Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
Raving Fans and Loyal Customers = More Sales (Pt.1)
Generating loyal customers is the pinnacle goal of any business as it means return business. All great business owners know return business is not only less expensive to generate but also more profitable. It’s easy to get the words promotion and loyalty confused; promotions generate one-time or transactional sales. Loyal customers generate relationship-based sales.
Loyal customers often have an attachment to the brand, service, product or all three usually beyond just the tangible, it becomes emotional. Good examples include: a favorite family restaurant, the morning cereal, or your first mobile phone.
How do you determine the best way to generate customer loyalty? How do you know it is working? How much should you pay to generate that loyalty? The answers are through detailed customer interaction and transactions your customers will answer that for you, and I’ll show you how.
Generating Customer Loyalty, Start with Segmentation
Many will say loyalty starts at the transaction; I propose it begins before the customer knows they will make a transaction. Businesses need to understand their customer groups are as different as the cars they drive and know the key attributes to deliver their customers before their customers know it.
Step 1) Segment Your Customers – Break Your Customers Into Easy to Understand Groups. Take the main differences, wants, needs, attributes or sometimes called psychographics, but only the 4 or 5 defining attributes.
Segmenting allows you and your organization to understand the differences, group them and name them to discuss them. If you don’t know the differences or have not measured them through research or survey, do it. If you are a small business, get all your customers to complete a survey and rank the main areas: Product, Price, Service, Overall Experience, Cleanliness, or Expedience, add those attributes that are key to your competitive attributes and differentiation. Add the questions, no more than 10 to your registration page.
For example, you may find you have 3 groups of retail website customers:
Big Spenders – 6 or more sales every six months.
Impulse Buyers – The one time purchase that caught their eye. Has capacity to become a Big Spender.
About Thomas Shaw: A marketing innovator recognized as one of the most influential marketing bloggers, by Ogilvy and Mather 2007-2008. He has held senior marketing roles in the financial services vertical driving brand awareness, sports sponsorship, mass media and direct response campaigns while leading and motivating departments of over 100 people. A former ad agency veteran he delivers a business development and strategic approach to marketing with hands-on experience. His nationally recognized blog is at www.MarketingExecutive.biz
Posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 11:51 am and is filed under Branding, Business, Customer Service, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
