Improve Customer Loyalty
18 Mar 2014 Leave a Comment
in Marketing TIPS Tags: customers
- Mail personalized thank you cards showing your appreciation for recent purchases or interest in your products and services.
- Create a customer loyalty program that offers special promotions and incentives for return customers, such as birthday discounts, a reward punch card, free shipping, monthly discounts, or free upgrades.
- Give customers a great experience with your brand. Offer a quality product and stand behind it.
- Encourage open communication with customers by requesting feedback and suggestions. Offer options such as e-mail, online surveys, a toll-free number, and discussion forums.
- Humanize your brand and create a personal connection with your customers by interacting in social media. Encourage customers to respond to your blog posts, attend trade shows, provide open houses, offer hands-on training sessions, and more.
- Treat your customers like insiders. Include them in decisions, ask for feedback, and assure them their opinions are valued.
- Consistently under-promise and over-deliver to ensure customer satisfaction.
- Surprise your customers with something they don’t expect, such as a coupon for “$10 off your next $10 purchase” just because.
- Remember the golden rule. Think about the type of treatment you would like to receive as a customer.
Turn You Competitors’ Customers into YOUR Customers
28 Feb 2014 Leave a Comment
in Marketing TIPS Tags: competitors, customers
Turn your competitors customers into your customers!
- Offer a comparison chart that focuses on reasons why customers should choose your product over the competition. For example, you may offer a standard five-year warranty, while your competitors may only offer a three-year warranty. Or perhaps they offer an extended five-year warranty option, but at an additional price.
- Stay informed of what your competitors are doing, but avoid copying their ideas. Instead, add value and make their ideas even better. For example, if a competitor offers free shipping on purchases of $100+, you could provide free shipping on all purchases and possibly even returns.
- Create a unique tagline or slogan that focuses on your key selling points, such as: “Hassle-Free Returns” or “Receive your lunch order within 30 minutes or it’s free.”
- Add value to a comparable product through added services, such as longer support hours, free training, and live phone operators (no automated phone service).
- Create a customer survey. Ask your audience how you can improve, what new offerings they wish you provided, what they like best about your company, and what areas they may find lacking. Their answers could easily point to ideas that will help you gain a competitive advantage.
- Provide a risk-free trial to test your products or services before committing to a change.
- Compare your guarantee to your competition. If your competitors don’t offer a guarantee, this is an extra reason to promote your guarantee heavily.
- Compete with low-price competitors in creative ways. Offer exclusive discounts when items are purchased together as a package, or offer free or discounted add-on bonuses.
- Romance your competitors’ customers. Show them the affection they may be missing from their current vendor, and let them know you’re willing to go the extra mile to win their business.
- Even if prospects are happy with their current provider, be sure to continue your marketing efforts. Create front-of-mind awareness so you’re at the top of their list if they ever change their mind.
Words Your Customers Love to Hear
03 Jan 2014 Leave a Comment
in Marketing TIPS Tags: customers
Words Your Customers Love to Hear
- Guarantee. Not only does a guarantee show confidence in your products, but it also removes the risk of trying your product, giving potential customers the added persuasion to purchase your product over another.
- Instantly, immediately, or fast. We all love fast results or solutions, so it’s no surprise that people love instant gratification.
- New. Today’s society is always on the lookout for the latest and greatest products available. However, be aware that the novelty of “new” can wear off. After a while, customers often fall back to their familiar, tried-and-true products again.
- Save. Saving money is something that everyone wants to do. Whether you offer an exclusive savings promotion, a discounted package deal, or even a money-saving coupon, your customers will be listening.
- Discover. The word “discover” offers a promise of something more to come. Like unwrapping a gift on your birthday, discoveries always bring a sense of excitement and adventure.
- Easy. People love to purchase things that are easy to figure out, easy to assemble, easy to manage, and so on. The less effort required by the customer, the better.
- Free. Although the word “free” is often overused, it continues to be the number-one attention-getting word. Use it sparingly and only when you truly have something free to offer with no strings attached, such as a free sample, free trial, free shipping, or buy-one-get-one-free deal.
Your VIP Clients
02 Aug 2013 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: customers
Even if you’ve already heard these statistics before or intuitively know them to be true based on your own experience, it may still be a bit startling to see them here again:
- It can cost up to 7 times more to acquire one new customer than to keep a current one.
- The likelihood of a prospect buying from you is between 5 and 20%. The likelihood of an existing customer buying from you again is between 60 and 70%.
