Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Raving Fans and Loyal Customers = More Sales (Pt.1)

Thomas Shaw

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:

Holiday Expediters – Who want their product fast, regardless of a 10% increase in price, typically before a major holiday or event. Avg 3 sales per six months.

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

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PCI Compliance

by goWholesale.com

With all the concerns about identity theft and credit card fraud these days, it’s no surprise that credit card companies are keeping a closer eye on businesses to make sure credit card numbers and personal information are being properly protected. This is how PCI compliance standards came about.

PCI stands for Payment Card Industry. The compliance standards were set up and not only apply to your business, but also the banks and credit card companies. The industry wants everyone who is in contact with credit cards to be responsible with the sensitive personal information that has been entrusted to them.

The importance of being PCI compliant can’t be over-emphasized. If you are found to not be PCI compliant, you can have your credit card processing privileges revoked.

Imagine how much business you would lose if you could not accept credit cards!

Network Security

In order to charge a credit card, the cardholder’s information has to go through a network to be processed. Wherever that information is sent and stored needs to be protected in order to meet PCI compliance standards. If you have an online business that runs through a web server, your website processing is generally covered by the server company - they promise security. You should check to make sure their security includes encryption of at least 128-bit SSL (secure socket layer) to meet the standards.

But what happens to the information when it reaches your home or office computer? Do you keep any of the customers’ information? Even if you just keep their names, you need to have that list of customers secure on your system.

You also need to make sure you have the proper firewalls and security programs in place to keep that information safe.

Cardholder Data in the Office

If you keep any of your customers’ card information on file in your computer or elsewhere in your place of business, you need to protect it in order to meet PCI compliance standards.

While many businesses do store customer credit card information to make things easier for repeat purchases, it is necessary to make sure that data is encrypted, so anyone who tries to steal the information will not be able to decipher it.

Train Your Staff

If you have employees, make sure they have been properly trained in the procedures to keep customers’ information safe.

You should have a company policy for dealing with sensitive information - and make sure all your employees are very clear on the protective procedures that must be followed.

Limit Staff Access

While you may have trained your employees in the right way to deal with credit cards, there are always some people that will take advantage of sensitive personal data. Unfortunately, you won’t know it’s one of your employees until it’s too late. The best way to avoid this is by limiting their access to sensitive information.

This information should only be allowed in the hands of those who need to have access to it. Even then, each person should have their own login ID to get into the system so you can monitor what they are looking at.

Keep Your Computers Protected

Every day, hackers are coming up with new ways to get into the computer systems of businesses around the world. While your business may not be the first target on their list, if your computer systems are easy to break into, they may consider you an easy target.

Make sure to keep your computer operating software and virus protection software up to date. Most companies offer regular maintenance updates to fix any loopholes that have been found in a system.

Once you have a cardholder security system in place, you need to make sure it’s working. Test your system regularly. You can even have security testing companies regularly check your set-up for any openings, and keep you one step ahead of the hackers.

goWholesale helps small businesses find suppliers of the products and business services they need to grow. Connect to wholesale suppliers and find valuable information for your business today at www.goWholesale.com

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