When starting a business, you should prioritize expanding your customer base. Customers’ loyalty is more valuable than new ones once a company has moved past the initial stages of development.
Many small businesses in the area aren’t doing a good job of ensuring customer satisfaction. Seventy-two percent of SMB owners in a recent survey said that customer acquisition cost them the most in terms of marketing dollars. Spending on existing customers is only a top priority for 28% of companies.
Even though repeat customers make up the bulk of a small business’s revenue, less than half of those polled do not have a customer loyalty program or similar customer retention strategy in place.
If your business doesn’t take steps to increase customer loyalty, it could be losing out on revenue. It’s a waste of time and money to actively pursue new customers when you could simply upsell to your existing customer and accomplish the same things with much less effort.
The challenge lies in figuring out how to get the most out of your current customer financially.
- Pay close attention to what your customers are saying
- Create a sales team that focuses on retaining existing customers
- Use email to reach out to your customers
- Start a loyalty and membership rewards program
- Engage in on-going communication via social media
Pay close attention to what your customers are saying
Providing excellent service is essential if you want to keep your customers coming back. Regular surveys and feedback from customers are essential for gauging the success of your customer service efforts. Apply what you’ve learned to the ongoing training of your customer service staff, and they’ll keep improving.
Create a sales team that focuses on retaining existing customers
Make sure your sales team is cognizant of how vital repeat business is to the health of the company. Show them how to upsell existing customers on additional services in a way that doesn’t seem pushy. Rather than focusing solely on making a sale, your sales staff should be trained to actively listen to what customers have to say and provide solutions based on that feedback.
Use email to reach out to your customers
In order to encourage customers to sign up for your promotional emails, it is helpful to highlight the benefits they will receive. If you own a business where customers would benefit from updates on sales, discounts, and new offerings, you could let them know about your email newsletter. Explain how your company’s email newsletter will help B2B customers make the most of the products or services they’ve already purchased from you.
Make sure your emails are accessible on a mobile device. Most people now check their email on their phones first; if your message doesn’t look good on theirs, they’ll probably just delete it. Do your recipients simply open your emails without taking any action? If that happens, your emails may not display properly on mobile devices. Emails should be mobile-friendly, but you also need to make sure that any landing pages that are linked to in them are as well.
Start a loyalty and membership rewards program
Digital loyalty solutions have become widely available across all sectors, from retail and restaurants to services. Explore your options for a user-friendly customer loyalty program. The best programs will also keep track of data about your customer, including what they buy, how often they buy, and how they respond to various offers. This information will be useful in shaping future advertising campaigns.
Naturally, growing one’s customer is crucial to a business’s prosperity. It’s important to find ways to bring in new customers, but it’s equally important to keep the ones you already have happy, increase their loyalty, and sell to them more.
Engage in on-going communication via social media
You can keep your current customers by reaching out to them where they already spend time online. Business-to-business (B2B) companies, in particular, can benefit from engaging with customers on LinkedIn by monitoring the platform, reading customer posts, and responding with helpful content. If you run a business that sells directly to consumers, you can increase your social media following by advertising perks like discounts, early access to new products, and invitations to special events. If you want people to follow you on social media, make it easy for them to do so by placing icons for the various platforms in obvious places on your website and promotional emails.