Based on these numbers, it’s clear that nurturing and cultivating your existing client relationships can go a long way toward improving the health of your company’s bottom line. However, many companies devote most of their marketing budgets to new customer acquisition, rather than trying to keep existing customers coming back. New leads and customers are important, but your existing customers should also hold a very high place on your list of marketing priorities.
How can you keep customers coming back?
Sending simple thank you cards to show your appreciation is one idea. A monthly printed newsletter that informs, educates, and entertains is another. Picking up the phone and having a real conversation is perhaps the least expensive, yet most powerful way to retain existing clients.
There are many ways to show your appreciation, but timing is essential if you want to maximize the effect. The first 30 to 90 days after your new customer comes on board is the most important time to begin showing them your appreciation. If you haven’t done so already, create a blueprint for your remarkable customer experience plan that must be followed throughout your organization. Place one or two key people in charge of overseeing this plan to make sure it is implemented and followed through with every new customer.
This plan should have tasks and due dates attached for each activity. For example, your plan might call for a thank you card to be sent the day after a new customer comes on board. Gifts, lunches, coffee, phone calls, newsletters, and personal visits can all be part of the plan, as well. Make your customers feel like VIPs. Listen to their needs and respond quickly. What’s critical here is that you have a plan, that you have someone who is accountable for implementing the plan, and that you include due dates for each task in the plan.
Creating a remarkable customer experience can be as simple or as complex as you would like it to be. The more remarkable and unique you can make it, the more memorable the experience will be. The key is to have a plan and to always remember that it is much less expensive and profitable to keep an existing customer happy than it is to acquire a brand new customer.
Do You Have Customers or Clients?
21 Jun 2013 Leave a Comment
in Marketing, Marketing TIPS, Services Tags: clients, customers, small business tips
Most business owners and company executives use the terms “customers” and “clients” interchangeably without fully realizing that there is a meaningful difference between the two. Understanding the distinction and setting your plans accordingly can help you build and grow a more profitable business.
Let’s start with the definition of each term according to the dictionary.
As a business owner, how do you perceive “customers or clients”?
Customer: “a person who purchases goods or services”
Client: “a person or group that uses professional advice or services”
Examples of companies with business-to-customer relationships include Wal-Mart, Apple, and your local grocery store.
Examples of companies with business-to-client relationships include service-oriented professionals such as accountants, attorneys, advertising agencies, architects, and the like.
There are pros and cons to catering to each type.
Customers will typically do business with you based on convenience, value, and price. They’re loyal as long as you meet those parameters, and they don’t require as much personal interaction as clients do.
Clients, on the other hand, are looking for more. Clients are seeking professional advice on how to get something accomplished in the best way possible. They’re willing to pay more for that type of expertise than a customer would, but in return for that premium, they require more attention and hand-holding. A business-to-client engagement is typically a longer-term relationship than a business-to-customer scenario.
Every business has customers. Fewer have clients.
So, is your business built around customers or clients?
There is no right or wrong answer. It matters only that you know the difference and set up your business to serve whichever type you are seeking.
7 Secrets to Customer-Focused Marketing
01 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Inspirational, Marketing, Marketing TIPS Tags: customers
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”
While many businesses like to focus promotional materials on their company story, business accomplishments, and products, they should instead focus on the customer — their wants, their needs, and solutions to solve their problems. Here are a few ways to show your customers you truly care about their needs:
- Educate your customers about industry trends, product training, upgrade options, and product releases.
- Provide resources that are focused on helping your customer, such as product and/or price comparisons, product reviews, customer testimonials, and customer references.
- Listen to your customers’ needs, then recommend products and services that are the best fit for them, not your pocketbook. If a customer truly feels like you helped him with a buying decision, he will likely return for more advice and sales.
- Promote a solid guarantee that shows your commitment to quality and gives customers confidence in your products. Then stand behind your warranty should a customer need to use it.
- Customize marketing messages based on your target audience. Thrill seekers often respond better to upbeat, urban electronic messaging. Older audiences often prefer traditional print messaging with larger fonts.
- When customers give you the opportunity to serve them, make the extra effort to ensure every experience with your business is positive.
- And finally, be sure to reward customers for their loyalty. Throw down the red carpet occasionally by offering exclusive discounts, loyalty incentives, and free bonus gifts to your top customers.
Got any other customer-focused marketing secrets you’d like to share? Add them in the comments below.
