Lead Generation - Customer Lifetime Value
Pawn Leads A Legacy Worth Living Up To!
Marketing today is about lead generation strategies, promotional programs, customer base and retention, and customer lifetime value.
By 2025 customer lifetime value (CLV) will be the leading key performance indicator (KPI) the growing business sector will strive to understand and put into place.
The underlying premise is it costs less to retain a customer base than to create a new one.
Did you know that it takes about 25% less to keep a customer than to find, build, and establish a new one? In the past, acquiring a new customer was seen as costing five times more than retaining an existing customer.
However, according to Forbes, customer lifetime value is the key to creating long-term profits.
Creating new customers is essential for all businesses but retaining customers is critical for long-term profit. Existing customers want to purchase product or service items from your company because they trust you.
You don’t have to spend the time and energy on them to help them understand what brand you have to offer. They already have existing brand loyalty with you.
Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70% while selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
Defined CLV is the total worth of your business throughout the relationship you have with your customer.
Knowing how to calculate this value contributes to effectively planning for customer lifetime value (CLV).
To calculate CLV, you need to know how to calculate the average purchase value and then multiply that number by the average number of purchases to determine the customer value. Now that you know the average customer lifespan, you can multiply that by customer value to determine the customer lifetime value (CLV).
Pawnshops are no different than any other business. Owners desire to provide a service to their community while making a reasonable profit for the product or service they offer.
Strategically owning and managing a pawnshop business effectively leads to profits, and all companies have to cover costs to remain in business. One strategy is to know your customer base; This is essential if your business will boom.
Another essential business strategy is to understand that customers desire to feel a part of the business they do business with.
Maintaining and involving your customers in your business is how you will enhance relationships and keep customers coming back. People want to be a part of something. How can you set up your lead magnets and content marketing to help promote involvement from your customers?
A returning customer is like money in the bank, and your connection with them will ensure they think of your business first when they need the product or service you have to offer.
Marketing Team Efforts
Know Your Avatar
Your team’s initial efforts in marketing are to initially attract potential customers and let communities know about your business. Sales leads, lead magnets, branding, digital advertising, and setting up a lead generation campaign are all ways to draw clients in. Leads for your business focused on the target audience in your area are a must. Do you know your target audience? The target audience is your avatar.
An avatar is a profile of perfect buying potential customers.
Knowing what the customers look like, enjoy, their habits, what they do for fun, what challenges they may have, what excites them, and any other facts you can gather about them will help your team reach them. Are you in an area where luxury handbags and diamond jewelry are highly sought after? Maybe you are in a place where gently used tools are needed for construction projects.
It is not only about prospective customers; it is about knowing those customers, and by knowing them, you can attract prospects who will buy or shop at your business. Knowing them well helps you promote collateral loans and turn first-time visitors into high-quality leads for your business.
For example, if you are marketing to a community in Los Angeles, California, your approach will differ from marketing to Santa Fe, New Mexico. All community members may require pawn loans, same-day cash, gold, silver, and luxury items, but the approach to getting the word out about your service and product will differ. If you are a new business or are branching out and want to focus on different luxury items, your marketing strategies will be paramount in generating leads for your business.
Investment
Investment is defined as the action or process of investing money for profit or material result but is it?
According to Yigal Adato on page 76 in his book Pawn Profit Pillars, he writes that he learned from his coach that “Make money, hold money, and grow money.” You have to make money to pay your bills; you have to hold money for emergencies. You gotta grow money and not just keep it. For me, cash isn’t just cash; You can deposit “cash” into your marriage by communicating more effectively and going on date nights. You’re depositing “cash” into the lives of your children when you can leave the store early or take an additional day off to spend time with them. And finally, every dollar put back into our communities is another step towards building something greater together – a legacy worth living up to!”
Is an investment just money, cash, or profit? When you stop and think about investing, think a little further. Is knowing your potential customers an investment? By understanding the profile of the people who will shop in your store, you can fund retail items that your customers will purchase for fun and enjoyment; you can invest in solutions to solve their challenges. Without knowing your customers’ profiles, you can’t invest your time and efforts wisely to build lifetime customers.
