A large part of your business plan should deal with marketing and growth. While this does include attracting new consumers and gaining a larger share of the market, it also involves keeping the customers that do frequent your business. In many cases, losing a customer is more costly than failing to attract a new customer. These tips can help you build your customer base, while helping you keep the customers already engaged with your business.
Invest in CRM Software
What if you had a magic genie that could feed you pertinent information about each one of your customers as you need it. This is basically how CRM (customer relationship management) software operates. It stores and analyzes all data you collect from your customers to help build a profile that will improve your customer interactions. By making use of data from emails, social media interactions, and other sources, you can provide a more personalized customer experience.
Enhance Customer Support
One reason for a high rate of customer churn is that customers feel abandoned or undervalued. In the digital age, customers shouldn’t have to wait hours or days to get the help they need and they know it. In addition to telephone and email, there’s text messaging, online support, and even social media communication, so leaving a customer hanging is no longer acceptable. In many cases, it may be a frustrating automated telephone response system, or an unanswered email, that ultimately drives your customers away. Investing in new technology that helps improve the customer service experience is a worthwhile investment in your business’ growth.
Make Use of a Full Range of Marketing Tools
When it comes to digital marketing, most business owners think of social media marketing and traditional paid advertisements. While these are valuable resources that you should definitely exploit, there are many other ways to build your brand. For instance, influencer marketing involves paying a social media influencer to promote your products to their followers. Additionally, you can offer webinars, make guest appearances on podcasts, or write your own blog. There’s no limit to the available marketing resources at your disposal.
Reward Your Existing Customers
This is something you can do to reduce churn, while also appealing to new customers. It involves giving something back to your loyal customers to show that you value their patronage. This can be a small free gift, or you can offer coupons to each customer who buys from you. This will help keep your current customers happy and they will likely brag about the rewards your business offers. This creates word of mouth advertising that may produce more business growth than other types of advertising.
Increase Overall Visibility
There are a couple of ways to increase your business’ visibility. You can start with ensuring your website, blog posts, and social media posts are all SEO compliant. Using the latest SEO trends are essential to ensure your content is coming up at the top of search results. Even if this means hiring a professional SEO writer, the expense will be well worth it. You can also post a page on your website that allows customers to leave testimonials. If consumers can see what previous customers have to say about your business, this will raise your credibility and increase word of mouth exposure. As you get more customers talking about your business in a positive manner, you’ll lose fewer customers and you’ll attract more new consumers.
You may find many more ways to reduce customer churn and boost your business’ growth. Don’t be afraid to try them. While you will likely make errors in judgment along the way, it’s something with which every business must contend. However, without taking those chances, your business will lie stagnant and lose customers.
