Do you want to build a flourishing business? You need to be aware and take care of your most valuable assets – Customers.
As a business owner, there are three goals that your business success depends on: Leads; Customers; and Sales. But what are these goals if your customers don’t return? Here is where Customer Retention Marketing becomes essential.
What is customer retention
Customer Retention is the process of retaining existing customers to continue buying or using your products or services and to refer other customers. It’s different from customer acquisition or lead generation because you’ve already made the customer buy at least once. Certainly, acquiring new leads is great, but retaining existing customers should be the primary focus of your business. Building a loyal customer base and relationship will make your business thrive.
The best customer retention tactics enable you to establish lasting relationships with customers who will become loyal to your business. They could spread the word about your brand within their circles of influence, which can turn them into brand ambassadors.
But let’s take it from the top. A consumer buys a product or service from you, so what next? That’s when you build and perform customer retention marketing.
Doing retention marketing and making it work are two very different things.
We’ve picked three ways you can incorporate customer retention into your marketing strategy:
Show more customer appreciation:
Customer appreciation goes beyond a business’s customer service team’s success—it impacts a business’s overall goals. It’s how you show your customers that you care about them and that you’re thankful for their business. And when you take actions to show customer appreciation, your customers are more likely to be loyal. You could create customer loyalty programs offering freebies like annual discounts, surprise them with new free features, upgrades, or random rewards. Or you can send a thank you email whenever they make a purchase, offer to help if they have any challenges, etc.
Implement customer feedback:
This is information given by customers about their experience with a product or service. Its goal is to reveal their level of satisfaction about a product, customer success, and helping marketing teams understand where there is room for improvement. Here are some of the best techniques to gather customer feedback:
- Monitor social media: Look out for trends and comments concerning issues that customers bring up on your various social media outlets
- Add feedback dialogue boxes to your site – You can add a simple question to the feedback box, like “How can we serve you better?” and place it in your website footer.
Do as you say:
Your customers are very sensitive to everything your business says, does, also to things it buys, sells, or advertises to its entire audience. Your content must be relatable to how your brand does business. It is crucial to have your relationship with your customers include more than just products and services. You can create regular communication and strategy to ensure that every customer is reached and communicated personally.
You can’t keep 100% of your customers. Some will leave due to reasons, not within your control, or simply because they no longer need your product or service. Nevertheless, you can dramatically increase your customer retention by following the strategies outlined here.
Remember, the 3 keys are to show customer appreciation, implement customer feedback, and do what you say.