How to get repeat customers for a local business

What it costs 6 min read

The people who already paid you once are the cheapest work you will ever win, and for most local trades that list sits in a phone doing nothing at all.

You spent part of this week wondering where to advertise. In your phone are people who have already paid you once, know where you park, and have not heard a word from you since the invoice went out.

That list is the cheapest work you will ever get. For most one-person trades it sits there untouched, not because anybody decided to ignore it, but because there is never an afternoon spare.

The second job costs less to win than the first

A new customer costs you something before you earn anything. The advertising. The drive out to look at it. The hour writing the quote. The two other people you quoted the same week who went with somebody else. Some of that is money and some of it is your evening, and both count.

The second job with the same customer skips nearly all of it. They know your name, they have your number, and they have already decided you are not going to rob them. Usually there is no visit to quote and nobody else bidding.

You already own a list, and it is scattered

Ask where your customers' details live and the honest answer is four places at once. Invoices in the accounting app. Texts in your phone. A notebook in the van. Emails from the website form, somewhere under everything else.

That is not disorganization. It is what happens when the same person does the work and the paperwork.

But scattered means unusable, because nobody is going to reconstruct two years of jobs on a Sunday night. Pulling it into one place is a boring afternoon and it is most of the project. A spreadsheet is enough: name, phone, suburb, what you did, when you did it.

Work out whether your trade repeats on its own

The shape of the work decides what you do next, and the shapes are different.

Some work returns on a clock. A service, a clean, a treatment, a check before winter. The customer will need it again on a date you can predict, and the only question is who is standing there when they do.

Some work does not return, but the same customer buys something next to it. The bathroom you did has a laundry down the hall. The roof you replaced sits above gutters.

And some work is genuinely once. Replace somebody's driveway and they are done for twenty years. Their value to you is a name passed to a neighbor, not another job, and chasing them for repeat work will waste an evening.

Decide which one you are in before you build anything.

Time the reminder to the work, not to the month

Most reminders land badly because they go out when the sender was free, not when the customer was due.

If the job has a natural interval, put the next date in your calendar the day you finish, with the name and what you did. Twelve months for the service. Six for the clean. Three weeks for the thing you said you would come back and check.

Then the message arrives at the moment it is useful.

Two short lines, from you, about them.

Name what you did and when. Name what is due now. Give them a way to answer. "It was March last year we serviced the unit at the Fifth Street house. It is about due if you want it before the heat. Reply here or give me a call."

What kills it is generality. A message that would fit any customer reads as a bulk send and gets treated as one. You have the detail nobody else has, so use it.

One message and one follow up. If nothing comes back after the second, they are not saying no to you, they are busy, and you can ask again next season.

What to write down at the end of every job

None of this works without a habit at the end of the job, at the point where you least feel like it. Write these while the van is still in the driveway.

The name, and the number they actually answer
The address, and which one it was if they have more than one
What you did, in words you will still understand in a year
Anything you noticed and did not do, and what it would take
The date the work is next due, if it has one
How they found you in the first place
Whether they were straightforward to deal with

That last line is not unkind. It is planning, and in a busy month it is the difference between taking the right job and the first one.

When chasing repeat work is the wrong answer

Sometimes the reason nobody came back is not the reminder.

If a job finished late, or the price moved after the quote, or a call went unreturned for a week, a well timed message will not repair that and can make it worse. The same is true where the work is genuinely once in a lifetime. There is no reminder to send and no reason to send one.

And if you are already turning work away, do not spend an afternoon manufacturing more of it. What you have is a pricing question, not a marketing one, and the afternoon is better spent there.

The useful test is dull. Think of the last five customers who did not come back and be honest about which of them simply had no reason to.

Where a website fits into this, which is smaller than you think

The website does not bring old customers back. The message does.

What a site can do is answer the question a returning customer actually has, which is nearly always whether you do the other thing as well. A services page they can read at ten at night. Hours that are correct, so somebody who decides to call you gets you. A number that works from a phone without being copied out.

If anybody tells you a website will win back your old customers on its own, that is a sales line rather than a description of what happens.

Questions people ask

How often should I contact a past customer?

When there is a reason, and not otherwise. For work on an interval, that is when the interval is up. For everything else, once or twice a year at most, and only if you have something specific to say.

What do I actually say in a message to an old customer?

What you did, when you did it, what is due, and how to answer. Four things, two sentences, no offer attached. Anything longer starts to read like advertising.

Is a newsletter worth it for a small trade?

Usually not. A newsletter is a job you have to feed every month, and the thing that works for local trades is a timed reminder about that person's own equipment or property.

Do I need permission before texting past customers?

For a reminder about work you did for them, you are on solid ground. For anything that reads as advertising, the rules vary by state and by how the number was collected. Keep the message about their job, always give a way to be taken off the list, and take one person off the moment they ask.

Should I be paying for customer software?

Not at first. A spreadsheet and a calendar will carry a one-person trade a long way. Software starts to earn its money when somebody other than you needs to see the same list.

Is it worth calling a customer who has not been back in two years?

Yes, once, if the work has a reason to recur. Call rather than text, keep it short, and take a no as a no. The worst outcome is that you learn they moved.