Marketers have been knowing for ages that it’s cheaper to market to existing customers than acquiring new ones. And there are three factors that help this circumstance:
- People are lazy.
- People are afraid.
- People forget.
It’s the new customers that are put off by (sometimes clever and funny) reports of how customer service is denied, how employees stupidly force policies on customers, all the promises were not kept — it’s all online, available at a single click.
But guess what? That’s still not enough to make all the old customers go away too. And quite ironically, it’s not the fear of disappointment if the alternative fails as well. It’s the fear of the alternative being better, realising one should have tried earlier.