You may have cracked the business code for offering amazing products at dirt cheap prices or solved a long unnoticed pain point with your service. However, that doesn’t count for much if you fail to retain customers. That’s why you need to work on building customer loyalty to grow your small business big.
Loyal customers make up your stable customer base and bring your repeat purchases, more upselling opportunities, and keep your revenue up. They are also your fiercest band advocates. That’s why successful marketing ideas for small businesses always work towards building customer loyalty
Let’s check out how you can cultivate customer loyalty with limited resources:
1. A loyalty program
The goal of a loyalty program is to incentivize repeat purchases from your customers and also make them feel rewarded and valued. There are several ways to do this.
- Referrals– Referral programs encourage your customers to spread the word about your brand with referrals. No, successful referrals! So, only reward people with discounts or free products, if they can get another person to buy or subscribe to your product or service. This is one of the best marketing campaigns common in Silicon Valley.
- Points-based system– your customers get points for every purchase and can redeem them in the form of discounts, merch, or something else.
- Tiered programs– In this program, you create a layered system with increasing benefits depending on purchase history and overall business. So, if you have a limo service, your gold-tiered customers get an exclusive and luxurious experience on their birthday.
Points-based and tiered programs are some of the viable and low-cost marketing strategies small businesses can adopt.
2. Provide excellent customer service
Do you know when a happy customer turns loyal? When you exceed their expectations! Pleasant surprises leave a wonderful taste in our mouth and exceeding customer expectations always achieves that. For instance, what if your customer service representative doesn’t just apologize for a late shipment, but adds a discount code as an apology? Unexpected and Pleasant!
Invest in training your staff and make sure that they are knowledgeable about your offerings, align with your brand voice, and are patient and friendly with the customers. It’s also important to pay your staff well so that they proactively seek out customer pain points and solve them. Trader Joe’s is a great example where they pay their workers fairly and also offer them other benefits. No wonder their employees are always happy and extra-friendly.
Do you have a customized customer service training plan that worked wonders for you? Submit a guest post in our marketing blog and share those ideas to promote your business and help out other business owners like you. Another win-win!
3. Go beyond the discounts
Discounts are amazing incentives! However, loyalty goes beyond monetary transactions. Give your loyal customers the royal treatment while acting on your strengths. For instance, if you run a smokehouse, invite loyal customers to behind-the-scenes operations where you show them how you select ranch cows to preserve the quality of your product.
You can give special access to tasting sessions for new products you’re thinking about launching. This kind of low budget marketing idea requires you to think of a smart strategy where you provide your customers with valuable experiences without eating away at your budget.
4. Collect feedback to improve your offerings
Small businesses don’t have resources or a large enough customer base to collect a wealth of data and analyze that to improve their services and products. Instead, you can go old school with feedback mechanisms. For instance, you can create a Google form for collecting feedback and suggestions on your product lineup and create a QR code that can be scanned on your invoices.
When you use the information collected by those forms to improve your service or products, let the customers know that their suggestions helped. Add a discount code with a personalized thank you note. These gestures show your customers that they are valued and make them willingly share those positive experiences to attract new customers to your business.
Building customer loyalty with limited resources isn’t difficult when you use the above-mentioned tips. They help you make genuine connections and cultivate a loyal fanbase among your customers. Have some stellar marketing tips of your own? Write for us in our marketing blog to share them with a wider audience.
