How to create recurring business revenue with The Automatic Customer’s John Warrillow | #563

The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets change, and competitors can be ruthless.  So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret is in recurring revenue … in finding and keeping automatic customers. It’s a strangely recurring episode 563 of The (12 year-old, award-winning) Small Business Big Marketing podcast.

A little more about The Automatic Customer’s John Warrillow …

These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before. 

Far beyond music, movie, telco and gym subscriptions, you can sign up for weekly or monthly supplies of everything from groceries to tampons to flowers to razor blades.

And, according to today’s special guest John Warrillow (author of the NY Times best seller The Automatic Customer), this emerging subscription economy offers huge opportunities to businesses (of all sizes and industries) that want to turn customers into subscribers. 

So get ready for your mind to be blown, as John:

1. Explains the 9 subscription models you can choose from along with some great examples
2. He explains the psychology behind selling them
3. And how to avoid the dreaded customer churn

I started off asking Joh nto explain what an automatic customer is and why they’re so important to a business’s growth potential …

Timbo’s Top 3 Attention Grabbers from his chat with the author of The Automatic Customer John Warrillow …

1. I love the fact that a subscription model strategy can not only work for any type of business in any type of industry, but that once implemented successfully, can add considerable value to your business when it comes time to sell it.
2. I love the idea of (at the very least) giving some consideration to which customer segment in your business could you develop a subscription model for. As John said, you don’t have to boil the whole ocean, you just need to find a small subset of customers like H Bloom did with 5-star hotels.
3. I love the idea of creating WOW moments to minimise customer churn. Or as John put it … to sprinkle in a little spontaneity every now and then like the guys at BarkBox do.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Grab the eBooks John Warrillow mentioned

How to WOW your customers with a customer manifesto

Join The Small Business Big Marketing Tribe on facebook

How build a community epsidoes:

Leroy Faure – Fit Dad Lifestyle

Andrew Griffiths – Author

Other episodes of The Small Business Marketing Podcast with founders of recurring revenue businesses

Mia Klitsis has a monthly tampon subscription service

Tina Tower teaches how to create online courses 

The Cheese Therapy guys sell cheese monthly

Last Week’s Episode of The Small Business Big Marketing Podcast

Huge credit card debt plus a smart marketing idea turned Adorn Cosmetics into a multi-million dollar online business.

Thanks for tuning in. May your marketing be the best marketing.