MBA2083 Guest Teacher – Chloe Thomas – How to Build Your Customer Masterplan

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Hey Yo. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Helping you build the business you want every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Chloe Thomas and she'll be teaching you how to build your customer master plan. Do you ever scratch your head and ask yourself where do I get more customers? Where are these people? What do they look like? How do I find them? How do I market to them? How do I turn them into customers? Do you get overwhelmed with these thoughts? Well you're in luck because today we're going to lay it all out for you. We're going to make it simple with the help of Chloe Thomas. Chloe Thomas is a best selling author and international speaker. She's the host of the award winning podcast E Commerce Master Plan and Keep Optimizing. She was one of the top 30 e commerce influencers in 2021 and that's because she gets results. She's helped people market their e commerce businesses for a very long Time now. Today's lesson, as Chloe will mention, is not just for e commerce businesses. This strategy can be applied to any business to help you identify, find, market and acqu. We got a lot to get into, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Now you might be asking, why do I need to create a customer Master plan? What problem does this solve and how does it improve your marketing? Well, that's why we are so excited for today's lesson with Chloe. She's going to break it down. I highly advise that if you can grab a paper and pen right now and walk through the lesson with her, she's going to give you some great information, allow you to take some notes, maybe draw a few graphs as well so that you can be able to apply it to your own business immediately. I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and give my takeaways. But for now, take it away. Chloe.

Hey everybody, I am Chloe Thomas from E Commerce Master Plan. Thank you so much for joining me. Today I'm going to be teaching you how to build your customer master plan. So let's get down to business. I'm going to start off with why I created the customer Master Plan model because I think it'll help you understand what it actually is, which is probably the number one thing you want to know right now.

So I've been an e Commerce problem.

Solver for pretty much the last 20 years, helping different businesses in various ways. I've worked client side, I've had jobs working for retailers.

I ran a marketing agency for 10.

Years and I've done coaching and consulting.

What I found though, was that just helping one on one didn't help enough people. For me, I still saw so many businesses out there making terrible decisions with their marketing that I wanted to find a way to help you solve your own problems. To do that, I've written five books on the host of two podcasts and I developed this model to help you all help yourselves. To help you answer the biggest question in marketing, what should I do next? Now, there are so many, many, many things we could be doing at any one time. So many ideas we have, so many new channels, new marketing methods, new tactics, new hacks we all hear about. And what separates most of us from the really, really, really successful businesses is that the successful businesses disregard all could be doing and they focus in on what they should be doing.

And that's what the customer master plan model is all about.

Helping you work out what you should be doing, what you should do next. Why do you need a customer master plan?

Well, in any business, the goal has to be to speed up the flow of the right customers through the buying journey. And that's what the customer master plan is here to help you do, to help you focus your marketing in the right areas to streamline, to grease the wheels of the buying journey, to make sure the right people are coming into your buying journey. Now, two quick warnings before I explain the detail of it all. First off, I built it for E commerce, but it can be used in any business sector. I use it to help me grow my podcasts. I know people who use it to help them grow marketing agencies. It can be used in anything because it's really about people more than it is about a different business model.

The second warning is that in this.

Lesson, we're going to focus in on the marketing side of the model. Okay, the marketing bit, but you can also use it for customer service improvements, your website improvements, messaging, essentially everything in your business. But that's too much to cover today. It'll get too confusing. But at the end, I will explain how you can explore those areas as well. So what is this customer master plan thing? Well, there's two parts to it. One is a visual aid that you should print out and put on your wall to help you stay focused. And I'm going to talk you through that in a moment. And the second is a process you go through and I'm going to take you through that after I explain what the model looks like.

Now, it is a visual model designed to be on the wall, but I can explain it in this lovely audio format. So imagine what I'm saying. So imagine six circles going from left.

To right in front of you. Now, each of these relates to a level of relationship that someone in the world has with your business. So I call them the customer relationship levels. Three circles, three lily pads, if you like, that people have got to in your business. On the left hand side, we have the world that contains everyone in the world who's never been to your website. Yes, there's an awful lot of people on that very first lily pad.

Our second circle, our second lily pad is the visitors. These are the people who've made it to your website. Number three is inquirers. These are people who have given you their contact details. Could be postal, could be email, could be sms. Usually it's email. The fourth lily pad or circle is the first time buyers they have paid you something. Once they've done one transaction with you, the next one is repeat buyers. These are people who've done two transactions with you. And the sixth and final one is our regular buyers. These are those beautiful, amazing people who.

Endlessly buy from your business that just.

Keep coming back for more.

Your favorite customers in the world.

