Are you always looking ahead and thinking of ways to grow your business by getting new customers? I’ve got an even simpler way to earn more money in your small business: customer retention. In this guide, I’ll show you how to get repeat business from existing customers.
I love sharing ideas and ways you can earn more money without having to work twice as hard. In this guide, I’ll show you the magic of encouraging repeat business. This means bringing people back to you for repeat orders – and there are so many benefits of this, beyond the obvious of earning more money.
What is Customer Retention?
At its most basic level, customer retention means keeping current customers and encouraging them to make repeat orders. The goal of customer retention programs is to help companies retain – or keep – as many customers as possible.
This begins with the very first contact a customer has with a company. Another buzzword that goes along the same lines is “brand loyalty.” If your customers are loyal to your brand above all others, you will have high customer retention.
What is Repeat Business?
Repeat business happens when a customer returns to a company to buy more products. This is the same thing as customer retention, it’s just another word for it. If you have high customer retention, you’ll have people coming back for repeat business. It all works together.
Multiple Benefits of Customer Retention
There are lots of reasons you want to focus on customer retention. At the end of the day, if you focus on it, you will be earning more money than you would without it.
Here are some more of the biggest benefits of customer retention.
1. Easier Marketing
For one thing, selling to an existing happy customer is a lot easier than trying to get a sale with a new prospect. They already know your products and your business, so you don’t have to try and get them to buy into it. Plus, after someone buys something from you, you already know they love what you make so you can offer them more of the same.
2. Happy Customers Are Best Marketers
Another benefit of customer retention is that when you have happy customers, you have one of the best marketing teams (and its free!). Word of mouth marketing will always be the best kind. People are more likely to believe their friends and family instead of reviews they will encounter online.
When their friends are happy with a company, they will be more likely to try them out too.
3. You’ll Learn More About Your Customers If They Are Loyal
When you retain customers, you will learn more about your customer base. You’ll know which products are the most popular and which ones aren’t working.
This is a huge benefit! All of the data you gain about your repeat customers can change and affect your marketing and advertising campaigns and new product development as well.
Learn Even More About How to Earn More Money
While customer retention is one solid method of increasing your income, it’s not the only way. Grab my free 5-day course and learn tips and tricks for saving time and money in your business.
Customer Retention Strategies To Increase Repeat Business
Are you ready to learn how to retain your customers? Here are some of my favorite tried and true customer retention strategies. Try them all and watch your repeat customer increase!
1. Establish a Loyalty Program
First of all, you need to establish a loyalty program. This is a must.
So many companies and businesses have loyalty programs that you will actually shock people if you don’t offer one of some sort.
One huge tip – a study proved that customers are more likely to come back and use their loyalty cards when they are rewarded as soon as they sign up. Give them their first hole-punch for free just for signing up and they will be more likely to come back.
An easy way to implement this into your own business is to offer incentives. For example, you could offer special pricing to renew a coaching package or if they buy into another offering before their agreement has ended. I will do this for my 1:1 coaching clients and let them know that it’s special pricing that a new client doesn’t receive.
2. Build Trust Through Relationships
In order to keep your customers and bring them back for more purchases, you need to gain their trust. According to a report by Forbes, marketers should use data to build trust with their customers.
You can get this data from surveys you send out through a platform such as Microsoft Office 365 Forms, SurveyMonkey, or even Typeform.
Send out surveys to your customers and ask for feedback throughout the course of your working agreement. This helps you make sure you know what parts of your services that your clients love. Then, check in to see if there are things that you need to do differently to make it a great (not just good) experience for them.
3. Overdeliver On Your Promise
Don’t just stay true to your word, go above and beyond it! When you overdeliver on your promise, it will delight your customers and make them more likely to want to shop from you again.
Another side benefit of overdelivering is that it prevents customers from being dissatisfied – and when a customer isn’t happy they are likely to tell 20 people about their negative experience with the brand.
It’s true. Word of mouth marketing works that way too.
So remember: Under-promise and over-deliver.
4. Don’t Just Sell – Educate
Another customer retention strategy is to encourage customers to “buy-in” to your products. They should know exactly why they adore your products and become passionately engaged in it.
You can do this by not just selling to them, but educating them about it too. You can do this with live webinars and fantastic email marketing. When your customers feel like they know a ton about your products, they will want to come back for more!
5. Communicate With Customers Frequently
Communicating with your customers is a vital component of customer retention.
Don’t skip over this step.
Make sure you have an email marketing tool to keep in touch with existing and past clients. The more value that they get from you, the more likely that they will continue to purchase.
You are missing a huge opportunity if you don’t do email marketing. Your company and products will become out of sight, out of mind.
For example, I do a full car detail on my cars about every 2 – 3 years. Because I don’t do it often, I will often forget the person that I last hired! And since they don’t keep in touch with me via email marketing, I don’t hire them again because I don’t remember them.
6. Provide Excellent Customer Service
Next, you need to create a stellar customer service plan.
There is a way to turn unhappy customers into your biggest fans just by providing amazing customer service. This means answer quickly and resolve the complaint completely and promptly. A recent survey shows that 69% of customer service experiences are rated good if the complaints are resolved quickly.
7. Focus on Quality Over Speed
Finally, make sure your business model treasures quality over speed. If you rush your products out and leave errors and defects in them, your customers will notice. They will be more likely to return to you for more if they can rely on you to produce high-quality content that feels like an amazing value to them.
Want more proof?
According to research from Gallup, customers were nine times more likely to be engaged with a brand when they felt the service was helpful and courteous. Customers were only six times more likely when they experienced speedy service.
Evaluate your customer service and products often to make sure you are providing high-quality experiences for your customers.
Customer Retention: Final Thoughts
Customer retention is the best way to earn repeat business and make more money. These repeat customers will be your biggest advocates and marketers too. Focus on your customer retention strategies and watch your small business grow by leaps and bounds!