Customer Acquisition and Retention – The Keys to Growth

Retaining existing customers is a goal that every company needs to have, however getting those customers to purchase more is also extremely important.  Those customers already know you and your products, you just need to get them to purchase more of your products.

Just keeping existing customers buying and hopefully buying more is important, but if you really want your company to grow, you need to acquire more customers.  Here are a few recommendations on how to grow existing customers and acquire new ones.

Customer Retention and Growth

Do Your Customers Know That You Listen To Them ? – When your customers make your brand their brand, you win.  Do you listen to your customers?  Customers want you to listen to them and provide the products that they want, not the products you think they want.  A great place to listen to your customers is social media.  When you do something right or wrong, social media is where your customers let other potential customers know how they feel about you.  Use existing customers as a focus group to grow your business.  When your customers feel that you are listening to them, they will feel an affiliation to your brand.

Customer Loyalty – Do you have a customer loyalty program?  I have a keychain with 27 customer loyalty cards on it.  Why do I do have so many?  I have them because I get points, discounts or other benefits for having them.

Encourage Your Customers To Buy Other Products That You Offer – Most people are creatures of habit.  When they like a brand, they become loyal to it.  If your customers are buying Brand X from you, offer them related products to that product.  Since your customers may not be buying the related products from you, they are buying it from someone.  Make it easy for your customers to buy related products.  On your website, those related products should appear when they are checking out. For example, “Don’t forget to buy batteries” when they are purchasing a flashlight.

Cross-Sell vs Upsell – Amazon has done cross-sell and upsell effectively for years.  Amazon has used some very sophisticated algorithms that offered products that are normally purchased together, not necessarily related products.  I know this because I implemented that same referral engine at a few companies where I worked. It was amazing how it worked. When you go to the grocery store to buy milk, do you always buy cereal at the same time?  You may buy milk and ammonia because you run out of them at the same time.  Amazon figured out those buying patterns and offered those products as upsells in addition to related products.  Look at your customers buying patterns and you might find some very valuable information.

Customer Acquisition

Understand Who Your Existing Customers Are – It’s really easy to get a mailing list and blast out tens of thousands of direct mail pieces hoping someone will read the flier, see the light of how great your company is and immediately become a customer.  Realistically, that prospect is someone else’s customer.  Your job is to get them to become your customer.  The best way to find those prospects is to first profile your existing customers.  As I stated earlier, you want to retain your existing customers and encourage them to purchase more.  You also want to find prospects that are like your best customers.  It requires analysis, research and homework, but it’s worth it.

Branding – Prospects may not be existing customers because they may not know who you are and how you can help them.  I have found great success creating and implementing branding and awareness campaigns using direct mail fliers, print and online advertising, email marketing and social media.  People do business with people they know and trust.

Networking –   LinkedIn is an excellent networking tool.  Once you have determined the companies that you want to target, use LinkedIn to find the contacts.  Connect with them on LinkedIn.  If your company doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile, create one and include information about your products and services, as well as your value proposition.

Community Service – Yes, I said Community Service.  There is no better way to let prospects and customers know what your company really stands for than reaching out and helping in the community.  Get some t-shirts made up, give them to your staff and go out in the community and help someone.  My company, Positive Promotions, creates custom t-shirts for a wide variety of charitable causes.  It makes you and your staff feel good, builds morale and teamwork and it shows everyone in the community that you are there not just to sell your products but to give back to your community.

Listen to your customers and give them the products they want and upsell/cross-sell them other products that you sell.  Profile your customers and find prospects that match that profile.  Expanding your brand, network and reach out to the community will help you grow.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit: Krypto / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Marketing Research – The Voice of the Customer

Doing marketing without research is like flying a plane without a flight plan.  Marketing research is a critical part of building a successful marketing plan.  You need to know what the customers want so that you can build your plan to meet their needs.  Here are a few suggestions of ways to gather this critical information.

Surveys  – Email customers with short yet pointed surveys.  Customers don’t like long surveys with tons of questions.  Make sure your surveys are short and to the point.  There are several online survey tools like Survey Monkey, Survey Gizmo, Survey Planet and Smart Survey that you can use.

Focus Groups – Gather together your best customers for a free lunch and conversation of what they like and don’t like about your company.  It is best to have skilled focus group moderators as they have a unique way of gathering necessary information.  I worked with a focus group moderator who had an amazing ability to make participants feel that their suggestions and ideas were the most brilliant they have ever heard, although they have heard those suggestions a dozen times before.

Social Media – Social Media is a great way to get the pulse of what’s going on in your market.  Customers talk to other customers all the time on social media.  You need to join in the conversation.  You’ll learn a lot about your customer’s perception of your company from the conversations that they have on social media.

Google Alerts – Set up Google alerts so you are notified whenever your company is mentioned online.  You’ll be amazed at what your customers and competitors are saying about you.

Visit Your Customers – Pick some customers to visit.  Go see their facilities and learn more about what they do and what they need.  Personal visits can make a huge impact.  When customers see that you really care about their business and building relationships with customers is key to long term success.

