Your customer is the lifeblood of your organization. Without strategic customer retention efforts, your company can and will spend more money trying to permanently attract more customers. In fact, retaining current customers is 80% cheaper than gaining new ones. But, the question remains, how do you attract potential customers to your business, convert them, and then retain them.
The customer experience is one of the most important factors to include in any marketing or strategic plan for your organization. Creating key touch points within your company ensures that your customer experiences everything about your brand and your product from the minute they interact with your brand for the first time.
So, just what converts someone from being interested in your product to actually converting into a customer? We took a look at what factors decide whether or not a customer will convert, and thereafter, become a fully-fledged, loyal fan to your brand.
Trust Is a Huge Factor
75% of customers will not buy from you if they don’t trust you. The price of the product or service is the only other contributing factor to a customer choosing your product over another. Establishing a sense of trust with your customer base can be a long process, but there are a number of ways of achieving this.
Having existing customers review your products and services are a big drawcard in attracting new customers. In fact, having positive reviews is essential for your brand. Not only can customers establish that your existing client base is satisfied with your product, but it also provides key information to new customers about your products. Consumer review sites can be a great marketing tool for you to attract new customers.
They work in your favor in several ways, besides allowing customers to see other satisfied compliments. Firstly, the customer can learn more about the product and establish if it suits their needs. Secondly, they could open up a brand new market that you have not reached before. The sites listing your brand with several other brands open your audience, especially to the direct target market who are specifically searching for your product. Your potential customer is already verified and interested and all you need to do is convert them.
They Feel Like You Empower Them
Knowing your customers is one of the biggest keys to unlocking your customer’s loyalty. But this doesn’t mean knowing their average age, gender, and general demographics. This is about knowing what interests your customers, what their behaviors are and what their buying pattern is like. They want to know that they are more than a number to you.
Exceptional CX means that you go out of your way to make sure that your customer’s needs are met time and time again. Every touchpoint that the customer has with your company needs to be optimized to make it efficient, and as informative as possible. It is vital to also know what the customer wants before they know it themselves. You can only do this by tracking their behavior and monitoring patterns. Offer them additional products or add-ons when they purchase, throw in discounts or free delivery. Follow up on their experience and find out what they liked and disliked about the experience.
All the while, you need to keep engaging with them and continuously offer useful content and information that they can actually use. Blogs and newsrooms are a great way to convey informative content to your customers that will allow them to feel empowered, trust you more, and ensure that they have the right information at hand to use with your brand. An informed customer is an empowered customer. And an empowered customer will be a loyal customer.
Constant Engagement Will Keep Them Coming Back
When we say constant, we don’t mean that you need to hound your customers. Frequent contact, on various platforms, on different levels will keep your customers interested and engaged. Have a mailer going out once or twice a week with the informative content that they can actually use. Post on social media frequently to keep your brand top of their minds, and make this content as engaging as possible.
The most engaging posts are posts that encourage the customer to have a say. They should be regularly incentivized to comment, like, share and tag friends into posts. Give your customers a reason to visit your social pages and interact with you. Keep in mind too, that these social pages are also a key platform for customers to review and see reviews of other customers. So, make sure you keep it as transparent as possible and engage with your reviewers. Remember, if you get a negative review, the best way of dealing with it is to engage with the person who posted it in the first place.
Their Buying Process is Respected
Knowing your customer’s buying pattern will mean that you know exactly when to target them without them getting annoyed with harassing engagement. Instead, it will rather serve as a reminder to purchase again. If you are a B2B company, you should have keen insight into when your customer will need replacement products and when they usually stock up. You will need to know who the point of contact is, how they go about the purchase and their habits around making the purchase.
Once you know these habits, you can shorten and sweeten the process for them. Take the hassle out of them making the purchase and you will have a customer returning again and again. You can also incentivize more purchases by offering them discounts, add-ons or delivery discounts.
Last Thoughts
In wrapping up, make sure that your customer experience strategy is in place in your brand. Customers need to be encouraged to come back over and over again to be surprised and delighted throughout the customer journey. The key aspect to keep in mind is that your brand needs to be trustworthy at all times. Whether the validation comes from other customers, reviewers, or constant content to keep them engaged, you will need to ensure that it is being fed in from all platforms to keep your brand at the top of their minds at all times.
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