Nowadays, there are many innovative marketing strategies that keep businesses looking for and winning new customers. However, with the contemporary fast-paced business environment, getting a new customer to do business with you again is a real challenge. According to research, 60 to 80 per cent of customers who are satisfied with the business they bought from do not purchase from that business again.
One of the major reasons why customers do not go back for repeat business with a said company is a lack of connection with it. For instance, if you visited a nail salon and they did a good job on your nails but they kept silent while doing your nails, never bothered to know your name, and did not follow up to know if you were satisfied with their services, would you go back to the nail salon another time?
Creating a personal relationship with your customers can go a long way into helping you retain them. Not to mention, retaining existing customers is a lot cheaper than acquiring new ones. How important is it for your business to keep new customers? Read on to find out how you can retain customers as well as the top benefits of retaining them.
Top 3 Strategies to Keep Customers
If you have been having trouble retaining customers, consider using these true-and-tested strategies to help your business keep more customers in future and save money.
1. Have clear success metrics
Just like in a relationship, your customers are your partners, and they want to feel that you are working tirelessly to give them the best experience. Would you stick with an underperforming partner? I guess not. How can you enable customers to gauge your performance and check if it is in alignment with their expectations?
Source: https://www.impactbnd.com/the-10-marketing-kpis-you-should-be-tracking
2. Keep the promises that you make on your sales pitches
A great sales pitch will win you new customers, but it cannot help you retain them, especially if you do not follow through on your promises. For any customer to remain loyal, they need to be sure that fulfilment of promises is key to your organization.
If you have trouble coming up with an excellent sales pitch that brings in strong leads, you can get professional help and tips from the best writing websites. When leads brought about by your sales pitches convert, make sure that you have met all your promises by the end of every purchase. That way, this will establish a strong connection, and new customers will deem you trustworthy, increasing chances of retention.
3. Get to know your customers better
While ignoring customers and lack of a personal connection can plummet your ratings and decrease customer retention, rushing your customer relationships will have the same effect.
Source: https://lab.getapp.com/new-research-forget-chatbots-customers-still-want-to-talk-to-people/
Customers desire to feel known and understood, and they will run to your competitor if they feel that he/she understands them and invests time in creating a solid relationship with them. Invest more time with each customer and take some time to create a real relationship with them to increase your retention rates.
Benefits of Keeping Customers
If you are thinking about investing in a solid strategy to help your business retain customers, here is what you stand to gain:
A boost in profits
Repeat purchases bring in more profits to your company. Customer retention rates of just 5% can increase your profits by up to 95%. According to studies, repeat customers are 300% more likely to spend more money on your business than new ones. Unlike new customers, existing ones use your business more for purchase and tend to purchase more over time.
Every loyal customer trusts your business and believes that you offer superior goods and services compared to your competitors. As a result, they are also more likely to buy even expensive and new products from your company which boosts your sales and increases your profit margins.
Free advertising
Loyal customers are likely to recommend your business to their friends and family through the word-of-mouth. When it comes to driving sales and advertising your business, never under-estimate the power of the word-of-mouth. The word-of-mouth drives sales 5 times more than paid impressions.
According to recent research by Neilsen, 92% of customers trust recommendations from their family and friends more than any other form of marketing. People who get recommendations from friends and family are 4 times more likely to buy from a business. Additionally, 49% of U.S consumers credit their brand awareness to friends and family. These statistics clearly show that retaining a customer not only offers you free word-of-mouth advertising but also wins you more new customers.
The cost of retaining customers is low
It can cost you up to 30 times more to win a new customer than to keep an existing one. Remaining very close to your customers, so you know exactly what they need helps you to innovate and improve your business to suit their tastes and preferences, which increases customer retention. Most importantly, it means that you save money that you could have used to attract new customers/win back old ones and put it in your savings or reinvest it in another part of your business.
Conclusion
Long-term customers have a positive effect on your brand as they are proof that you offer great service. The more customers you retain, the more potential customers will perceive you as trustworthy, and the more the chances that they will stick with you.
To realize these and more benefits of customer retention, make sure that you use the strategies discussed in this article to increase your retention rates. Do not forget to implement feedback systems that enable your customers to give feedback and great insights on improving your business.
