Your next customer is probably one you already have

Reactivating a lapsed customer costs a fraction of finding a new one, and almost nobody does it.

Marketing budgets go almost entirely to strangers. Meanwhile there is a list of people who have already paid you once, already trust you, and have simply stopped coming - usually for no reason at all.

The first thing to do with that list is to know it exists. Most small businesses have the data spread across a card machine, an inbox and somebody's phone. Getting it into one place is unglamorous and is the whole prerequisite.

The second is to segment it honestly. Someone who bought once two years ago and someone who bought monthly until March are different people with different reasons, and the same message will fail both.

Then the message itself, which should be short, specific and easy to act on. Not a newsletter. A reason to come back, with the thing to click.

Reviews belong in the same conversation. The moment to ask is right after the job went well, and the ask should be one tap. A business with forty recent reviews and one with four are not competing on equal terms, whatever the work is like.