Popular Marketing Posts
How To Keep Hold Of Your Customers
These days, when people are holding their purse strings a little tighter, they think a little more carefully about where they spend their money. This means, if you want to keep your customers coming back you have to go that little bit further to offer them the extra value they are demanding.
It’s not just about offering the best price – it’s about providing a reliable service and building a strong relationship so that the customer would rather deal with you than your competitors.
Here are some steps you can take to help ensure your current customers stay with you for the duration:
Target Your Approach: People like to think that their specific needs are being met. This means keeping detailed records of everything each individual customer has bought from you, any interaction you have had with them and so on. This means that when you send them promotional or marketing emails they can be tailored to their particular interests. That’s the way to keep them interested.
Personal Touch: Make sure you touch base frequently with your established clients or they may not be clients for much longer. You can do this, for example, by asking for feedback on a recent service and any suggestions for how you could improve. If you haven’t received any business from them for a while then it’s worth giving them a call or sending an email to see if there is any way you can help them.
Market Research: To keep hold of your customers it’s important that you keep up changing market needs and understand their priorities. Otherwise how can you be sure you are offering them what they want? Regular market research is therefore a must. It may seem like a lot of work but it’s something that you can’t do without. Otherwise you will find that your competitors are ahead of the curve whilst you have been left behind.
Loyalty Schemes: This is one of the most tried-and-tested methods for maintaining your customer base and there’s a good reason for this: it works. If a customer knows they are going to get a free product or service after a certain number of purchases, it makes good sense for them to keep coming back to you. In addition to the loyalty schemes, you should also ensure your offer all the customers on your mailing list regular promotions or discounts. This is a call to action as well as offering regular reminders of your presence.
Respond To Complaints: Even the most well-run company will make mistakes from time to time. Delivery mix-ups, damaged products – no-one is infallible. But if a customer does make a complaint about your services you need to limit the damage straight away by offering an immediate solution and, of course, a profuse apology. This can even work in your favour. If a customer knows that a problem will be quickly resolved they will feel much more secure about buying from you in the future.