Marketing Team as an Investment
Marketing teams are essential to a business’s success. These teams are necessary to build awareness about your services, brand, products, and how you meet your customer’s needs. Your sales team will work with your marketing department to help search engine optimization and generate quality leads for your business. The whole purpose of these teams is to develop marketing channels to get your product or service out to customers for them to purchase. Additionally, marketing teams generate “noise” and awareness that you may have just what they need should an unmet need arise.
Four Main Marketing Channels
Knowing the main channels will help you develop your strategies; direct selling, selling through intermediaries or groups and individuals who make it possible for customers to have access to your products, dual distribution of simultaneously getting out what you are selling through two or more channels, and reverse channels where the customer seeks you the business and your company’s product or service.
Isn’t it awesome when a customer seeks your business because they heard or saw from what they wrote in the search engines that you were the one-stop-shop offering to buy, loan, and sell scrap gold or luxury handbags? Instead of going to another shop, they reached out to your business. Your team’s job is to keep them through excellent customer service.
Customer Service as an Investment
Attracting prospects and eventually turning them into paying customers starts with engagement. People are social creatures who want comfortable engaging interaction. Attracting prospective leads is just the start of increasing profits and building those lifetime customers. Through quality, transparent, honest communication, potential leads are converted into long-term customers. When first-time potential customers, known as new leads, come into your store, they are eager to be a part of your business.
How are you using their customer profile, and what do you already know to convert them to paying customers? Does your team begin by greeting them by name? Does your sales team offer to show them around the store? Does the lead pawnbroker ask what exciting item they are searching for or what challenges they may have that need a solution, a solution you may have?
Do your return customers ask for a team member by name? Does that team member welcome them with open arms, and is the member ready to promote all you have to offer them?
How does your team follow up on potential leads who call and ask for a quote? Do they call them back? Does your team ask for online reviews when someone comes into your store? Does anyone do a call after the customer leaves to ensure they were satisfied with their experience at your store? All of these small things added together sum up to return life-long customers.
Knowing the ideal customer who comes into your store and all of their nuances will quickly turn into a quality lead and become a lifetime customer who will only lead to your success. Sales teams need to know how to invest their time and energy into a direct engagement that helps the ideal customer feel like they are a part of your business and your product or service is something they must have.
As a pawnshop business owner, you must take the time to set goals for your sales teams and train these team members so every qualified lead results in future customers and long-term retention.
Customer service makes the difference in someone returning to your business or not. It will either solidify the lead into a buying customer or set up a roadblock so that lead never returns.
Sales Teams as an Investment
The people on your sales team will lead to an increase in high-quality leads or a decrease in high-quality leads. Although they aren’t a free tool, they directly connect the new customer and the returning customer. Your sales team is a unique lead capture mechanism, and with training and support, they will be able to turn looky-Lous and first-time customers into customers who eventually purchase from you or secure a short-term loan. How the potential leads that come into your business are interacted with, assisted, given advice to, and have their needs, wants, and desires met will impact your business directly.
Customer service is just that "service."
It takes good customer service to earn the trust of a potential customer. Overlooking its importance can be detrimental to your business.
It only takes one bad interaction to result in poor goggle reviews, the spreading of substandard services, or the unpleasant image of your product or service being shared across the web. Customers and most leads who visit your store expect service, not just everyday service but exceptional service.
Service is defined as an act of helpful activity.
The business owner will impact potential clients by effectively training their sales team in quality customer service. Teaching your team about customer services begins with your team knowing the strategies and goals you have for your company, your company’s product, or your service. Your team needs to understand your plans for the pawnshop and how to meet those through good customer interaction.
The strategies and goals should teach ways to provide customers with the best service experience possible. How will your team deal with customers, those who are good and those who are bad? How will your team become experts about your product or service? A boss invested in their team’s long-term success will help build their teams’ knowledge on products and services and keep them updated as things change.
How will the communication between upper management and the sales team be accomplished so team members stay updated on changing products and services? By investing in your teams’ customer service skills, you are investing in your pawnshop business and helping customers turn into lifetime customers.
