Your Marketing Doesn’t End When Someone Buys | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 6 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing
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Overview
In step 6 of the 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success, John Jantsch makes the case for the part of marketing most founders quietly neglect: the customers they already have. The typical business pours close to 90 percent of its budget into winning new customers and only about 10 percent into keeping, reactivating, and growing the existing ones. Yet a returning customer who buys again and refers others is often worth three to ten times a one-time buyer. That gap is the opportunity this episode sets out to close.
John walks through what he calls the customer experience engine, built on four intentional components: onboarding, repeat engagement, a referral system, and reactivation. He explains why the back half of the Marketing Hourglass, the repeat and refer stages, holds the highest-ROI marketing available to most small businesses, with practical examples that range from seasonal maintenance plans that turn one-time projects into recurring revenue, to reactivation campaigns that bring dormant customers back quickly.
This episode is for small business owners, marketers, and consultants who want more growth from customer retention rather than constantly buying it. If your marketing runs smoothly right up until the sale and then goes quiet, this one gives you a framework for keeping the relationship, and the revenue, going.
Host Bio
John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and the creator of the Marketing Hourglass and the Strategy First
approach to small business strategy. He is the author of several books on marketing for small business, including Duct Tape Marketing and The Ultimate Marketing Engine, and he hosts the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, where he shares practical, real-world strategies for owners, marketers, and consultants. Through Duct Tape Marketing and its network of certified consultants, John helps small businesses install a complete Marketing Operating System.
Key Takeaways
- Most founders spend around 90 percent of their budget acquiring new customers and only about 10 percent keeping and growing the ones they have. The math rarely favors that split.
- A returning customer who buys again and refers others is often worth three to ten times a one-time buyer.
- The highest-ROI marketing sits in the back half of the Marketing Hourglass, in the repeat and refer stages most businesses skip.
- Treat onboarding as marketing. The first 90 days set the relationship, so build a structured sequence with a clear goal for each touch point.
- Do not wait for customers to remember to come back. Use maintenance plans, seasonal triggers, anniversary touch points, and simple check-ins to drive repeat engagement.
- Build a systematic referral approach that asks at moments of truth, when a customer is visibly happy with a result.
- Reactivation is often the quickest win available. A single campaign to dormant past customers can bring a meaningful share back, sometimes 15 to 20 percent.
- A strong customer experience produces reviews, case studies, and results-based stories that AI cannot fake, and those assets feed your new-customer marketing.
- Start by auditing one number: the percentage of your budget going toward customers you already have.
Great Moments
- [00:01] John introduces step six of the series and opens with the budget question every founder should ask.
- [02:18] Why a returning, referring customer is worth three to ten times a one-time buyer, and why the back half of the Marketing Hourglass holds the most value.
- [04:36] Onboarding as marketing: designing the first 90 days, plus repeat engagement through maintenance plans and seasonal triggers.
- [07:02] Reactivation as the quickest win, and how a campaign to dormant customers can convert fast.
- [08:21] The application effect: turning happy customers into reviews, case studies, and content that strengthens acquisition.
- [10:43] John’s closing challenge, plus where to get the full ebook and a consultation.
Memorable Quotes
- “A returning customer is probably worth three to ten times what a new one’s worth.”
- “The back half of the hourglass has the highest ROI marketing available to most small businesses.”
- “The marketing is orchestrated to a T until they say yes, and then it falls apart.”
- “AI will reward you for clients that are willing to talk about your business.”
- “What percentage of your marketing budget goes towards customers you already have?”
Resources
- Seven Steps ebook: dtm.world/7steps
- Talk to an advisor: ducttapemarketing.com/consultation
- Feedback and contact: john@ducttapemarketing.com
John Jantsch (00:01.474)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and again, another solo show. I'm doing this seven-show series called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. And you are listening today to step number six. So if you missed all the past episodes, go to ductemarketing.com and you can catch up if you are just now catching up. If you've been following along with me, I'm so thankful that you're here. So
Today I want to talk about the half of your marketing that you are ignoring. So here's a budget question. What percentage of your marketing budget goes towards getting new customers versus the ones you already have? Getting them back, turning them into referral sources? honestly, for most founders, it's probably 90-10 or worse, meaning they spend 90% getting that new customer and only about 10% on.
Activating, reactivating, retaining, turning that existing customer into a great source of advocacy. And frankly, a returning customer is probably worth three to ten times what a new one's worth. And so that math just doesn't really make any sense, but I get it. All right.
Why this customer engine, if we will, customer experience engine gets ignored. I think I think a lot for a lot of people for many, many years. It's why I developed a marketing hourglass because a lot of people think that marketing ends at the end of the funnel, right? At the sale. You know, everything after that is operations. But this is a really expensive assumption. I mean, the back half of the hourglass has the highest.
ROI marketing available to most small businesses. Just as a reminder, the seven stages of the marketing hourglass are no, like, trust, try buy. That's where most people stop. And then there's repeat and refer. That's where the real value is, that's actually where the momentum in any business growth really comes from. I mean, acquisition gets all the budget, the meetings, the attention, customer experience for a lot of organizations gets the leftovers. And yet,
John Jantsch (02:18.614)
The customer who buys comes back and refers again is worth three to ten times quite often that person that just buys one time because you offered them a deal or something. So, I mean, I think the ratio shows up in the data to to really prove this easily. So, how do we actually address it? There are four components to this idea. and it starts really with experience. So I call this the customer engine, but it's not about.
