Business success is driven by your ability to gain and retain repeat customers. These repeat customers spend more, spend often and love your brand. They will stay loyal, talk about your business to friends and keep coming back for more. But keeping these customers can be easier said than done. Whether or not a customer will come back to you is one of the biggest uncertainties in business. So what can you do to be successful at this important yet tough endeavor?
Inc. writer Iris Kuo investigates some of the ways you can easily keep your customers coming back:
- Recognize patterns in your customers’ behavior: Make the effort to learn more about your customers. What do they like? When do they buy? When do they abandon their shopping carts? What external or environmental factors influence their decisions? Is it the weather or the time of year? Or is it something about you that they come back to or abandon? When you know these nitty-gritty details, you’ll be able to engage with your customers better.
- Show them what they’re missing: Communicate why you’re important to your customers. What would they gain from your partnership? What would they lose by not using your product or service? What’s unique and amazing about you? When they know your own value, your customers will make time for you.
- Turn it into a game: Make engaging with you fun! Organize events, activities and PR efforts to make this something your customers will look forward to.
- Build a community: Build a genuine community that allows your customers to share their journey with others—encourage this interactive community share by celebrating successes (or even commiserations) when they happen.
- Be thoughtful: Surprise and delight your customers. From swag giveaways to a personal note from the CEO… connections like these will make your customers want to keep coming back.
The following are some numbers showcasing the importance of the power of return customers:
- 8 percent: The average part of a U.S. business’s customer base made up of longstanding buyers
- 7 dollars: How much it costs for a company to market to an existing customer (on the contrary, it costs $34 to market to a new customer)
- 20 percent: The amount by which the spending of a repeat customer exceeds that of a first-time buyer
For more, read the full article here.
Thanks for reading, and until next time… stay WISE!