How You Can Build Greater Customer Loyalty

Let's face it. Landing new customers can be tough. It's often time-consuming and expensive, and it usually takes lots of hard work. Many businesses and sales reps get so caught up in seeking out new customers that they never stop to think of, much less implement, a proven way to build their business and substantially boost their company's marketing ROI.

What's this sales “secret” that can make your business so much more profitable and make your life so much easier? Focusing on making repeat sales to your current customers. And how do you create an environment where they are more likely to buy from you again and again? And tell their friends about you and how wonderful it is to do business with you?

You actively work to build customer loyalty. You “knock their socks off” with incredible service and value. You treat them so well that they can't imagine doing business with any of your competitors, and would feel guilty if they did.

Loyal customers are necessary and are a benefit to any business. Without them, your business might survive, but it's very unlikely to thrive. Loyal customers tend to buy more from you, and say positive things about you – very important in this day and age of social media. And they are, as a rule, much more pleasant to do business with.

So how can you build up a loyal customer base that loves you so much they buy from you over and over and become “evangelists” for your company? Glad you asked!

Ways To Build Customer Loyalty 

Customer loyalty is something you can “set the stage” for, and begin building, even before you make the first sale to your prospect. You can do this by producing marketing content and copy that resonate with him, that interest him, that he eagerly devours because they are focused on him and how you can help him solve a pressing problem.

To win more customers, and increase the odds that they will be loyal to you down the road, make the sales process as pleasant as possible. Do what you can to minimize the stress your prospect's feeling while he's buying from you.

Go For The Win-Win

Don't make him “jump through hoops” to take ownership of your product. When he's ready, even anxious to buy, let him buy then and there! During your sales presentations, whether in person or by phone, be “consultative”, not pushy. Ask him questions about his needs, and show him how your product can meet these. Don't force feed him what you want him to buy. Offer him what he wants.

When he's made his decision to buy from you, gently upsell him on additional products you have from which he could benefit. Don't be afraid to do this. Don't feel like you are doing him a disservice. The truth is quite the opposite. Think about it: if you have an additional product that can make his life less stressful, can make his work more productive and successful, etc., don't you owe it to him to at least mention it?

After he buys from you the first time, and every time after that, send him a thank you note, preferably one that's hand-written. Remember that even in this age of digital marketing wonders, there's still a place for the “offline touch”. A hand-written “Thank You” card sent to your new customer through the mail can have a big impact on him and can build loyalty to you.

Your Email Newsletter: A Great Tool For Building Loyalty And TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness)

In your newsletter, you can give your customer valuable, useful content that helps him solve a problem or accomplish a goal.  You can remind him that you are available, in case he's thinking of making a new purchase or has a question for you.

You can include marketing messages that persuade him to consider buying from you again. And yes, you can use your email newsletter and other content marketing tools to build TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness).

Consider this: Many companies make a sale and then totally ignore their new customer. So when the customer is ready to make a supplemental or replacement purchase, he often forgets about the original vendor and goes somewhere else.

If you had kept your brand prominently planted in his mind through email and a solid content marketing strategy that offered him valuable free information and subtly “sold” him on buying from you again, chances are he would have bought from you again.

The Most Common Customer Loyalty Killer?

You can work hard to provide a pleasant marketing and sales experience for your customers (by all means, please do), and you can give them valuable information through your content marketing efforts while increasing the likelihood they will buy from you again, but if your Service department routinely drops the ball, you will lose a lot, maybe even all of the loyalty you've worked so hard to build up.

Don't let this happen! Don't let your post-sale customer service become the weak link in your customer loyalty chain. Hire, train and handsomely compensate qualified, motivated customer service reps. Teach them to listen attentively. Train them to quickly solve problems and to know when to escalate the case to higher level support.

Make it easy for customers with service problems to quickly reach a qualified, eager-to-help, cheerful, live person, instead of doing what so many companies do – make customers navigate a near-impossible menu, put them on a ridiculously long hold and try to divert them to an automated menu of service tips when what they really want is to talk to a living, breathing human, not a machine.

Great Waiters Do This. You Should Too

Another great way to build strong customer loyalty, one that both Sales and Service can actively pursue, is to anticipate customer needs before they ask. Here's an illustration from the restaurant industry you can apply to your own business: Think about the last several times you dined out in a full service restaurant. Did you have to continuously ask your waiter for more coffee, bread, butter or sugar?

If you did, maybe he promptly responded to those requests, giving you what you had asked for. That would indicate a level of service that you might consider “OK” or even good. But wouldn't the service have been much better and your dining experience much more enjoyable if the server had silently and unobtrusively monitored your table and promptly taken care of these seemingly little things before you had to ask?

Apply this illustration to your business. What needs do your customers have that you can anticipate and respond to without them having to ask you first? Do this, and they will be blown away by your great service, and needless to say, will be much more likely to reward you with their loyalty!

Don't discount the importance of outstanding customer service. It's a wonderful way to build fanatically loyal customers. It can pave the way for repeat sales.

Digital Tools To Help You Build Customer Loyalty

Whether you run an offline “brick and mortar” business that leverages the power of the Internet to help you win and keep customers, or your business is strictly an online venture like an E-Commerce store, there are plenty of available tools to help you in your quest to build a loyal customer base.

One of the most effective steps you can take in your loyalty building campaign is to simply ask for feedback from your customers about how they feel about doing business with your company –  how they feel about your marketing and sales processes, your product quality, your customer service.

An effective way to gather the information you need in order to gauge how you are doing is to run an online survey. A well-known survey tool that many businesses rely on is Survey Monkey. Survey Monkey allows you to quickly and easily set up and run a survey and analyze the feedback you get.

Doppler – Email Marketing Made Simple!

Businesses can benefit big time by leveraging the power of email marketing. Doppler is a powerful, easy-to-use email marketing platform that enables you to quickly and easily create and send emails to your customers, providing them with useful, problem-solving content and paving the way for future sales. Doppler integrates with social media, enabling your customers to share your content with their networks, meaning you can gain even more valuable traffic to your website.

Lander – The Easiest-To-Use-Landing Page Platform In The Universe! 

Like I talked about earlier, you can lay the groundwork for strong customer loyalty even before your customers become your customers. You can give them a stellar marketing and sales experience that makes buying from you a pleasure. A landing page from Lander is a great tool to help you do this.

Whether you are running a B2B content marketing campaign with the goal of drawing new prospects into your sales funnel, or you operate an E-Commerce store, a Lander landing page can help you create a marketing environment your prospect will enjoy.

He'll love our professionally-designed landing page templates engineered for a pleasant user experience. If you own a local business, and he's trying to find your location nearest him, he'll love how Lander provides support for Google Maps and how you took advantage of this powerful feature.

He'll love that each of our templates comes standard with its own confirmation page, especially when you use it to sincerely thank him for being your customer.

You'll love what a great tool Lander offers you to help you build customer loyalty. You'll love that it offers your prospects such a wonderful user experience. You'll love that it enables you to further optimize your online marketing campaigns through its advanced A/B testing capability.

Lander has clients in over 132 countries. You can become one of them. You can enjoy the same benefits they do. And we have great news! As always, you can try Lander for free!

Happy Marketing!