7 Customer Retention Tips
7 Customer Retention Tips
You know customer retention is vital but you’re so busy working your business that you don’t have time to give your current customers the attention they deserve.
Here are a few ways you can keep your business in front of your customers:
- a newsletter that includes useful tips, information and coupons
- a text message list that is used to deliver coupons
- greeting cards that are sent out on birthdays, major holidays or any other occasion that is important to your customer that you can use to put your business name back in front of them while wishing them well on their special occasion
- run a contest
- run daily or weekly specials that are only for people that are on your list
- do Google Hangouts on a regular basis to give your customers a chance to ask questions live
- make YouTube videos that show how to use your product or service for maximum effectiveness
There are many ways that you can make your customers remember your business in a good way and every time you implement one or more of these strategies you may increase sales or customer loyalty.
If you have run the numbers, you will know that it is much cheaper to keep an existing customer and get them back in the door than it is to acquire a new customer.
Make your customers happy then ask them for referrals and reward them for bringing you new business.
Your customers like to be appreciated is much as you do so giving them little perks or even just a greeting card that acknowledges that you remember them and appreciate them will get you a lot of goodwill because many of your competitors won’t be willing to make the effort.
Your existing customers have purchased from you so they have a certain amount of know, like and trust in you or your business so use that to your advantage to keep them buying and to help get new business by getting customer reviews and using them to get word-of-mouth advertising.
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How To Get More Customers
How To Get More Customers
A steady flow of paying customers is the lifeblood of your business. This article will give you tips on ways to get the business you want and need to survive.
There are many ways to attract new business. Some will cost money and others will require both time and money. Some of the customer acquisition methods commonly used are:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a.k.a. Organic Search
- Local Search
- Video Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click Advertising
- Coupons
- Deal Sites
- Print Ads
- Radio Ads
- TV Advertising
- Billboards
- Flyers
- Direct Mail
- Cold Calling
- Text Message Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Squeeze Pages
As you can see from this list, there are many ways that you can get new customers and a number of these methods are designed to work without the Internet because they existed long before the Internet existed.
All of these methods can be effective when executed properly.
Proper execution of almost every method mentioned above has to be done by a professional to get the highest possible ROI on your investment.
Almost anyone can make a flyer but the combination of colors, ad copy, images and the call to action used are what will turn a flyer into a lead generation machine.
Radio ads, TV advertising and billboards are too expensive for many local businesses and most online businesses.
Direct mail can be very effective if you have a highly targeted list, if you are using proven copy and you have a marketing budget large enough to handle the expense. If you know your copy pulls and you know the normal conversion rate, it should be easy for you to achieve a positive ROI using direct mail.
Unfortunately, too many business owners forget to do one thing before they start advertising their business and without that one thing your chance of success is drastically reduced.
The one item that can make or break your business is your ONLINE REPUTATION.
I don’t care which advertising medium you use but most people that I know will enter your business name into Google or another search engine to try and find reviews about your company after they’ve seen your ad. If they cannot find reviews on your company, they will search for reviews on the product or service being sold.
If you have a bad reputation, no reputation or just a small reputation; your conversions will be much lower than a competitor that has 10 or more five star customer reviews.
New businesses obviously do not have customer reviews but there is a way these business owners can position themselves as experts in their marketplace.
The way you can become an expert within your marketplace before you even get your first customer is to write and publish a book on Amazon.
You know your product and service and you know how it will benefit your customers. If you use this knowledge to write a book that explains many of the problems that your customers face, that explains how the product or service solves those problems and then give extra tips on additional problems that they can solve using your product or service, you will be showcasing your expertise and creating credibility in your marketplace.
It doesn’t matter if you sell a single book. The fact that you are a published author will give you a great deal of credibility.
If you’re an established business owner and you already have a reputation in your marketplace, you may need to make sure that your reputation is five star before you even think about writing a book because publicizing a business that has a less than stellar reputation may do more harm than good.
One of the worst things you can do as a local business owner is to not know what your reputation online looks like. If you are aware of your online reputation but you aren’t actively working to build a solid five star reputation that you can use in your marketing, you are wasting advertising dollars every time you market your business.
Click here to see if your local business has any negative reviews in the major online directories.
Your bookmarks, comments and feedback are always welcome. Disclosure of Material Connection
Do You Know How To Make A Unique Selling Proposition For Your Business?