Online Customer Service
Because there is currently a vast digital marketplace, online customer service is also a necessary training investment. With health concerns in public, gas prices soaring to new levels, and people working from home, eCommerce is growing. Many pawnshops have eCommerce store options. It would be best to educate your team members on working with online questions and requests, so the customer feels confident that you are the business they need. Because customers can post reviews, complaints, and comments on social media pages, news travels fast.
Keeping a close eye on what is being said on social media like your Facebook page is of paramount importance so you can address issues promptly.
Training team members to handle complaints with “kid gloves” yet effectively. Remember to teach your team to tackle complaints head-on and take extra effort to keep the customer happy. This approach will help build trust and eventually result in more leads for your business.
An Automated Software Platform Investment
Owning and managing a business is time-consuming, and understanding how to leverage your time and talent is vital to ensure your business is profitable. Selecting and utilizing an automated software platform will help you automate your marketing and sales engagements so you can generate leads, focus on your lead generation strategy, follow up on prospective customers, close more deals, and accurately measure marketing success.
Today, several automated marketing platforms are available for businesses to purchase and use to increase lead generation.
When selecting the right automated system for your business, it is essential to consider these seven things:
First user interface design
How user-friendly, simple, or overwhelming is the platform’s user interface? User interface design or user interface engineering is used to designing user interfaces for various machines, software, and mobile devices. These tools can be easy, and they can be difficult. How is the design, and does it maximize usability? Is the platform one that speaks to your customers and your team?
Features and Integrations
With so many platforms to choose from, make sure you are shopping for one that maximizes its usability and has customer support, learning resources, userbase reviews, set-up, easy onboarding, and features and native integrations that suit your needs. Don’t settle!
Will the Platform Fit Your Skills?
If you need a platform that automates marketing campaigns and interacts with social media platforms, ask the questions to ensure the platform will do these easily. If you or your team are spending hours trying to figure out how to post for sale items in your eCommerce store, you aren’t spending time with customers building relationships.
Suppose you have customers come into your store, and you want to follow up with them regularly. In that case, you want to make sure that the platform you chose has quality lead generation tools, tools to promote funnels and opt-in campaigns, text messaging, and learning tools that will help you use the platform to its fullest capability.
Let's Talk Pawn Shop Platforms
There are several platforms available for pawn shops to consider, and there are pros and cons for all of them.
According to Sam Reading, the co-owner of Pawn Leads, “point of sale and marketing platforms lack often lack technical advisors and implementors needed to automate things with a focus on customizability.” Pawn Leads brings state-of-the-art software to the Pawn Industry by having a development team and the necessary resources to bring integrations and customizability needed to generate improved quality leads to each pawnshop.
Sam, who owns two thriving pawnshops, understands that each has its own unique set of needs and customer profile, its avatar. By working with a platform designed and used by a pawnshop owner, you will be assured that the Pawn Leads platform is designed to fit your rhythm and operational process, and Pawn Leads is an excellent choice.
Sam guarantees as a Pawn Leads customer, you will have quality direct engagement with him as the owner or an expert team member to discuss your prospective leads, to understand your business leads, how as a paying customer you will benefit from the platform, and how you can be assured that the buying process for the platform is quick and easy.
Focused primarily on Pawn Shops in the USA, Pawn Leads offers our Pawn Leads CRM system (2-way texting, reviews, email marketing, blog post writing and SEO services, landing pages, etc.), website builds, progressive mobile websites that add to your current site, web hosting, and custom development as needed/required. We also offer Google Ads and dedicated marketing support (flyer creating, holiday marketing, etc.) to enhance your marketing efforts.
Understanding that traffic to your website is essential to attract potential customers, Sam and his team will start with reviewing your website with you and providing consultation about how Pawn Leads can work best for your company.
Pawn Leads is the most affordable rate in the industry at $97 Monthly! We want to assist pawnshops by web Hosting, Site Speed Enhancements, and Quick Website Launches.
