Today in part 2 of Customer Retention Small Business Marketing Strategies, we focus on sales tactics to foster growth in your business. The key to keeping great customer retention is to keep regular contact with your clientele and prospects via email, phone call and even twitter. Below are some tips for your reference.

Support Claims with Authentic Research and Real Examples

Making unsupported claims about your product is the fastest way to drive away your customers. You should back up your claims with research, case studies and real examples to highlight the USP or unique selling points of your products. Real examples are the most convincing testimonials to enhance sales.

Real Customer Testimonials As a Sale Lead Generation Tactic

Real Customer Testimonials is a very important tactic to lead generate for new sales. The credibility is much higher when other real customers speaks well of your product and allow you to quote them in your sales and publicity materials. Compared to making your own products claims, this is indeed more credible and convincing to the potential buyers, especially when they are return buyers who are familiar with your company and your customers. Work into your public relations and after sales feedback process to set up an easy process to generate testimonials. For every satisfied customer, request a testimonial for future use. Most will be willing to provide you with the information, especially when your public relations officer would be using them in your newsletter and giving your customers free publicity exposure. Get customers’ permission to use the testimonials in your small business marketing strategies and tactics like corporate website, sales brochures and direct mailers, email etc.

Dare To Ask … For Referrals, That Is

If you trust the company you keep and trust the customers you have, there should be no problem in asking for referrals from your existing customers. Again, work out a lead generation process to ask for referrals, preferably at the end of the sales process or together with the request for testimonials. You would be surprised how simply by asking, you will be rewarded handsomely financially.

100% Guaranteed or Your Money Back

The above phrase looks very familiar to most of us. But read it again, this time from the perspective of your customer – the buyer. Reading it from this whole new standpoint would give the phrase a whole new meaning too. Providing a money back refund guarantee is the best vouch for quality and helps to reduce buyer’s remorse, especially when you are selling high ticketed items. The key to good customer relationship is to ensure that you process refunds fast and hassle free, Remember that you build trust by standing by your words and keeping a good reputation within the industry and amongst your customers are critical to building long term relationships.

If you brainstorm deeper, you will be able to innovate even more into Small Business Marketing Strategies for customer retention. What is more critical is the implementation and follow through of your promise to deliver, exceed customer expectations, and WOW them into a long term business relationship.

As Trust is the Foundation and key to any sustaining relationship between two parties, and this is ever so true with business relationships. With trust comes confidence in your product and services, thereby meaning that you are more inclined to generate more future revenue from them over the long term. Below are the Customer Retention Small Business Marketing Strategies and tips on building trust for great long term customer relationships

Position Yourself and Your Business As The Must Have Resource

Information, be it generic or specific to your products and services can be critical to the final buying decision of the customer. Provide information which are accurate, timely and useful to your clients. For the less internet savvy clients, you may wish to set up a monthly newsletter to be sent to all by snail mail.

Whenever possible, include a blog section to your company and product websites and provide constant updates and useful information to clients. Email them whenever you have fresh content that you think they might be interested in. You can provide free physical or online training on how to use your products and services or conduct webinars.

Adopt A High Touch Strategy

Content can come in the form of articles, video or audio. When you write articles and publish them on your website, article directories as well as complementing product websites, you are establishing yourself as an expert who knows about the subject in depth and will to share pertinent information thereby helping you to build trust and loyalty.

Keeping constantly at the top of mind is very important to your business. Successful businesses often adopt a high touch strategy which embraces the concept of regular and consistent contact with potential and existing customers to facilitate interest and high mindshare. Your tools of communication include email, snail mail, phone, newsletters etc. You can even do surveys, polls, online or paper based focus groups to generate feedback for product and service enhancements.

To build trust and long term relationships with customers literally means that you whole heartedly avail yourself and your business to their needs, being accessible at most times and always listening to feedback for product and service improvements. This is essentially one of the key success factors of Customer Retention Small Business Marketing Strategies.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series.

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In this looming economic downturn, you would think that there is little you could do with your existing client base. Well think again. It is all about understanding your clients’ needs and meeting them exceeding their expectations. You have been in business for a while now with a list of existing, potential and dormant clients. What can you do to further the potential revenue from the list? Yes, you merge, purge and keep selling to your repeats.

Customer Retention vs Customer Acquisition

The cost of customer acquisition versus customer retention could reach as high as 700%, according to a report by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company as below:

• Acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer
• Over a 5 year period customer attrition rates could reach as high as 50% if databases are left dormant
• Businesses which boosted customer retention rates by as little as 5% saw increases in their profits ranging from 5% to a whopping 95%.

Regardless of whether your business nature is B2C or B2B, there are critical steps which you must execute whenever you run your direct marketing campaigns. This applies for both online and offline direct marketing campaigns. I shall skip the basics and we shall proceed to delve deeper into your databases.

Repeat Buyers – Make Them Sticky for Life

What at Repeat Buyers? They are your loyal customers who continue to use your services by virtue of the fact that you provide a specific product or service which they need, they are used to and that which is not available elsewhere. You may have exceed their expectations by a superior product or service, over delivered on your product value proposition or provided additional value add to them in a special way. You might also have given them privilege pricing which is unmatched elsewhere. Or your delievery channels are good match for their needs. In all aspects, you must have impressed your repeat clients well to keep them coming back for more. And there are ways you could further capitalize on them.

These repeat customers are what you might deem as Cash Cows as in the BCG Matrix, which require little maintenance cost, and consistently repeat revenue over time. You need to analyze the greatest “hook” your product or service have on them, which could be anything from the above stated.

Milk The Cash Cows, Build Relationships, Help Them To Help You

“Milk” them well by continuing to delivering your services over and above expectations. You may launch a special marketing campaign specific for loyal customers and package your most popular offerings using bundled pricing.

For B2C businesses, consider organizing “Loyalty Rewards Nights” and have them invite their friends and families, or have a quarterly “Bring a Buddy” Special Seminar. For B2B businesses, organize Business Partner’s Nite where business partners bring along their extended business associates for networking purposes or Golf Charity Outing for fostering relationships.

How ever your approach, you need to keep building relationships with this segment and provide them with genuine help in support of furthering Their business objectives. Essentially, you need to help them to help you grow your business. This way, good word-of-mouth & “testimonial” will bring you much more sustaining revenue over time.

Why Did You Stop Buying? – Reviving Your Dormant Customers

As for the Dormant Customers who have been one time buyers, run a “Survey Gift Pack” and ask them why they have not bought from you again. This is the customer segment which could well turn into your Cash Cows if you only listened to them. You might be surprised to find what they have to say about your product or service. Keep an open mind and take criticism constructively. Past experience is that further product development and refinement arise from customer feedback giving rise to new lease of life to the product life cycle.

Check out more good reads, visit Product Life Cycle Rejuvenation