[BF #045] 🥰 "One night stand" Customer?
Nov 26, 2020 7:35 pm
When you think about your future customers - what do you see? Is it a long line of different people, or a small group you will cultivate and maintain over time?
This answer will be different for different types of businesses, but regardless of the answer - you need to know what it is. This way, you can craft your approach to attaining perfect customer for your business.
If you are a wedding photographer, for example, the chances are that you will not have a repeat customer. If you are delivering a single "one-off" service, can you think of a way to provide additional value to your customer down the line?
When I'm working with clients that hire me for a single purpose, I will look to increase my offering and provide additional value beyond what we initially started with.
Just because at the moment we are working on a website, does not mean that the client won't have additional needs in the future that I can provide, like landing pages for their sales funnels, or graphic design for their marketing collateral. So I make sure they know this.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer lifetime value is the metric that indicates the total revenue a freelancer can reasonably expect from a single customer.
You have to consider a customer's revenue value, and compare that number to the cost of customer acquisition. Use this metric to identify customer base you are best to target with your offering.
Don't be afraid to experiment and change this over time. When I was starting, I was concentrating my efforts to a wide range of businesses I wanted to service, my reason being to gain experience working with different people and different industries.
Now I've narrowed my focus to only a few things, and I got comfortable only once I've identified the type of business I prefer to work with, and kind of projects that both challenge me and bring me joy and excitement.
It took me around three years to know exactly what I want. If you have it all figured out, great, but if you don't - don't feel pressured - as long as you're moving forward, learning and gaining experience; you will get there eventually. But that's the part of the fun.
OK, NOW, DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN LEAVE COMMENTS ON THESE EMAILS!? Because I didn't! 😂😂 It's a bit hidden feature - so how about we test it out?
Just go to Breaking Freelance Archive. Find any email you wish to comment on (let's use this one), and at the bottom of the text, there's a comment section. I'm curious how many of you would prefer that over replying to email directly (that I just loooove when you do it) 🥳😎
Read you soon!
Have a great day!
T.
Tom Kozacinski, sir Freelance-a-lot 🙃
