Marketing has traditionally been all about attracting new customers to your business. The way this is achieved in the modern era tends to be digitally focused, with businesses investing heavily into digital marketing, and rightly so.
However, what tends to be overlooked is what happens to the prospect after they become a customer. Fostering closer relationships is key to maximizing profitability and there are many different ways of achieving it. The crux is to find a balance between attaining and retaining customers through a blend of marketing tactics.
The digital landscape has changed the way businesses compete with one another. With everything now being digitally focused, SEO has now become an important tool for businesses in trying to reach out to their target market. It tends to be part of a long-term strategy because being able to rank well on Google takes time, persistence and prudence. SEO is expected to be worth $80 billion in the USA by 2020, meaning that those businesses choosing not to leverage its power will find it more difficult to attract new customers.
An equally effective tool in attracting new customers is using a pay-per-click (PPC) strategy. This method is more of a short term strategy that can immediately propel your website to the top of Google’s rankings. It operates on a cost per click system, whereby the costs are dependent on the competitiveness of the keyword. For more information on the full range of benefits that PPC has to offer, click here.
No matter how attractive a competitor’s offer is, your loyal customers prefer buying from you. That’s customer loyalty and it’s something that you should be striving to achieve after customer acquisition. Attracting new customers to your firm is often regarded as one of the most difficult things about business, but holding onto them can be even harder. However, being able to achieve this is paramount to long term growth and success.
Providing excellent service instills a positive emotional experience that enhances the perceived value of the product or service. As a consequence, this elevates the value of your brand, giving your customers no reason to go to a competitor in the future. Achieving strong customer loyalty provides businesses with innumerable benefits that will work harmoniously with your efforts into achieving your objectives. These include:
Marketing has traditionally been used to attract new customers but shifting the focus onto customer retention changes the marketing paradigm: you no longer just look for new customers; you focus on making more money from your existing ones. The objective here is to adopt a marketing strategy that complements your tactics on the acquisition with retention. There are a number of different ways of achieving this.
Your customer service team are usually the front line of communication between your business and your customers. Having staff that are happy and have high job satisfaction is paramount to being able to effectively reflect the values of the company. Staff that are willing to exceed customer expectations will have a profound impact on improving the reputation of your business since consumers are likely to share their positive experiences with friends and family. This is a term referred to as word of mouth marketing and it’s regarded as one of the most effective advertising strategies.
Simple ways of investing in your customer service team could be providing them with special training or investing in a customer feedback app, such as the one from HappyOrNot. They can provide you with real-time surveys that your customers have completed regarding what they would like to see improved and what they love.
The relationship here should be reciprocal: invest in your staff and they’ll invest in the company.
Social media has made the world vastly more interconnected, where people now have a platform to share ideas and seek out new information. A unique and valuable trait about social media is that it enables brands to connect with their customers on a more personal level, acting as a hotline between the two.
Here you have the opportunity to share valuable content directly with your consumers, promote special offers or reward schemes and communicate a story that helps to mold your brand identity. The advantages of social media can be significant if leveraged correctly and is something that should not be overlooked when trying to retain a loyal customer base.
Post-purchase email automation is an effective retention tactic that will help to bring qualified traffic to your website. Since these are people that you’ve already done business with, they’re aware of who you are and if they had a positive experience, then they probably already trust you. Sending them personalized emails that advertise products that they are likely to purchase will increase the chances of them doing business with you again. Over time, this can help to facilitate trust and loyalty through repeated purchases.
A business’s marketing efforts should be balanced equally into trying to attain new customers and retaining them because both can equally contribute to achieving growth. New customers create new business opportunities and being able to retain them will result in more revenue in the long run. Focusing on one aspect more than the other can create an imbalance that will only prevent a business from reaching its full potential.