So we've got these six circles and the people who are on these, they are statically on each of these lily pads. And your job as a business owner, as a marketer is to get people.

To move from one to the next one.

So from the left hand side to.

The right hand side.

And I talked earlier about greasing the wheels. Well, what we want to be doing is we want to be making that flow from the left to the right.

Hand side as the simple and as.

Fast as possible for those people we.

Want to turn into regular buyers.

So most of our work is focused.

Actually in between those circles, not on those lily pads. So going from left to right, therefore we have stage one which is getting people from the world onto your website. Stage two, getting people on your website to join your email list. Stage 3 email list to first time buyer. And I should say I have no problem at all with someone going straight from being a visitor to buying.

Okay.

They can leapfrog over the Inquirer's lily pad if they want to. Stage four is first time buyers to repeat buyers. Stage five is repeat buyers to regular buyers.

So you've got six circles going across.

Five arrows in between them, which is.

Where you do your work. Then we have another arrow going from.

The bottom left to the top right that I call the customer lifetime value, which is just a little visual reminder that the further someone moves along this process, the more they are worth to your business. So you want to put extra special effort on the stages towards the right hand side because those are the people who are worth the most to you. Then we have another arrow that goes from top left to bottom right which is the people arrow. This is to remind you that there are fewer people that we are talking to from the left hand side to the Right hand side. This may sound obvious, but I find it incredibly useful to be reminded of these facts. And I say this is someone who's been doing this for nearly 20 years now. And then finally there's an arrow that go from left to right and back again, double ended arrow across the top of the model that I call the conversation. You could also call it branding story tone. It's all about reminding you to keep your message consistent from one end to the other of this model. So all your customer communications are consistent. They're all giving people the same impression, the same feel, the same story about your brand and your business. And that's, that's kind of like the secret sauce, the bit which really, really speeds things up when you get that connection, the customers coming in.

Now you're probably listening to this going, wow, that's quite a big old complicated model, Chloe. Well, no it's not. It's there to keep you focused, to keep you nice and simple. So I think we should now go.

On from this pretty image you've got in your head because you're probably going.

Chloe, how is this going to help.

Me work out what I should do next or even how is it going to help me switch my focus from all those many, many bright shiny objects that I could be doing to that one thing I should be doing? Well, there is a complex method that involves maths, but don't worry, we're going to do the simpler one here, which actually over the years I found to be the more effective. So I want you to get a piece of paper, put it into the portrait orientation. So you've got the short edge at the top and the long edge down the side. Draw four horizontal lines on it to create five boxes going down the page. And then in the first box draw two vertical lines. So at the very first box at.

The top of your page you've got.

Three squares kind of going across and then below that you've got four wide boxes.

Each of those rows across your page, they relate to those five stages I mentioned.

And then those three boxes at the.

Top are because we divide stage one into three because there's just so many different ways you can go about getting someone to your website. So the first of those we're going to call Shine a Light. That's the marketing methods which put your business in front of everybody out there in the world. Then we have the target customer. These are the marketing methods you put in front of your target customer and then get found is to make sure that when someone wants to find you, they can find you. So there's not a lot you can do there, but that's that one.

So we've got this, this, this page in front of us with these boxes and what we're going to do really, really straightforward is to write down in each of the boxes what marketing you're doing in that box.

Now be detailed as you do this. Email is not a sufficient answer. It has to be which email campaigns you've set up, which email activity you're doing that actually achieves that. All right? So you've got to be a bit detailed. So for example, in your shinerlight box, if we start top left for stage one, getting people from the world to your website, you might have a Facebook video ad to everyone in the USA Target customer box. The next one over, you may have Facebook ads to a lookalike audience of our best buyers. And you might have partnership marketing you're doing with another brand who have customers.

That are very like your customers. Then in get found you might have Google Ads on your brand name.

Okay, then we go to stage two. How are we turning visitors into inquirers? This might be email or SMS pop ups on the website. It might be a footer email capture box. It could be a series of offers or partnerships doing to gather data, list swaps, etc.

Stage three is then how we turn those inquiries into first time buyers. This might be your welcome campaign for new signups, could be your email newsletter that you're sending out every week.

It might be retargeting ads that you've got running on that data. Or it could even be special webinars.

You'Re running for the people on your list.

Stage four is then turning our first.

Time buyers into are repeat buyers. So this could be a post purchase campaign on your email or your sms. It could be retargeting ads on Facebook or Google again. It might be something you're putting in the parcel that you're sending out to people. It could be your broadcast so your newsletters again. And then we get stage five which is our repeat buyers turning them into our regular buyers. This is where things like VIP loyalty programs and communities tend to come into, into place. So take some time and fill in the boxes with the detail of what you're doing in each space.

