Photo by Henrique Félix, CC0 1.0
Getting customers into your door or onto your online site is difficult. However, there’s something that’s even more hard – keeping those customers for a long time and having them come back for more and more. Because of the tough competition in most industries and the huge influence that technology has on our shopping decisions, it’s pretty tough to gain customers and make them loyal to your brand and your brand alone. However, this is a crucial part of making your business successful. You should work your hardest to build loyalty among your customer base.
But how is that even possible when you have so much competition knocking down your door and stealing your customers? Well, we’re going to tell you how in the below article. There are plenty of ways to do this and most aren’t too difficult to implement in your business! Keep reading down below to learn more about these methods to gain loyal customers.
1. Get Super Personal with Them
One of the first things that you have to realize when you want to build loyalty in your customers is what your customers actually want. Your customers want to feel as though you truly care about them. They want you to know what they’re looking for and recognize them when they come back to your business for a second or third time. This may seem over-the-top, but wouldn’t you want the same if you are a returning customer to a specific establishment? In case you’re helping clients find cost-effective homes, you should take the time to learn about their needs, desires, and help them achieve what they’re looking to achieve.
There are plenty of ways to make this happen. For example, when a returning customer walks through the door, you can configure a message to be sent to them thanking them for their visit and offering them a coupon.
2. Give Priority to Your Best Customers
When you have returning customers, one of the most important things to do is give them priority. This really depends on the industry you’re operating in, but there are ways to implement this priority no matter what product or service you are selling. You could give your loyal customers first access to the newest products or services you have to offer before anyone else. Or you can give them the opportunity to skip the line, rather than waiting with your first-time customers. Perks like these are going to ensure they keep coming back for more because it shows you really care about their business.
3. Meet The Chef
Meet-and-greets and behind-the-scenes tours are fantastic ways to make your loyal customers feel special and keep them coming back for more. Imagine how great it feels whenever the chef comes up to your table after your meal and thanks you for coming in. He or she might even talk about the meals you just ate and what recipes they are based on. This is the same logic that applies to your loyal customers. If you have a warehouse, you can offer them a behind-the-scenes tour of what goes into make the products or organizing the services they love so much. Or you can offer for them to have an exclusive meeting with one of your executive leaders.
Each of these options are really going to help them feel special.
4. Create True Ambassadors
Customer referral programs are a great way to make your customers into both loyal customers and ambassadors of your brand. When you implement these ambassador programs, customers will be able to refer their friends and family to buy your product or service. Whenever those friends or family come on-board, the customer who referred them will get some sort of discount or free product/service. It’s been shown that companies with customer referral programs found a big growth in their new & loyal customer bases after a while of it being in place.
5. Reward Your Customers Properly
One of the most crucial things you need to think about when you want to gain loyal customers is to give them what they really want – free stuff! Yes, you know it’s true. When you want customers to come back for more of your product or service, you should have a high-quality loyalty program in play, so they can get free stuff or discounts whenever they buy more of it. If you are a real estate broker, you can offer your loyal customers access to high-quality yard signs that they wouldn’t get otherwise.
You should make sure that these loyalty programs are tier-based. This means that depending on how much your customers purchase, they will get better and better rewards.
6. Minimize The Distractions
Next up, you’re going to have to ensure that you minimize the distractions between your customer and the product/service they want to buy. Customers don’t like to have social media accounts and other tools keep them from getting to what they’re looking for. Spend some time to figure out how you can minimize the obstacles in the way of your customer. This is going to increase the positivity of their experience and keep them coming back for more.
7. Nature Should Take Its Course
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past decade or two, you should know that more and more businesses are using technology in-store to improve the customer experience. But if you try to implement the newest technology as soon as it comes out, it can come off as a little desperate to customers and might even overwhelm them. This could keep your customers from buying your product or coming back from more. It’s best to let nature take its course and let these technologies naturally come into the scene. A better idea would be to use the newest tools and technology behind-the-scenes to improve your customer’s experience that way.
And there you have it! These are all the methods you should think about implementing if you want to improve your customer’s experience and keep them as loyal customers.
