By June Brockmeyer
In this three part series we want to share some strategic marketing tips that can help you win lifelong customers and continue to grow your business by attracting new ones.
We’re discussing the importance of dedicating time to keep our existing customers happy and build a loyal customer base that will support us through thick and thin. Those customers can become brand advocates and share their positive experiences to drive referrals to our business.
As entrepreneurs or small business owners, we’re always excited when someone buys our products or utilizes our services. In fact, we often spend more time and money looking for new customers and not as much time as we should keeping the customers we have satisfied and excited about us.
And we’ve all been there; after closing a sale it’s easy to be relieved and forget that we’re not quite done. We want that person to be back and buy again and again, but do so happily. So here are five marketing tips to help us win lifelong customers.
Tip # 1- Getting Organized and Staying That Way
When we’re getting our small business off the ground, it may seem easy to keep track of all of our customer information in one place. Some people like index cards, some use excel to keep things organized and some may even us a client relationship management tool to store their data.
But once our business starts growing, it becomes harder to find, and organize, all of that customer information, purchase history and time frames for those purchases. And we’re not even talking about nurturing sequences and other important things that help make every interaction unique. So, getting a good CRM system as early as possible is crucial so we can build those relationships and develop brand advocates and customer loyalty.
If we can look up each customer and know the day she last interacted with our company, exactly what products she purchased and any additional information like that she has three kids, then you can make the next interaction even more unique than the first one.
Happy customers can become brand advocates and help strengthen our marketing strategy.
“Hi Jane, how are the kids? By the way, we see you’re almost out of your (insert product here) and we’d love to help make things more convenient for you on your upcoming purchases…”
It doesn’t have to be just like my example; it can be an email that targets a certain few of your customers who share data, then you can segment and be more efficient when reaching out to them.
With the correct data at our fingertips, we can craft each message and give an amazing customer experience every time we interact. Appreciating our customers and providing great service will help us stand out from the rest.
Now we’re beginning to create an effective marketing strategy. Next week we’ll focus on automating some of the processes and what that could mean for our business.
Winning repeat sales and lifetime customers all depends on the customer experience, so check out “Deliver. Satisfy. Repeat.” to learn winning strategy!
