Keep Them Coming: How to Create a Loyal Customer
This article was guest authored by Jillian Day. Jillian Day created 508Assist to help people all across the web make their sites accessible to individuals with disabilities. She was inspired to start 508Assist when a close family member, who happens to have a visual impairment, had trouble finding a dinner recipe online that he could read easily. When she's not chasing after her little ones, Jillian enjoys being outside, whether she's fishing, hiking, or Geocaching with her family. The opinions expressed within the content are the guest author's.
If you run a small business or startup, you’ll already know that building a localized, loyal customer base is a top priority. Establishing your brand with a core demographic can ensure consistent income, spread awareness, and set the foundation for long-term success, but if you want to keep customers coming back, you’ll need to check out these key strategies.
Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs represent an excellent means to build brand trust whilst simultaneously providing value for both you and your customer. Ideally, you’ll be able to interconnect your loyalty program across channels (both off and online) or even develop proprietary apps/technology that allow customers to engage with your brand wherever and whenever suits them best. When developing your loyalty program, try to ensure that rewards are clear, attainable, visually represented, and unique enough to stand out. Many marketers also advocate for ‘gamification’ and, as long as this is implemented ethically, you might be able to provide an element of fun as well as value for your customers.
Customer Service
When you’re still in the early stages of business development, it’s important to place increased emphasis on your customer service. The value of good customer service isn’t just anecdotal, it’s backed by data, as customers who are happy with their service are more likely to refer others, pay more for services and grow in lifetime value. If you can spare the time, try to steer clear of conversational AI and focus on responding personally to any queries or hire enthusiastic individuals to do so on your behalf.
Feedback and Improvement
If you are responsive to it, customer feedback can play a crucial role in business development. The information accrued via surveys, social media, or direct communication can be used to improve your business credibility, increase sales and, most vitally, inform business development. You can often use feedback to refine your customer experience and even cater to common requests by developing new products/services. If you haven’t already, try to create a methodology for gathering and reacting to feedback. For example, this could involve collecting, analyzing, acting on information, and evaluating results.
Referrals
As consumer trust shifts away from media and government, individuals and businesses have more influence in dictating where people spend their money. Therefore, referrals represent an important force for driving profit. There are multiple ways to incentivize referrals, including programs, building individualistic relationships with existing customers, or even using high-quality content to increase the ‘shareability’ of your brand. Another idea is offering your customers gift cards for referrals. With a digital gift card API, you can automate gift card delivery and personalize payments with custom messaging. Ultimately, you want your customers to feel comfortable and enthusiastic about spreading the word and vouching for your products/services.
Business Administration
Although not directly linked to the acquisition of new customers, good business practice tends to show itself via one means or another. If you haven’t already, evaluate your business structure and consider forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC). This will result in less paperwork, reduce your personal liability and protect your company name. You can avoid lawyer fees by using a formation service to help you set up.
Social Engagement
Interacting with your customers on social media helps to boost your posts/pages via an algorithm, but (when done correctly) it can also lift your brand in the eyes of your customers. Interacting with customers on social media can boost brand loyalty, improve customer satisfaction and retention, provide valuable feedback and insights on products and services, and increase brand awareness through positive word-of-mouth marketing.
Whether you’re collecting feedback, incentivizing customers for referrals, or engaging on social media, it’s important to always keep your best customers’ best interests at the heart of your business. If you can cater to your existing base, you’ll be sure to expand it.
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