Do You Know How To Make A Unique Selling Proposition For Your Business?
unique selling proposition for your business
A unique selling proposition (USP) will help you make your business unique. Without a USP, how will your customers be able to tell you from your competitors?
There are many ways that you can create a USP and some business owners try to get very creative in making their business unique but that isn’t always necessary.
Examine each of your competitors and see what is unique about them, if anything, and see what you can do differently or better that will help you improve your business.
One area that you should never compete on is price. There are many reasons you should never compete on price but one of the biggest reasons is that pricing your product or service too low can make the consumer wonder about the quality of the product or service.
Example: If you and your nearest competitor have identical boats for sale that have a suggested retail price of $30,000 and your competitor prices his boat at $25,000 and you price your zip $15,000 to get the sale, everyone that looks at your boat is going to consciously or subconsciously wonder what is wrong with it.
A different approach to pricing your boat might be to put $35,000 on it for a price and in big bold letters right next to the price put “Ask Me Why.”
You could then explain to your customers that the price includes extras such as lifejackets, fire extinguishers, oars and the other essentials that are needed to pass a Coast Guard inspection. A gas card or additional perks could also be added and these extras are things that will be useful to the consumer that is buying a boat and it shows that you want to get them started out on the right foot with a boat that is ready to go.
By taking price out of the equation, you were able to position yourself as an advisor that can help them get the boat that fits their needs, their wants and their budget.
Trusted advisors can become friends of their customers and they often get more referrals.
If you deliver a product or service that fits the need of the consumer in addition to their wants without bringing the Walmart® mentality (always low prices) into the equation, you have a good starting point for your USP.
When you take the time to develop a five star culture within your business that delivers a five star experience to your customers and add it to always putting the customer’s needs first, you will have a USP that very few businesses deliver today.
Visit www.getyourlocalreputationreport.com to see what your local business reputation looks like online. Note: If you have no online reviews, your reputation is almost as bad as a competitor that has one or two bad reviews.
Your bookmarks, comments and feedback are always welcome. Disclosure of Material Connection
11 Marketing Mistakes That Can Absolutely Destroy Your Business
11 Marketing Mistakes That Can Absolutely Destroy Your Business
1# Failure To Identify Your USP And Then Promote It
Wal-Mart has built their brand around “Always Low Prices”. John Deere has “Nothing runs like a Deere”. These slogans have been repeated so frequently in conjunction with the brand that consumers can immediately identify the company even if they don’t always agree with the statement.
If you don’t have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that identifies your company and brand, how will your customers be able to tell the difference between you and your competitors?
2# Failure To Identify Your Target Market
If I ask you to tell me who your business is targeting with your product and services and you tell me everyone, I will come to the conclusion that you have absolutely no idea who your ideal customers are and where to find them.
Observe your customers and you’ll figure out what your ideal customer looks like.
3# Failure To Target The Hot Prospects In Your Target Market
A hot prospect within your target market is someone that is itching to buy the product or service that you have to offer and any reasonable pitch that is presented to them will result in a sale. Unfortunately, hot prospects don’t last forever. You need to know your customer, know where they congregate and know how to reach them when they’re ‘hot’ so you can put your offer in front of them the minute they get hot for your solution for their itch.
4# Failure To Build A Five Star Reputation For Your Business
If you put a system in place to train your employees on the importance of building a five star culture within your business and then collect reviews from your customers, you will have everything you need to help get that all-important word-of-mouth advertising.
5# Failure To Use Your Five Star Reputation In Your Marketing
Once you have nothing but five star reviews on directory sites like Google+ Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, on other local directories and on your corporate website, you’re ready to start letting the world know how good your reputation is but most of you don’t do it.
Isn’t it about time that you started to use these great reviews in press releases, in your print advertising, in your social media marketing and in any other type of promotions that you do?
6# Failure To Build And Maintain A Relationship With Your Customers
Do you collect the name and email addresses from your customers? When you make a sale, do you have the opportunity to collect the name, address and phone number of your customer? Information like this from buyers is a gold mine.
You can use this information to send them an old-fashioned thank you note for making the purchase, informational tips on how to get the most out of their purchase can be sent to the consumer or you can send them greeting cards for the major holidays. Little things like that will require a little time, some planning and a certain amount of money but it will keep your name in front of your customer and help build loyalty.
People appreciate these little extras and these extras will make it much, much easier to turn this happy customer into a repeat buyer.
