Deb Rapacz • Great question. It’s also helpful to ask if you’re losing your best customers. It’s amazing to me that many of the CPG brands I work with lose as many of half of their heaviest customers from one year to the next. And the percentage is higher for lighter buying groups.Good strategies can be developed to solve those problems once you realize you are losing customers.
There is tremendous power in keeping current customers – especially your heavy buying customers. My research shows heavy buyers typically stay with the brand longer, use the brand more exclusively, buy on-deal less often, engage with the brand more, and cost less to keep vs. acquiring new ones.
How can you measure if you are losing your customers?
The real simple way to measure is how many did you have last year over this current year or count every six months.
Look at:
- Who is returning and who isn’t?
- Have your customers signed up for your loyalty program or not?
- When was the last time they referred or bought from you?
- When Is the last time you spoke to them?
- Have you asked them to fill out a feedback survey?
- Why aren’t they returning to your business?
Some people keep track of their customers by using a ROI - Return of Investment to get a new customer. Some people track ROR a return on the relationship that you have invested in.
Shehryar Anwar • Net Promoter Score is surely an effective way of measuring, monitoring and improving customer loyalty. The concept revolves around gauging relationship strength by getting customer feedback on regular basis. I suggest you read “The Ultimate Question” to get an insight into what this single number can do to your business.
If you aren’t concerned about losing your customers, this means someone else is serving them. If you are always busy with new customers, depending on them to keep returning on their own will not help you, especially if you have an off-season or off year. Yes, it’s great to be busy, however if you aren’t continually marketing your business, customers will forget about you. Then what?
Developing a relationship with your customers will surely grow your business faster and be more profitable. People seek a community or Tribe to belong to.
For example, there is a wonderful restaurant here in Sedona, Elote – they do nothing to encourage customer loyalty. Yet they are packed every night for dinner. Why? The food is excellent and they rely on visitors to come to their restaurant. It’s one of my favorite places to dine..Why? Staff is friendly the food is fresh, very good and because I am local, my husband and I will chat up the visitors offer suggestions what to do in Sedona, while they are here. Plus, the bar or community table is a place to hang out and build community.
If I had the opportunity or if Jeff would be interested in retaining his raving fans there would be a few things I would suggest that he could do. The challenge that I have found, if you are in a tourist town, or city being too dependent upon visitors and not locals can leave you in a challenging place.
Are you losing customers is something you really need to think about and why are you losing them? Get my FREE Report on why your are really losing them.
Thanks,
Mari-Lyn
Tagged as:
Relationships,
reputation
It’s amazing of how many times I have gone to a website or blog that an Artist has asked for feedback on their site, how can they improve it? Mostly because they don’t get the visitors that they would like to have who then they can convert into customers or buyers for their art work.
The first thing I look for is a CTA – Call to Action..most recently mobile advertisers or text advertisers are offering workshops in how to get the attention of the phone users. This CTA is the lowest way to get people to take action on your products for services. Only 6% of mobile users are being targeted right now. Maybe it’s a good thing, because it’s not heavily used. You also, need to consider if your product is going to benefit from using this tactic. I don’t think selling or having a CTA for art work is going to work. A mobile capture would work well for restaurant or food services.
Say you are out for lunch, and you are wondering where is a good place to go eat lunch? If there is an ad or coupon for a lunch place then you may consider taking up the coupon offer and go to that location.
CTA are using ways to convert your visitors, readers, fans to op-tin to your newsletter or get a FREE report or gift. It’s a way to grow your list. Who is in your list and how do you keep in touch with them, will depend upon how long they hang out with you…and it will also give them an opportunity if they really want to do business with you. Like take you up on your coaching program, or buy your art work or workshop or..whatever services or products you are offering and they need or want.
Growing your list takes time and effort..for example I created a series of “How to’s in Developing your Social Media Strategy,” it’s a blend of video’s, text and e-books to help you to get started. It’s very simple yet doable for the Do It Your Selver (DIY’er), or for new Start up’s. Once you are through the program you can decide if you want to get another e-book from me, or subscribe to my blog posts via RSS.
You can grow your list, by offering the kind of things I am doing or you can do a newsletter. Here’s a few other ways that you can grow your list with.
1. Newsletter subscriptions
2. Forward the newsletter or report to a friend
3. Offline shows and events
4. Having social sharing buttons on your site
5. Social sharing buttons in your email
6. Registration forms for downloads or workshops or tele-seminars
7. Registration for a purchase
8. Online events/webinars
9. Paid search – like Paid per click or Google Ad words
10. Co-registration programs, some call this a JV
11. Mobile phones
12. Contests
13. Free Trials, giveaways, samples
14. A sign-up page when they are checking out of your shopping cart
You want to be sure to have a CTA on every page according to Hubspot..the thing you want to be sure is that you want a quality relationship with those that opt-in, if you aren’t then they are just fillers, lurkers. If they aren’t the right people for your business then you will begin to feel you are wasting your time.
If you doing have enough CTA’s on your site, now I have given you a few ideas in how you can get started and why you really need to consider in doing this.
Here’s my CTA, Get a Free Report on Customer Retention and why you are losing customers.
By the way, if you are interested in expanding your network..join me for a Rolodex Party November 3rd Thursday 9:00am PST. Just enter with your 1st name.
See you then,
Mari-Lyn Harris
Tagged as:
Artists,
inbound marketing
