One of the best ways for businesses to grow and thrive is to keep customers coming back. It’s far less expensive for a company to retain customers than it is for a company to constantly try to woo and obtain new customers. But, even the healthiest of customer-business relationships can grow stale after a while. If you want to increase customer loyalty and give your oldest clients a reason to stay, you want to start thinking outside of the box. Here are a few ways to surprise your customers and keep them working with you.
Get Personal
Whether your business is based online or not, as you get bigger, it can be easy to lose sight of who your customers are. Make an effort to engage with and reach out to each of your customers. You can send a hand-written thank you note to the customers who have been with your company the longest or send a personal email to customers to see how they are and to see how they liked a product or service. Keep the email and note completely free of sales language. You want to surprise the customer and make him or her feel happy, not make him or her feel as if you’re trying to sell something.
Keep Up with What Is Going On With Them
If you run a B2B company, it’s helpful to keep up with what is going on with your customer’s businesses. Follow their companies on social media, subscribe to newsletters, and generally keep an out for any mentions of the company in the news. Then, if something does happen, such as your customer’s company acquires another business or the person you work with directly gets promoted, make sure you reach out to the company and congratulate it. If your company uses social media, you can also write and share a post congratulating your customer.
Offer a Surprise Discount or Freebie
Although it can seem as if companies, particularly larger ones, are offering discounts almost everyday now, if your company doesn’t often mark down products or services, sending your most loyal customers a discount code or offer one day can be appreciated and can convince them to make a new order or purchase from you.
While discounts are great, they are also fairly common. If you want to make your customers happy and more likely to return to you for repeat business, you can try giving them another freebie. Send $5 or $10 gift cards to a coffee shop to your most loyal customers or to customers you’d like to see more business from. Even if your customers don’t drink coffee, it’s likely they can find someone in their social circle to use the gift card, and they’ll appreciate that your business made the effort.
Ask for Their Opinions
Many people like to feel as though their opinions are valued and wanted. Find out what is going on in the minds of your customers by asking them what they think of your products or services. A few weeks or months after a purchase, you might follow up with someone to see how the product is working out for them. If they love it, they will most likely let you know. If they don’t, you’re likely to hear about that, too. Asking for people’s opinions and thoughts gives you a chance to correct any issues and convince a customer to give you another try.
Add Value for Free
One final way to keep customers coming back: add value to your products or services for free. That can mean releasing updates of a product for free or recommending similar companies or products (that aren’t direct competitors with your company). When you give customers updates for free, they feel as if they are getting more value. And, when you recommend other products or companies to them, they feel as if you really get their needs and wants.
Are you wondering what else you can do to help your company continue to grow? Learn more about the virtual CFO and business development services New Direction Capital offers by contacting us today.
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