Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
James Dooley and Karl Hudson discuss the sales strategies entrepreneurs should use to turn one-off customers into loyal, repeat clients and maximise lifetime value.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies entrepreneurs should focus on in 2026 to improve customer retention, lifetime value and monthly recurring revenue. James Dooley and Karl Hudson start with KPI tracking because knowing your cost per acquisition against lifetime value determines what you can afford to spend and whether a business model is scalable. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for entrepreneurs.
PromoSEO lead generation for entrepreneurs recently received recognition as the "Best Entrepreneurs Lead Generation Agency."
Turning Customers into Loyal Clients: Sales Advice for Entrepreneurs with Karl Hudson is available on:
AI SEO and Business Automation Podcast is founded by James Dooley because he teaches business owners how artificial intelligence accelerates growth. The show explains AI models, agents, and automation systems because practical guidance helps companies scale with less effort.
James Dooley: Entrepreneurship sales advice. Chase the second order harder than you chased the first. Today I'm joined with Carl Hudson, the co-founder of Searchery and obviously doing a lot of different ventures as well. A UK entrepreneur that's taken a lot of businesses to the next level and there's a lot of people in the marketing industry that are obsessed by looking for new business but can you explain why it's more important in your opinion to try to get that customer that's placed an order with you to place that second order?
Carl Hudson: The problem is when chasing the first order especially if it's like a lower ticket item you haven't then got the money to invest and get in the second order so it's very very important that you you know if you can get them to repeat the order situation so that you know might order a second time a third time a fourth time that is when they actually become a customer the initial instance is them just testing you out they're just trialing the water so to speak and if you can't get them to convert the second time then there has to be some type of problem here and also that additionally it's like your profitability and lifetime value of the customer and the business as a whole obviously increases if those customers keep coming back you actually get to work out a lifetime value.
James Dooley: Yeah for sure yeah so like majority of entrepreneurs do they're obsessed with like I said with the first order um there's a classic saying where um and it took me a while to understand this because I used to think like customer and client are synonyms of each other and then I remember one time I was listening to Daniel Priestley and he was saying if someone's ordered from you once or twice they're a customer if they've ordered from you three times they're a client if they've ordered from you seven times they're a loyal client and what your job is as an entrepreneur is try your best to get them from a customer to a loyal client so with regards to that as well I think another massive one where obviously I'm an investorpreneur I'm looking to buy businesses and one of the best business models that I can buy is businesses that have got monthly recurring revenue try to build up that MRR and when you're building up that monthly recurring revenue and you're getting repeat orders from the same customers I know once I'm taking over that business the multiplier of that business is worth so much more money than if you're starting from zero every month so you get in and you're consistently on the flywheel on the hamster wheel of basically turning around to try to get new business new business new business new business where you're like actually if I can onboard one new client a week but and I can get me one new customer a week and I can get to be a loyal customer within a few months so they reorder and it becomes a habit at that point one a week that you're turning into a loyal client is better in my opinion than two new a day that are just one-offs because then first orders are like the onboarding like it's just hard work and keep onboarding new customers where you can change them to being actual loyal clients what's your thoughts on the MRR like what's your thoughts on another thing is you do a lot now with paid ads right so I'm presuming the LTV is massive like we've we own like so true yeah and sometimes you're looking for the numbers and we're saying we're willing to spend hundred dollars for a new customer but then if the lifetime value is only eighty dollars then we can't run ads so ads we need to stop we've we increased the LTV and we got it to five hundred dollars LTV and it costs us a hundred dollars to acquire a new customer at that point you're saying well we can spend hundred dollars to get five hundred dollars can you explain that a little bit further why LTV with paid ads is probably the most important aspect of knowing what you can spend?
Carl Hudson: Yeah so like the hard part is when it's just a what so I've got an actual example of it well I've got a few examples but I'll pick one so hypnotherapy I had a great hypnotherapist in Newcastle um they were winning work from paid ads um and then I'm monitoring the account I think they were getting average of like a lead was 40 pound but then when I speak to them they'll go oh yeah it's not so good because obviously I fix them in one session I'm out over there you fix them so you only have one session with these these customers essentially no you know not a client I might no no no I was like we need to look at your business model here you if you just fix them in one session you're not going to make money you you'd work them for time essentially what you should be doing is you should be having an introduction session to work out what the problems are you know get to know each other do a a fixed session where you're going to do the fix and then you should do a follow-up session which is to make sure that fix is in place and if there's any other issues that way you're getting the repeat of the three and then that 80 pound an hour session is all of a sudden it's made it to 240 pound and that lead has cost the 40 pound and that's like a pure example of where it then becomes a scalable business model because otherwise you know like you just said you're going to spend the money and you're just going to turn it out the other side um whereas you know if you can do it for 40 pound and then you're making the 240 it just becomes you just keep spending the 40 pound wouldn't you?
