It’s not always about new customers. While reaching potential clients who didn’t buy your products or services yet is necessary, working with existing ones may be even more important.
If a business can’t keep its clients and make them come back to buy more products or services, gaining new ones will become inefficient very quickly. Why? Because despite that the population of our planet is vast, your target audience is limited in some way. It means, that eventually, you might run out of new people to reach.
Moreover, by making customers come back to you (a.k.a. improving retention) you can increase your income quite significantly. The statistics say that if you increase retention by a mere 5%, you will see an increase in your profits by 25-96%. Isn’t it great?
So let’s see how you can improve your retention.
First, let’s see the difference between retention and acquisition
Customer acquisition is the process of reaching new potential clients and convincing them to buy your products or services. This step is essential for when you’re growing your business. But it’s not the only thing to focus on, even in the beginning.
It’s important to work on customer retention, too. This is a process of making your customers stay and keep buying from you. You need to take action to make consumers feel loyal to your business so that they stick to what you offer.
Surely, you need to determine what to focus on considering the growth phase of your business and the marketing goals you currently have planned. For example, a new company that has just a few clients has to put more effort into reaching new potential customers. But if a business is already established, it needs to work with its existing consumer base.
Why not keep reaching new clients?
As we’ve already mentioned, the pool of new potential customers is vast but finite. Yet, that’s not the only reason to focus on working with your existing consumers.
The thing is that it’s easier to sell to your existing clients — the chance is around 60-70%. They already know if they like what you offer, and they’re more likely to repeat the experience. When it comes to new potential consumers, your chance to sell something to them is just around 5-20%. You need to convince them that your offer fits their needs. And that’s a tough task, especially if a person already buys from your competitor.
That’s why it’s 5-25 times more expensive to acquire new clients than keeping and retaining existing ones. It’s much easier and cheaper to leverage the existing base of consumers to improve your profits.
How to improve retention
These methods work best when combined. Yet, it can be difficult to do everything at once. So pick a couple of approaches in the beginning and then complete your retention strategy with the remaining methods.
Make sure customers have a positive experience
It’s impossible to make a person deal with your business again if their first interaction was unpleasant and didn’t satisfy their needs. But actually, every interaction matters. So make sure each client has a positive experience whenever dealing with your business.
It can be reached by ensuring that the quality of products is good, the customer service team is helpful and quick to respond, and the delivery is fast and convenient. The whole process of purchasing something for you should be seamless for the client. It means, they shouldn’t experience any difficulties or issues. Customers, in most cases, will remember that they were treated well and come back to such a company.
Come up with loyalty programs
Benefits, created for repeating customers, are called loyalty programs for a reason — they make your clients loyal to your business. By offering them appealing benefits, you will increase the chance that they will come back to you and stick to your brand.
For online businesses, the introduction to loyalty programs usually begins with offering a new buyer to create an account. The offer should also mention the benefits a person will get for being registered at your website. Loyalty programs can significantly increase the chances that a customer will come back and the frequency of their purchases.
Stay connected
It doesn’t mean that you have to annoy customers with frequent emails. But you still should reach out regularly to inform your clients about new offers, any changes they need to know about, and new products. Also, it’s important to say congratulations when it’s a holiday or a customer’s birthday.
By staying in touch, you will remind your clients about your company and push them to make another purchase. And congratulations, updates, and personalized selections of products will make a customer feel appreciated and taken care of.
Show appreciation
Display how grateful you are that customers are loyal to your business by sometimes spoiling them with unique special offers such as unexpected gifts or promo codes. This won’t make you lose profits — on the contrary, it will increase the income since you will sell more.
If your business offers certain products or services that, for example, help customers to grow their own companies, you can tell your audience about their businesses. Thus, you will show potential buyers an example of how they can benefit from your products. And as a bonus — your clients will appreciate getting featured since it can serve as an advertisement for them. Just don’t forget to ask a customer for permission to tell about their company.
Feedback is important
Don’t forget to ask for feedback. It will help you understand if there are any issues you need to fix. But also, by asking customers for their opinion, you show them that you care about what they think. In most cases, clients’ reviews will tell you how you can improve your offers. It’s way cheaper and easier than performing some kind of research.
Make sure the website works well
It’s hard to convince people to stay on your site when it’s slow and laggy — let alone making them come back to you. In most cases, issues with loading speed are caused by the hosting that can’t handle the traffic and the volume of the website. So if that’s what you’re dealing with, check out King Server’s VPS hostings and dedicated servers today to make sure your site works properly.
Make sure your employees are loyal
When employees are satisfied with their work conditions, and they have all instruments necessary for efficiency, they will be able to make customers happy. Make sure your workers have all they need and don’t be shy when it comes to praise. A good word can make a huge difference. So compliment your employees when they do a nice job and they will be more likely to do that again.
Let King Servers take care of your hosting and the loading speed of your site so that you can focus on improving your retention and business in general.
