the Great Recession, many of us were working harder. Many of us were approaching the limits of endurance. This helps to increase production and generate wealth, but leaves us with precious little time to enjoy it.

And when you are working as hard as you possibly can (the ‘work harder’ part), how do you produce more leads and more sales, especially those working in the retailing and community sectors of the industry?

Within three (3) days of launching this completely new website and domain,
Premier Limousine had the #3 position on page 1 for their keyword.

One answer is take advantage of available technologies (the ‘work smarter’ part).

What is the lifetime value of a customer to your business?

Most businesses don’t think of this when it comes to acquiring and retaining new business, but it is very important when budgeting the cost of acquiring leads.

Figuring the lifetime value of a new customer (or patient in the case of medical practitioners), is a fairly straightforward task. What is your average sale? How times per week or month does the average customer make that purchase? How many years can you reasonably expect them to continue.

People are creatures of habit. Get them coming in and they tend to keep coming in if your price and service meet their expectations.

How much of a difference in your annual bottom line would adding new customers per month make? For most retailers, a huge difference! For chiropractors, dentists and the like, even greater!

Now what can you do to make that happen, where you are now and starting with the tools you have right now?

We’ve all heard (probably repeatedly) the fact that 82% of all consumer searches for a new place to live originates on the Internet. That fact alone should convince any retailer or community owner who doesn’t have a website to get one – IMMEDIATELY! (we can help)

If you already have a website, congratulations. You have the first part of the puzzle in place.

But do you have any idea how important it is to have your website appear on page 1 of search engine results pages (SERPs) for your keywords?

The Twisted Sifter’s blog holds the #1 and #2 positions on page 1, and the website is #4. Rounding that out is a directory service entry holding #3 for a clean sweep of the top four positions on page 1 for this keyword.

Even in a small market, it can be the difference between getting those two extra sales per month and not getting them.

How do you get your website onto page 1 of the SERPs?

Either through hard work or working smarter. And the working smarter part involved in attaining a page 1 listing will generate secondary sources of leads and can even compound your success rate. Sensing a theme here?

Moving your website from wherever it is now in your local search rankings to page 1 is a time-consuming and laborious process – but carries with it great rewards. And this is one of those tasks that brings to mind the quote from Red Adair that appears in my signature every time I send an email, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur!”

The more competitive the local market, the costlier in time and money gaining a page 1 position will be. But the greater the reward of success.

Making the wrong choice here will cost you money – a LOT of money. But far more important, it will cost you a lot of that irreplaceable resource – time. Time where you could be earning, but are still struggling.

Sometimes a keyword can be very competitive in a locale. A properly configured
Google Local Business listing can then help fill the gap until SEO can help claim a page 1 position.

For those of you who are inclined to take on this type of project yourself, I will be creating a product to help you ‘work harder’. I’ll be announcing it here in this blog – watch for it.

For those of you who choose the ‘work smarter’ option, help is just a phone call (859.544.9005) or email away.

Independence of this sort is a choice. Make your choice today.

Safer web surfing for yourself or your family is one of those things that we don’t often think about. But when a simple way of separating the good guys from the bad guys comes along, I think it’s important that you at least know about it. And if you choose to use it, so much the better.

That’s where the Web of Trust (WOT) comes in. WOT is a community rating service, whose members rate websites on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. When a web surfer with the WOT application installed as a Firefox extension, a Google Chrome add-on, an application for Internet Explorer and as a bookmarklet for Safari and Opera comes to a website, they can clearly see whether it is rated well or poorly.

Once you’ve installed the WOT add-on into your browser, you’ll see a “donut” shaped WOT icon in your browser toolbar (a bookmark that opens a popup in Safari or Opera). When you visit a website the “donut” will be gree, yellow or red depending on the rating given to the site by the WOT community. It casn also be gray with a question mark if there are not enough reviews. If you haven’t rated the site yourself, there will be a gold star superimposed on the “donut.”

Other WOT features allow you to block access to certain websites, for instance blocking sites with a red rating for child safety.

When you search using Google, the WOT donut will appear next to each of the results of your search enabling you to spot dangerous websites before you click on their link.

You can get the WOT add-on by visiting the WOT download page. It will open in a new tab/window. If you install it, after you finish, close the tab and come back and rate us. If you have a website of your own, send us the url and we’ll rate you. Heck, we might even publish the URLs of clients and readers and we can all get rated – and build up some good karma as members of the WOT community.

Have a look around the WOT websites and familiarize yourself with the features of Web of Trust.

Then place your website’s URL in the comments below and ask readers of this post to rate your site(s).

If you are an Orange Cat client, I’ve probably already rated your site. If you still have a gray “donut” with a question mark, you just need a few more folks to rate you.

You can return the favor by rating this site and my sites at OrangeCat.com, OrangeCat.net and MHMSM.com.

Orange Cat Productions LLC of Danville, KY announced today the launch of the new Tim Bidwell, Inc. website.

The website was built on the WordPress 2.9.2 platform. It features many labor- and money-saving features such as automated backup, automated Google Sitemap building and much more.

Tim Bidwell, Inc. provides accounting, bookkeeping and payroll and payroll tax services to businesses in the Central Kentucky BLuegrass Region.

The official Orange Cat Productions announcement is available at OrangeCat.com.

Please visit the new Tim Bidwell, Inc. website and give us your feedback.