You will understand your specific lead scoring through monthly individual marketing meetings with your Pawn Leads representative if you are on dedicated services. Lead scoring is a method to rank customer prospects against a scale representing each lead’s perceived value to your pawnshop. This, along with monthly reports and analytics, will give you a proper understanding of how you are performing regarding google ads, Facebook ads, blog posts, and press release ranking. These tools designed with your pawnshop in mind will help plan for future activity to help generate leads and grow your business.
By working closely with you and the managers of your pawnshop, a landing page can be designed to place an opt-in form so customers can opt into different niche campaigns. This is important when converting qualified leads into paying clients and increasing website visitor traffic to bring in clients to your shop.
A paying customer will select your store over someone else’s through a well-designed sales funnel. Sam and his co-partner Lex are experts in generating leads and will help you by giving you a few tips to add new leads and new business to your company.
In the end, every owner wants every customer coming through their door or visiting the online business to purchase something or use their service eventually.
Pawn Leads has a support team and training modules for its paying clients. All training modules included with Pawn Leads are free tools to help you use the automated platform to your advantage. Understanding how to use the platform you have invested in is essential if you offer a lead magnet to generate leads. Trial subscriptions, samples, an opt-in form, an email marketing campaign, a blog post, and text campaigns are all a part of digital marketing and advertising. Knowing how to use these tools to your business’ advantage is paramount for business growth and increased profits.
Lead Generation Strategies
Sam and his team at Pawn Leads will tell you that one of the most effective lead generation strategies is to set up landing pages to convert website traffic into quality leads and customers. A call to action (CTA) to a dedicated landing page is often overlooked.
A call to action is the action that gets customers involved. Remember back at the beginning of the article when we talked about customers wanting to feel like they are a part of your business and ensuring that you aim to understand and improve your customer lifetime value?
Getting customers involved in “buy it now” or “opt-in,” or any other message that compels a client to take action is a great way to turn those leads into a paying customer.
Now treat that customer with excellent customer service, including getting involved in conversations with them, including them on a targeted list of a niche they are interested in, sending a thank you for stopping by text, all improve their experience with you and consequently turns them into a lifetime customer. They will come to you when they need a gold ring, luxury watch, or pawn loan.
Some Ways to Generate Leads
- Birthday campaigns
- Thank you for visiting text messages or asking if their needs were met
- Develop niche lists to invite clients to join
- Make follow up calls
- Send cold emails
- Send an email story blast
- Set up a live chat widget on your website
- Send out holiday campaigns with a call to action buttons
- Ask for reviews
- Use SEO to increase traffic
Sam Reading, the owner of Pawn Leads, believes that pawnshops have been held back by the lack of integrations available to larger platforms. By keeping an open mind, and API available, Pawn Leads partners and develops on top of the best software available to catapult the busy pawn store owners into the next age of eCommerce presence meshed with brick and mortar operations.
With pawnshops having a fixed location and the community they serve, most pawn shops have also developed an online business presence. Pawn Leads has the expertise and tools to design digital marketing with your pawnshop to improve lead quality, convert leads, reduce the time you spend on mundane routine tasks that have to be done to keep your clients connected with the ultimate goal of increasing profit and increasing the lifetime value of each customer.
Being a family man, Sam knows firsthand that was owning and managing his two pawnshops is time-consuming. He understands how to leverage time and talent to ensure his business is profitable. He selected and utilized Pawn Leads automated software platform in his stores before making it available nationwide. He is vested in assisting any pawnshop owner in automating marketing and sales engagements. His team of experts works directly with owners, managers, and sales personnel to understand how every interaction is a foundation for a lifetime customer. Sam will talk with pawnshop owners to identify and set up a lead generation strategy and provide feedback through monthly reporting so changes can be made to ensure your shop can close more deals with less effort.
Yigal Adato, the author of Pawn Profit Pillars, talks about investment. Sam knows you can invest in more things in a business than just money, cash, or profit. He’s taken his investment perspective and focused on investing in people, his team, and his family. Using Pawn Leads, he invests in people, letting them know about his business, how to save money on items they want to purchase, and how to borrow money in times of need. He invests in his marriage, children, and family by decreasing his time at the shop doing the necessary mundane things because the Pawn Leads system is fully automated. He invests in his community and pawnshops by working with each store to build something more significant than what was available before.