7# Failure To Have A Marketing System In Place
Unless you have a marketing system in place, you’re throwing your advertising dollar out in a haphazard way which is going to make it more difficult to gain and sustain any kind of momentum in your marketing.
Once you have a marketing system in place, you will be able to measure the effectiveness of your local search marketing, your social marketing, each type of print advertising that you do and how effective your customers are at bringing in new referrals for you.
If your marketing system does not have a component that rewards current customers for sending new business your way, you’re missing out on some of the easiest marketing that you could ever do.
8# Expecting Your Marketing Message To Close The Sale
There are many types of marketing techniques that you can engage in with your business but no single technique has the ability to overcome a customer’s objections and explain all of the benefits as well as you or one of your employees.
9# Expecting Your Customers To Fully Understand How The Product Will Benefit Them
When a customer comes in to buy your product, they are looking to solve a specific problem at a specific point in time. If you or one of your employees, can add additional benefits that will serve the customer both now and in the future, that customer will place a higher perceived value on that product or service than they had when they walked in your door. This higher perceived value may help you justify a higher price or simply make the sale easier to make.
10# Failure To Position Yourself As A Trusted Advisor
A trusted advisor is a person that honestly points out both the good and bad about a product as it relates to the need of the customer. One feature may be a major benefit to one customer but it could be totally inappropriate for another. When you or your employees take the time to learn how the customer is going to use your product or service, you may be able to point them to a different product or service that would be more appropriate for their needs.
By helping them choose the correct product or service, you are showing them that their needs are more important than the sale.
The trust that you gain by helping them make the right choice helps you get a positive review when you ask for it, it may help you get a referral from one of their friends when you ask them to tell others about your business and they may be more inclined to become a repeat customer.
11# Failure To Market Consistently
The only thing worse than no marketing is stop and go marketing. Create a marketing plan that lets you promote your business on a consistent schedule. Use a percentage of the profits that come into your business from that marketing to put back into building your business.
Every dollar that you spend on marketing your business should bring in more money than what the promotional methods cost you. If you are not seeing a positive ROI, you need to tweak your advertising until every time you put an ad out in brings in more business than what you spent.
Consistent marketing with a positive ROI on every method that you use generally means that your business will grow at a rate faster than you ever dreamt of enjoy.
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Why Local Business Owners Should Not Do DIY Online Marketing
Why Local Business Owners Should Not Do DIY Online Marketing
Local business owners like you are experts in your field but you are unlikely to know an online marketing expert or have the skill to do it yourself.
You probably have a business plan on how you are going to grow your business for the next one to five years but do you have a marketing plan that lays out the marketing strategies you plan to use to reach your goals?
Without a detailed marketing plan, the type of marketing that you do has been described in a number of colorful ways. Some of these are:
- shotgun marketing
- throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks
- fragmented marketing
- chance marketing
You’re basically using fragmented marketing:
- when you get one person to design your website
- when you get another person to maintain it
- when you get another to do your mobile website
- when you get another to do your search engine optimization
- when you get another to do your social media marketing
- when you get another to do local search or your reputation marketing.
Every time you add a new person to do a specific task for you without having an in overall marketing plan or communication between each of the providers there is no guarantee that their strategies will move your business in the same direction and at the speed that is best for your company.
In addition to the lack of cohesiveness between your marketing team, each marketer brings their own skill set to the table and their skills may or may not be up-to-date.
Social media marketing, local search, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and video marketing are changing rapidly. A true professional in each discipline adapts their techniques so they can stay up-to-date with what works best after each change.
Very few, if any, friends, neighbors, relatives, high school students, college students or individual service providers have the ability or the team to help you develop marketing strategies then implement them so that you achieve a positive return on your investment.
Every business owner wants a positive ROI on every aspect of their marketing. If you do your online marketing yourself or contracted it out to individual service providers, how can you track and measure the effectiveness of each individual technique that is being used?
The speed at which you can grow your business depends on how many of your marketing campaigns generate a positive ROI. Do yourself a favor and create a marketing plan that includes marketing strategies that are coordinated so that you have the highest chance of achieving success with all of your online marketing efforts.
Give us a call at 813-489-6367 if you would like professional help in developing a marketing strategy that is tailored to your needs and goals.
Your bookmarks, comments and feedback are always welcome. Disclosure of Material Connection
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