What Does it cost?

The question for the forum today is… [I]What does it cost you to aquire a new client?[/I]

I was reading in another post, [MENTION=1377]Bruce[/MENTION] made this statement[COLOR="#0000FF"] "one can also back it in, in their own biz and see what it has cost per client and per repeat client and get an idea of what it would cost to create their own customer list if that is all that is really being sold

if one is at $100 per client aquisition cost, 200 clients would take $20,000 to create with their past proven marketing strategy
then it gets into who is a repeat or not
no contracts, so that takes the future dependability down"[/COLOR]

So it got me thinking what I’m i willing to spend or do to gain new clients or more market share. I would like to here the forums input on this subject from their own experience.

Thanks

It’s funny how fast a post slides down the list on a Monday morning…I guess our minds are going a hundred miles an hour over the weekend and we all hit the forum full of Question’s and Answers Monday morning…LOL

Is Bruce talking about the cost of a campaign to determine what each gained customer actually cost? Bruce are those your numbers or hypothetical?

Bruce and I talk about this all the time say you spend $500

you get two clients
They cost you $250 each that’s why I feel a customer list has a little more value then most give it credit

gaining customers isn’t cheap

Brain what is your take on the cost to aquire new clients, I would like to here your view.

I believe those numbers hypothetical. What is you’re take Phil on the cost of aquiring a new client?

20 years ago when the phone book was all there was, I had new customer costs as low as $8
repeat customers were higher

very different after '08

one just totals every $ spent on anything marketing related and divides it by the number of new and unique customers for the last 12 months

take out referrals, walk ups and the like that were just random to get a better idea

good way to benchmark and gauge effectiveness of one’s marketing efforts/channels

can be broken down by media type, but im talking overall aggregate above

I would not be surprised if most in so cal are over $100 per client, at least with direct mail

What Bruce said

[MENTION=1377]Bruce[/MENTION] What is your reasoning behind this statement,[COLOR="#0000FF"] “I would not be surprised if most in so cal are over $100 per client”[/COLOR]

So what you’re saying in SoCal to gain 200 new client’s cost would be about 20K give or take a few dollars. With what Ive heard on the forum prices are real low for window cleaning in socal (to many catfish in the pond) there, if that’s true how long before you are showing a true profit from marketing and gaining that one client at a cost of $100?

This is a very good question… I really wish I could just pull a report now and give you this answer… It is one of the things we calculate at years end when we decide what to do for advertising and marketing the next year. I have over the year seen our end of the year evaluations show anywhere between $7 and $19 bucks

Experience and numbers they don’t lie

You mean you don’t have system for that Chris…LOL

$7 to $19 is not bad. Does most of youre clients come from eddm or the web?

do you just add up the amount spent / by clients gained or repeat reminders depending on campaign?

or do also figure the amount each job booked subtracting that from cost of campaign?

i guess there are different metrics you could use to see the cost of client acquisition…

Not really because our old computer system didnt really have an easy way to keep track of it…

If I remember correctly we looked at marketing spent not targeted at existing customer, divided by the # of new customers acquired . Or something roughly like that… there are so many factors…

that’s a shame, good ol service ceo, eh?

as long as one is working with new and unique customers in the period being reviewed that’s all that’s needed, all the factors after that are pretty much a subgroup by type of marketing etc etc.

Yep it really sucks! - I cant wait to be fully moved away from it… While it was good 10 years ago, its horrible today.

I believe it’s around $40

[MENTION=1377]Bruce[/MENTION] is right about Socal, all DM campaigns are ehhhh at best, not like you east coasters. :eek: