In business, you should not only focus on making sales but also on how you can retain your customers after the fact. The key to building a successful business venture and increasing profits is attracting and retaining new customers. In this article, we equip you with five practical tips you can implement today to attract new customers and retain the old ones, propelling your business to the next level!
Have Good Values as They Will Help You Build Good Relationships
Your business’s values are critical as it determines whether clients will come back or not. The way you run your business, the quality of the products you sell, and how you handle your customers should reflect your values.
It would be beneficial to hold your business to very high standards as a brand. It would be best if you aimed to mirror the belief of your customers and treat them with respect. In theory, humans have an unconscious bias towards things they relate to. Put, if you make the customer relate to your business, they will likely return in the future and even refer their friends or family. This will have the net effect of driving more traffic to your business, increasing your profit margins.
Clear what you stand for to your customers and let your business practices reflect the same.
Trust Fosters Good Relationships with Your Clients
The act of building a brand that your customers can relate to is only the first step to acquiring and retaining customers. Trust is a key factor that will help you build solid relationships with your clients.
It would help you greatly if you utilize your customer data to learn more about your customers’ needs and provide that to them. In addition, use the customer data to guide you on how to best communicate with your clients to earn their trust.
Research has shown that more customers will continue using your products if they trust them. In addition, customers who trust your brand are more likely to recommend the same to their friends and family if they ever need the services you provide. Conversely, if you give bad service and the customer distrusts you, you will lose their business, and they will tell others about your dismal service. As you run your business, give customers a memorable experience and meet their needs, driving more traffic into your business over time.
Build Expectations in Your Customers, and Make Sure You Deliver Each Time
Customers generally feel that any company or business should understand their expectations and what they need. In the modern business landscape, simply offering good quality at a good price will not be enough to guarantee that the customer will return to your business. Remember that today’s customers have unlimited options for where they can purchase their goods or services. Therefore, if your business does not meet their satisfaction, they will go elsewhere.
Customers now expect to get personalized and proactive services as well as interactions. You can only meet your customer’s expectations is to know what they want. You can access their feedback through reviews and surveys, analyze this wealth of information and adjust your business practices accordingly.
In addition, cultivate honesty in all your business undertakings as this is the biggest driver of trust. Always be honest with your clients, and be careful not to overpromise on things you cannot deliver. If you promise something to your customer, you had better deliver because if you do not, you may lose their trust. If for whatever reason, you cannot deliver on a promise, it would be beneficial if you came clean to the client, gave an apology, and tried to find ways to compensate.
The customer will appreciate your honesty and may give you another chance instead of giving excuses that may come off as unprofessional. If the customer feels you are willing to go above and beyond to meet their needs, they are more likely to return to your business.
Use Customer Data to Your Advantage
As we outlined earlier, customer data can be an invaluable tool that you can use to pinpoint the needs of your customers. If you are aware of some of your customers’ pain points, be sure to include them in future surveys. Feedback and reviews can help you provide viable solutions to meet your customer’s needs.
Surveys can be an effective way of encouraging and building customer engagement. Giving out surveys communicates to your customers that you value their opinions and are willing to go the extra mile to meet their needs. Some of the benefits of conducting surveys include:
- They are an effective way of communicating with your clients.
- During surveys, customers tend to give honest feedback.
- Survey feedback can help you make positive adjustments to your services, products, or processes.
- It can allow you to make sure that you are using the right strategy or even help you re-strategize your email campaigns.
Surveys will also allow you to identify dissatisfied customers before they give up on supporting your business. You can even come up with campaigns that are geared towards winning them back.
Utilize Email Campaigns
As a business owner, you miss out on growth opportunities if you do not use direct mail in your current marketing strategy. Direct email campaigns allow you to reach out to past and current clients.
To run a successful campaign, you should utilize a communication calendar. This system will allow you to track how often you communicate with your client and how frequently the client communicates with you. You can potentially see the communications calendar too:
- Track the last communication from a customer that you received.
- Schedule promotional mailing campaigns when you have new services and products.
- Send out reminder emails for recurring services, such as oil changes and appointments with the dentist
- Recognize any special day of the customers, such as their birthday, and send out a birthday mailer with a gift in services or products to celebrate them.
If customers have not been in touch with you for a long time, sending them a direct email postcard that contains information on a new product or service can nudge them into visiting your business.
Conclusion
In addition, you can pair this postcard with a gift card that allows them to purchase or use a new service, as this will give them more reason to re-connect with your business. An email campaign is undoubtedly one of the most effective forms of advertising, and you should apply them to help get and retain customers.