Solicit Feedback – Ask your customers on your website and via email to provide you with feedback regarding your products and service.  Assign staff to follow up with every customer who responds.  I learned early in my career that when customers have an issue with your company that you can increase customer satisfaction more if you handle issues quickly versus never having an issue to being with.  Customers like to have issues resolved quickly.  Go above and beyond and your customers will respond positively.

Talk to your customers and find out what their needs are.  Develop products that meet their needs and exceed their expectations.  If you don’t ask customers what they need, you can’t help them.  Guessing and assuming what the customers’ needs are is fruitless.  Ask them and give them what they need.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit:  stavos / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Marketing on a Tight Budget

I don’t know many marketing professionals who have an unlimited, endless budget.  With the economy as sluggish as it is, marketing budgets are monitored closely.  Branding and marketing effectively isn’t cheap, but there are some things that you can do on a tight budget that are still effective.  Here are a few suggestions…

Email Marketing  – Email can be a very effective way to keep your brand in front of your customers and to drive sales to your website.  Email is still a very effective and inexpensive way to communicate.

Search Engine Optimization – Make sure that your website has the correct title tags, long-tail keywords, and great content on each page.  Well indexed pages on Google can increase your visibility in searches, which will drive new customers to your site.

Social Media – Social Media has many benefits for marketers.  Customers talk about your company on Social Media.  Listen and more importantly, join the conversation.  You can do some effective marketing using social media without spending a fortune.

Google Adwords – You need to be very careful with Google Adwords budgeting.  If you aren’t careful, you can blow through your budget very quickly.  The good news is you can set your Google Adwords budget so you don’t overspend.  This is a very effective tool especially if your website isn’t optimized.  You will have the opportunity to appear on search pages that highlight your top selling products.

Oversized Postcards – Postage is often the budget-killer with direct mail marketing, however there are some effective direct mail programs that won’t destroy your budget.  Consider doing oversized postcards or tri-fold mailers.  There are also slim-jim catalogs that still fall into affordable pricing models.

Blogging – Blogging is a very effective way of branding your company and driving traffic back to your website by embedding deep links to your website within the articles that you write.  There are several free blog sites on the internet that are very easy to use.  LinkedIn also offers an excellent tool for your corporate LinkedIn site to post articles.

Press Releases – Send press releases on a regular basis announcing new products or other newsworthy activities for your company.  Press releases can have usually up to four deep links on your website driving traffic to your products.  Sites that offer press release services often give discounts for larger PR packages.  If you decide to do a series of press releases, you can save money.

The best way to take advantage of these recommendations is to put together a strategy that utilizes them together as a synchronized marketing campaign.  Blog posts should work with the other social media activities.  You can get your postcard and email marketing efforts in sync to cover your target markets.  Press releases can drive traffic to your SEO-friendly website and your Google Adwords campaigns can drive traffic to the products that your press release is highlighting.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit: frankieleon / Foter / CC BY

Expand Your Network – Write LinkedIn Posts

I have always enjoyed writing and sharing stories of things that I have learned in business and on a personal level.  When I was younger if you wanted to get published, you had to submit manuscripts through snail mail.  Unless you knew somebody at the publisher, it was very difficult to get your manuscript published.  I know this process well.  I wrote several children’s books, but none of them got published.  Back then, there were so many manuscripts that budding new authors were sending to publishers, I was just one of tens of thousands. But today with blog posts, you “get published” whenever you want to.  It’s not the same as getting a novel published, but there is satisfaction for writers to get their points of view in front of the masses.  LinkedIn now allows you to use this awesome feature within your profile.

I started using this feature as soon as it was made available.  I have written over 30 posts on LinkedIn. Although most of my LinkedIn posts have had modest readership compared to the LinkedIn Influencers, I have been fortunate to have two of my posts featured on the Leadership and Management Pulse channel on LinkedIn.  Instead of having a few hundred people read my posts, when they were featured on LinkedIn Pulse, thousands have read them.

One of the key benefits to posting articles is the feedback you receive.  Some people love my articles and others don’t.  That’s OK.  The important thing is that these posts stimulate conversations with professionals all over the globe.  Many of my readers are interested in Marketing since that is often what I write about. They offer other points of view and valuable input that I haven’t thought of.

Another key benefit to writing posts on LinkedIn is expanding your network.  Since LinkedIn is the best professional networking site on the internet, it makes sense that new connections and followers are a benefit. Sometimes those connections are LinkedIn LIONS (LinkedIn Open Networkers) who have thousands of professionals in their network.  LIONS can help grow your network quickly.

If you don’t know where to start, check out the LinkedIn Pulse channels and read some of the posts that are popular topics and trending.  You will see what everyone is reading and it might give you some ideas on what you want to write about.  Or if you are like me, write whatever inspires you.  You’ll never know who you will inspire unless you try.  So what’s your story?

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit: TheSeafarer / Foter / CC BY