Customer acquisition. It's about customer retention. So we might call this the customer experience engine for this step. So onboarding, repeat engagement, referral system, and reactivation. These are core components that need to be intentional parts of your marketing, of how you build your business, quite frankly. And most of the attention in marketing goes to the that.
How do we get a new client? How do we get eyeballs? How do we run ads? So the four components, onboarding. The first 90 days, frankly, is where a relationship gets established. If you're one of those businesses that can retain, I mean, we're we're in a monthly retainer type of business. So every single month we're having to earn that experience, but we keep clients for years. And I think a lot of it has to do with a very professional onboarding experience.
A structured sequence that they can understand that you communicate to them, that you tell them this is how it's going to be. and and really, this is a part so many people skip. It it is the marketing is orchestrated to a T until they say yes, and then it falls apart. So walk through what a real onboarding sequence looks like for your business. Like all the touch points, the timing. each step should have.
i a goal of what it's trying to accomplish. Even and and you can obviously take this and and make a crazy onboarding experience, but even if you just actually set step back and said, how do we, or do we do it consistently? Or are there some tools we should develop around making sure that we communicate expectations? I mean, just having a 30-minute conversation with whoever frankly does the sales, but then also who does
John Jantsch (04:36.016)
the customer onboarding or or customer service, whatever you want to call it, just having a conversation with your team or thinking about creating an experience that that you would like to go through. And in fact, that's always a great place to find ideas on that. You know, if you're a customer of somebody, what's their onboarding look like? Did did did you like it? Did you not like it? Were there parts of it that you were like, yeah, we should do that, or parts of that you were like, we're doing that and we shouldn't. You know, those are things that you need to think of.
Repeat engagement. I this is one where, and I get it, we're all busy, but this is one where we just we just kind of rely on the customer remember to return, right? and and you you've really got to develop, you know, maintenance plans, seasonal triggers, anniversary touch points, check-ins anchored to you know, natural moments in a customer situation. Even even if it's really just checking in to say, hey, I just want to make sure happy with everything, right? So the the landscape business, right?
Introduced seasonal maintenance plans, converted about 40% of the projects to customers. we we helped show them that you know they could create meaningful recurring revenue by just making sure that they were hitting those clients at a time when they probably needed something and the timing was right, and then you just made it easy. That's one of the real keys. part number three, I've already talked about this, but the the referral system, actually having
a you know, a very systematic approach to going back and asking, going back at you know, at moments of truth, identifying when a client's going to be happy. you know, when you do that new installation and all of a sudden they're like, Man, this looks incredible. that's a point to say, you know, do you know others that would need this? Here's what you could do to actually introduce us to them. Here's how to do it. those are all parts of it. And then just reactivation. Sometimes a customer
doesn't have a need. You know, you think about the typical real estate you know, agent, the you know, the the client buys a house and it's not like they're gonna come back next month and buy a house, right? But they probably will in three to five years. so what are you doing to actually reactivate that past customer that you you know that if you just stay top of mind, they may actually have a need at some point. It's probably the the highest
John Jantsch (07:02.674)
ROI that that you can re that you can achieve and it's also one of the quickest wins. You know, sometimes we come into businesses and you know they have 1200 past clients. And some of them are existing clients, but you know, a large percentage of them haven't really done anything for a while. Don't really know why. Wasn't anything wrong. They just kind of drifted away. Maybe they're somebody else is serving them. Maybe they just decided,
I can get along without that product or without that service. Who knows? Right. and it's amazing what just having a a campaign, even that you say, look, these 800 people, let's make them an offer to come back. Let's remind them of something new that we have. And it's incredible. Like in some cases, you know, 15 to 20 percent of them will immediately purchase. And all of a sudden that that was like one easy thing that would have that would have been next to
impossible to achieve to activate that many new clients. So sometimes just actually going back and saying, look, we haven't touched these people in a long time. Let's create a campaign can be really one of the the quickest wins that you can have in your marketing. So the last piece is
John Jantsch (08:21.056)
What I would call the application effect on this. and what I mean by that is if you have a great customer experience, you're going to get reviews. You're going to be able to build case studies from those happy clients. You're going to be able to do things that that really allows you to produce content that is real content that AI can't produce because it's about the results. It's about the
the problems that you've solved. It's about the ROI that you've gotten for clients. And if you can actually then start to take and routinely use that content in your new customer acquisition, all of a sudden it becomes even more, hopefully it becomes even more obvious why you should have that approach for a customer experience that is going to make these clients
Really happy to talk about your business. AI will reward you for clients that are willing to talk about your business. So it becomes this cycle that really helps to build momentum in your business. So you create the incredible onboarding experience, you create the reactivation and the referrals, but you also create these moments, intentional moments, as part of your system where you are going to acquire.
content, you're going to acquire assets from your happy customers that you can then use in all of your marketing. So that's really as much as anything, that's one of the reasons to focus on this. I've the reasons to focus on this are obvious from a business growth standpoint. But then it amplifies itself when you're able to take these happy customer stories and then use them in your marketing. So what percentage of your marketing budget goes towards customers you already have?
That is the real uncomfortable question that is going to get you the two to the point where you will start to understand how important this idea is. So thanks for tuning in again. You can get the entire ebook at that this is based on at DTM.world slash seven steps. Or if you're ready to talk to one of our advisors, duct tapemarketing.com slash consultation. So thanks for tuning in. Love to hear from you.
John Jantsch (10:43.596)
Love to hear your feedback on this series. It's just John at Duct Tape Marketing if you want to do that. share this with friends, neighbors, colleagues, other business owners as well. If you think that they can use this type of information for their business, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road.
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