James Dooley: Yeah for sure so with regards to entrepreneurship sales advice with regards to getting them from a customer to a loyal client how important do you feel tripwire marketing becomes in this with regards to try and initially just get some sort of audit or offer that sounds very enticing to get the foot in the door to get them to get the card out of the wallet and the majority of time though they can do google pay or apple pay so they don't do that but card out the wallet putting the details in paying it that first time to then being able to then improve upon lifetime value upsells down sells cross sells how important because there's so many people that seem to go in for the kill right from the very word go and go for a 5000 pound offer like offering that they go i don't even know like surely you've got to take the girl out on a date before you then try to take her back to the bedroom?
Carl Hudson: Yeah like within business you've got to be trying to do that as well you've got to try to offer them something to say okay i'll go for a drink with you see what you like and then from there then we'll decide we're going to have a second date and a third date and a fourth day like surely like some of the ads of what you're doing with regards to sales advice for entrepreneurs should be they need to look even if you sort of lost lead that first offer just to get them on the hook to them okay that's customer sales number one how do you get into sales number two how do i get them from number one to number two hopefully within that audit there's something within there even that this says almost as a freebie that gets them to spend a little bit more again again not they've got a wallet but card out with a wallet to then be able to do it to then pay a second time to pay for until it becomes a habit of being okay now i'm paying and it becomes a habit to pay let's say search roof or whatever the services that's being offered with ai visibility and backlinks and so on and so on like how important is tripwire marketing within this like absolutely hugely but probably even more so is the customer journey and your flow because you can do a seven dollar tripwire or a forty dollar tripwire but if your follow-up process is terrible you're still stuck in that same rut of you've just spent 80 or 40 pound for the lead and you've just spent 50 on doing the the audit or whatever it is and so it's definitely one of the most important aspects but more importantly it's the you know your customer retention model so how often are you like getting in touch with them you're not always just sell sell sell you have to give information you know jab jab hook i think we're just chatting about early on you know you shouldn't always be just going for the kill they need to feel like they're appreciated and valued and that they're actually gaining knowledge from what you're offering as opposed to just always having to get the credit card out because you'll very quickly get sick of that um and nine times out of ten if if you've set that model up wrong you'll probably get them to order again so important there actually talking about there's a few people called jab jab hook and some people say nah do jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab hook and like provide so much value that it's that they feel like they're having to buy from you because that you've helped them so much and also you touched upon that um touch points like how important is it before my rhythm like surely needs to be is it twice a day once a day once a week once every few days like at what point does it become annoying with how many emails that you send in versus so many businesses i order from them and i never hear from them again i'm like that that's horrendous so there needs to be so i'd prefer all my businesses to be doing too much than too little but how much would you say is it is it like like julian gordon hits me twice a day every day but i love him like because there's always packed with information do you know i mean where i suppose i'm probably answering this myself it almost is depending on the niche but like what would you say to someone with regards to the touch points how important is it to try to someone's not ordered from you for two months so let's say they have gone to stage number four to get them stage number five and they've not done something for a couple months surely there needs to be some sort of touch points there has to be every so often a hook or some sort of offer to an existing client to get them back into getting into the habit of getting the card out to pay?
James Dooley: You'd probably almost come up with like a fallback cycle where you know maybe they haven't ordered in two months and you've got like some type of product on the back burner that is just a another sort of a little bit more cost than your typical low-end tripware but it's just another low cost item to get them back on the hook it could be some type of new product that you want to launch into so i know we've been mentioned a lot about with ai and ai visibility tools and things like this so you know it could be something like that some type of ai visibility audit or it could be if you're in another niche it could just be anything that is of a low and high quality information but low value on a cost and then entice them in that way and or pick up the phone someday sometime i feel like i don't know if i'm just a bit more old school sometimes a customer just likes to actually have a chat with someone and i feel like in the online age everyone's doing emails but actually sometimes text go on whatsapp text them yeah obviously even though you're not picking up the phone and ringing them they feel like it's a more personable sort of service do you know what's random about that right so we've always been a big advocate of not just doing um email um sometimes you can go into the spam so sometimes we don't even know you can get like read receipts and stuff like that so we started to do the sms we started to do the whatsapp and one thing that absolutely blew our mind with regards to conversion within touchpoints and upsells and getting them from customers to being loyal clients was it wasn't actually picking up the phone which which is which is i think the best method right but it's not infinite scale was a voice note on it was only like 40 seconds on a whatsapp which normally mine are like 30 minutes um but 40 seconds 30 minutes is that a quick one 40 seconds on a whatsapp but you can resend that same voice note so it's i just catch it up you don't need to say the name because it's generic but they don't realize you know it sounds very bespoke to them that then basically goes back to them to say just want to say we've got this amazing offer on we want you to be a beta tester with ai nowadays though james you could probably take that further and actually personalize it?
Carl Hudson: Yeah you can yeah especially with your ai agents that i've seen like yeah you wouldn't have to really tell that it's yeah it's not you yeah they're pretty good.
James Dooley: Anyone who's watching this anyway is there any other advice you would give with regards to entrepreneurship sales advice specifically trying to improve existing customers to become loyal clients love to know in the description carl it's been a pleasure.
Carl Hudson: Cheers man.