Three Simple Ways to Strengthen Customer Loyalty

Creating Loyal Customers

It is not too often that I feel inspired by reading my email, but it happened today.

The latest WebpageFX e-newsletter gave some great tips for creating happy customers. I was already thinking along these lines this week when I started my FREE RESOURCES page to share tools and tips that I think are great.

As I was reading, I found myself thinking about other ways I could work toward deserving my customer’s loyalty, and letting them know that I value them.

Everyone wants to be appreciated, and  a sure way to lose in any relationship is to take it for granted.

We all wish that our work or talents would speak for themselves and be enough to keep our clients coming back to us, but the reality is that there are some great competitors. Our customers have a lot of options.

I am not saying that obtaining new leads and gaining new clientele is not important, but it shocked me to see estimates that retaining a current customer can be five-to-ten times less expensive than acquiring a new one.

That is huge! So today I wanted to focus this post on tools we can use to  build on and build up our existing customer base.

Community

Community is about support and service. We can inexpensively build a community around our brand, product or service but make the focus our target customer’s needs. What a simple way to stay in touch with our audience and let them know they are appreciated!

• Create a Facebook page or a Facebook group for discussion and sharing.
• Be responsive on social media platforms – a personal message, mention or retweet is better than a bot.
• Engage, share what they are doing. Use groups and social media platforms to share our clients’ successes and highlight what they are up to; retweet, share a link to their latest blog post, or their press release.

Connection

• Strive to inform and encourage customers with content they can use. Our tools include our social media platforms, blog, podcasts, or an email list.
• We are building a relationship. Not just selling, but making sure they know how our product, brand or service is making their lives better.
• Get personal. Personalize emails and always post a “welcome” when people join our groups.
• Give them information that helps them attain their goals, even if it means giving kudos to a competitor.

Clarity

• Making it “all about them” helps clarify our business goals. As an added bonus we will see organic growth because prospects see that crystal clear focus!
• Simplify for our customers’ sake. Make it easy for them to save time and money by choosing our product or services. Websites should be user-friendly.
• Make service a priority after the sale by taking a look at customer service procedures and policies. Evaluate customer service agents to be certain they are caring and polite.
• Be flexible and make changes when they are needed.

Conclusion

As I finished up this post, I realized that this article is all about the “C”‘s. I obviously have no fear of alliteration, so let me boldly  conclude by saying, let me know if I can help you with any of  these tasks.

Check back in here so that I can share my favorite digital things with you and stay creative this week!