A successful business doesn’t just boast high sales, a large customer base, and its power to attract new customers: it also boasts having return customers which remain loyal to the brand year after year.
But what turns a one-time customer into a loyal one?
Besides a good and quality product, there must be something else that drives them to keep returning to one brand instead of exploring other options, because chances are that there is somebody selling a similar product for a lower price. To help you stimulate this conversion, here are 5 pieces of advice for you to consider.
1. Leverage on social media
Social media have become an inseparable part of every business’s marketing strategy so you need to tend to that part of your online presence regularly. Besides posting information about new products, sharing fun facts related to your industry, giving them tips and tricks about many different topics, your social media presence might have another purpose, one which is not created by you.
The customers or website visitors might decide to tell about their problems publicly so don’t be surprised if instead of contacting you to resolve something, they tag you in a not-so-pleasant post.
If you see something like that, it is important to promptly check what is going on and respond to that individual as soon as possible. In case you don’t get tagged but just mentioned, there are monitoring tools that can help you detect that, so you can react quickly in that manner as well.
2. Take their feedback into account
You can learn a lot from your customers’ feedback and in fact, they are an essential ingredient to improving your business operation, offer, and for making your business grow. There are some things you can notice and correct but chances are your customers will be the ones who will point out a mistake in the product description, a glitch in the check-out page or some other small detail that could be made better.
Also Read: Building up customer loyalty with emotional branding
Also, if your customers have set aside some time in their busy schedule to write a review, it is crucial to show your appreciation. To make the whole process easier for them and to facilitate analyzing and answering to the feedback, you can consider introducing a feedback app. It will help you monitor everything and respond to the feedback in due course.
3. Reward their loyalty
Another way of showing your appreciation for them leaving feedback or for purchasing products from you regularly is to reward them. What you can do is find a company to customize some products for you, such as notebooks or mugs, and you can also have them print out your business cards and send all of that to you so that you can ensure every loyal customer gets a gift and your business card.
Aside from that, you can also organize a competition, for let’s say, the best photo with a particular product and the participants would need to follow/like/befriend your social media profile and tag your brand on the photo.
Once the winners are chosen, you can award them with different items from your offer. In general, this strategy is excellent for boosting customer loyalty because it rewards their creativity and motivates others to become your customers as well.
4. Be transparent
Your current and prospective customers are generations who have seen a lot of marketing tricks throughout their lifetime and many of them have developed a sort of defence mechanism which makes them close the ads that pop out even without looking at them and shutting down a tab without taking a glimpse at it if some irritating video start to play on its own. They dislike pushy sales tricks and they can spot a condescending lie a mile away.
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This is why transparency is your best policy – if you make some error, it is always best to publicly admit so and work on resolving it in the most efficient manner than to pretend that it never happens. In this digital era, it is exceptionally difficult to hide anything not that trying to hide anything would do you any good. People appreciate honesty more than they do perfection, so you could end up expanding your customer base instead of losing customers because of a mistake.
5. Excel at customer support
Great customer support can do wonders for your business advancement for several reasons. Your customer support team handles many questions, doubts, and complaints, and being in direct contact with your customers gives them an opportunity to create a wonderful first impression, to correct a negative one, and even motivate customers to purchase more.
On the other hand, you can take advantage of the knowledge they accumulate from your customers to improve certain processes and reward the most loyal ones or those with the most useful feedback.
When thinking about how to improve this vital communication channel, you need to keep in mind that not everyone enjoys the same communications methods, meaning some would prefer chat, others tickets (emails), while some phone calls. Naturally, you can do only what your budget allows you but once you get to the stage when you can afford it, you should definitely expand your communication methods.
Wrapping up
One of the golden rules is – listen to your customers and show that you appreciate their feedback since you can learn useful details. Respond to all comments across social media, even the negatives ones because this is how you exhibit your transparency.
Also Read: A comprehensive guide to handling product returns carefully without upsetting customers
Also, be available and allow them to reach you in whichever manner they prefer and don’t miss out on an opportunity to reward them both when they point out something important and for staying loyal to your brand. This relationship can be quite rewarding but for it to be so, it’s essential you give your best to nurture it.
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Image Credit: Charisse Kenion
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