When you do this for the first.

Time, you're probably going to discover some gaps. So the first thing you need to do is fill those in because any box that's empty is making the whole.

Of your marketing activity the whole of your business.

Work less well. So first of all, fill in the.

Gaps the second time. Or if you're doing really well right now, add in when you last reviewed or optimized each of those elements and be honest, if you haven't reviewed any of them in three months, that's where you start. How to then keep using this to keep optimizing your results well, none of your marketing is permanently set and forget you need to keep optimizing every part of your business. So do more of what works or find a way to make it work better. Do less of what doesn't or find a way to make it work and.

The customer master plan model can help you work out which bit to optimise next. So I recommend redoing this process at least once a quarter and then focus on completing the areas it highlights for you.

So here's a quick recap. You can use this model to quickly identify the opportunities, the best opportunities for improving your sales pipeline. We've gone through it from the marketing perspective, but it can be used for.

Website and ops improvements too.

Use the process every time you need to work out where to focus next and at least once a quarter all right, this was Chloe Thomas. If you want to continue learning about.

Your customer master plan, I've put together a page of resources for you. Almost all of them are free. You'll find that@chloelink.com MBA that's C-L-O-E-L-I-N-K.com MBA including downloadable templates of the model and.

Planning sheet and a video guide to doing it all as well.

Thank you again for joining me today. Now it's back to Omar.

You've made it on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu. You think to yourself, finally, I can start my day. But what if breakfast could be even more perfect with the hot honey sausage egg biscuit? It finally is. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can.

What a detailed and informative lesson by Chloe Thomas. Chloe was generous enough to give you some resources to keep your learning going. A mini course on this topic. Just go to Chloelink.com MBA that's Chloelink.com MBA to get that for free just for listening to the podcast. One of the things I learned as a business owner business builder for the last two decades, whether it's an E commerce business or a service business or a software or coaching or courses, it doesn't really matter. But something that really rings true in all these types of businesses is that not all customers are created equal. You have to Exert a lot of effort to market and sell your products to your potential clients, to your potential customers. The effort you got to put in is the same. So you might as well focus on the right people, on the people that actually will get you the most return on that effort. Customers that will stick with you, that will continue to buy from you, that make your life easy because they're a perfect fit for your products, for your services. This should be your goal with all your marketing, is understanding your customers very well, who you serve best so that you can find these people and be able to serve them and give them a great experience. Why? Because when they get that great experience, when they get the results they're looking for, when they have a wonderful experience with your product or service or whatever you offer, they're going to tell other people, they're going to make your life easier. You're going to get referrals and word of mouth marketing. And the longer you run your business, the easier it is to bring in perfect customers. This is like you referring a friend to a job at a company that you work for. What happens in this scenario? You tell your friend all about this company, what you love about it, why they should sign up, what they should expect, what it is, what it isn't. And you wouldn't be doing this if you didn't enjoy your job, right? So the same thing goes when you're recruiting new customers, or I should say your customers are recruiting customers. But it all boils down to all starts with understanding who you can serve best. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 RMBA Show. If you love what you hear, hit us up with a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. Whether you're on Spotify, you can just hit follow and give us a rating. If you're on Apple Podcasts, go ahead and leave us a rating and review. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. Also, by doing so, you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. It's a whole lot of fun. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts and.

Dropping us a review.

Before I go, I want to leave you with this. At the end of the day, this is what business is. It's as simple as this. Creating a product or service that people want, finding those people that are perfect for that product or service and delivering that product or service in a way that they will find acceptable and get excited about. This is all you have to do, right, you focus on those fundamentals, you're going to be all right. I literally wake up every morning asking myself, which one of these three things am I going to do today? Am I going to create a better product, improve it somehow? Am I going to find these perfect customers, Customers for my product? How am I going to deliver it better? This is all that matters. If you get this right, your business is going to be easy, okay? Because that means you're going to have sales, you're going to have revenue, and a lot of problems can be solved with sales. This is one of the things I learned over the years, is that when sales are good, when you have a great system to bring in customers, it really takes care of a lot of problems. You could throw money at the problem. A lot of the times when something comes up, you're feeling overwhelmed. You can hire somebody because you have sales. You want to do better with marketing. Well, you can invest in marketing because you got sales. Feel like you want to be more competitive and build a better product or service than your competitors. Well, you could do that. Why? Because you got money with sales. So you get the point. This is all you need to focus on to have an easier experience running, building, growing your business. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then.

Then.

Take care.

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