By Kim J. Walsh-Phillips
Last year the Las Vegas big boy casinos lost over one billion dollars.
How could this be?
Their attendance is up, their hotel stays are up, their night club business is up, restaurant and bar sales are up. How could their sales be down by one billion dollars???
It is because of their belief that new customers were in order – which attracted a lot more customers who are completely NOT PROFITABLE. These new Vegas fans sleep all day, party all night and do not gamble. They don’t shop nor do they utilize the services and amenities of the buildings. They cannot come close to supporting the 55,000+ sq. foot buildings that the nightclubs are housed in, even with their $250 per night bar tabs.
Vegas became married to the idea that their money should be invested in attracting new younger, hipper, sexier customers and they achieved that. What they failed to do was to invest in their current very profitable customers who were actually making them money.
Whether or not you support the philosophies of the casinos or Vegas as a whole, there is a lot to be learned here by their catastrophic business failure. They were caught up in shiny object syndrome and the need to go after something new when their most profitable market was already right in front of them. When they were going after completely new markets, they should have been further investing in the one they already had.
Are you guilty of this in your business? Are you spending more time going after new business than you are investing in your current customer base? Instead of spending your marketing budget on getting new leads in, could you spend your time and money monetizing your current customer base to achieve more profits?
Consider these strategies for customer monetization:
Increase your prices 10%
Offer a premium product to VIP customers
Create a campaign for each of your current customers to introduce you to one more person
Set a goal of 20% of your customers to add on one additional product or service into their current relationship with you
Include a product or service in your offers that has such a high “pain of disconnect” that your customers are reluctant to ever stop your services
Interested in launching your customer monetization strategies in one day? Interested in having me create them for you? Join us for our upcoming Mining for Customer Gold workshop.
Your current customers are 66% more likely to buy from you than non-customers. It is time you started asking them for more sales.
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