There is plenty of advice out there for startups and small businesses on how to bring new customers to your business.
Of course, there’s a reason for that; it’s one of the most important things that you can do for your business.
After all, without new customers, your business is never going to be in a position to grow, expand or develop.
You need to be constantly thinking about new ways to bring in new customers at all times.
Whether it’s through your marketing, connecting with them through social media, or simply through word of mouth, there are dozens, if not hundreds of different ways that you can attract new customers.
But there’s one thing that a lot of pieces written about attracting customers always seem to forget, and that’s how to keep those customers.
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How do you keep customers coming back for more time and time again?
There are actually some relatively simple answers to this question. The problem is that far too many people tend to ignore it entirely in favor of constantly focusing on trying to attract more and more new customers.
It hardly takes a genius to understand why your existing customers are so important.
They are the ones who will create a solid foundation for your business so that it can become successful enough to grow and expand.
Not only that but taking care of existing customers is a great way to produce a lot of word of mouth promotion for your business.
If people find that a business consistently takes care of them, they are more likely to tell their friends and family about it. With all of that in mind –
Here Are a Few Simple Ways That You Can Keep Your Customers Coming Back For More
#1. Offer Rewards
A lot of businesses tend to focus on rewards for new customers.
They are constantly running promotions that are specifically designed to tempt new customers away from other businesses by offering them special deals.
This is a great way of doing things when you’re trying to attract new people to your business; it creates an incentive for them to try it out and is a great way to promote it.
The problem with this is that it leaves your existing customers at a disadvantage.
Many existing customers will find themselves paying more for things that new customers are able to get special deals on.
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This is why it’s such a good idea to offer rewards to your existing customers as well.
There are plenty of different ways that you can do this. One simple way is to offer a rewards card that they can present with each purchase that they make.
You can also take the time to reward customers for specific, extended periods of time spent with your business.
If they have been a loyal customer for a year or more, then it’s worth showing your appreciation through some sort of special offer.
#2. Improve Your Customer Service
One of the simplest and most effective ways of holding on your existing customers is also one of the methods that tend to get ignored by many businesses.
Your customer service is a fantastic way to make sure that your customers always have positive associations with your business.
Let’s face it; you’re never going to be in a position where you can keep every single one of your customer’s happy one-hundred percent of the time, so it’s important that you have customer services that are available to support them in the event that this happens.
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Not only is a strong focus on customer service important to help support customers who have had some kind of problem with your business, but it also has a very subtle, but very crucial psychological effect on your customers.
If your customer service staff have done absolutely everything that they can to support the customer and deal with their problem, then customers are going to come away from that interaction feeling very positive about your business.
Even if they first contacted you feeling angry or frustrated, the fact that you went out of your way in order to help them is going to create an extremely positive association in their minds.
This will make them far more likely to want to engage with your business again in the future, as well as making them more likely to recommend you to the people in their life.
#3. Make Customers Feel Important
Above everything else, most customers simply want to be made to feel as though they really matter.
They don’t want to feel as though you see them as just another one out of thousands of different customers.
There are plenty of different ways that you can make customers feel special and important.
If your business is fairly small, then there’s a chance that you will be able to strike up a much more personal relationship with them and connect with them on a human level.
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Of course, unless you have an extraordinary memory then you’re never going to be able to remember the names of every single customer when you’re potentially dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of them.
In this case, a solid point-of-sale system can come in very handy. Any way that you can set up a database of information on your customers so that you can record who they are and what interactions they’ve had with your business in the past.
This not only allows you to tailor sales that you make towards them but it offers you the chance to do little things that can make your customers feel valued.
For example, one of the best things that you can do for your customers is to call them just to see how they are getting on with your product. It’s a very small thing but it really can make a whole world of difference.
