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4 Ways to Grow Your Business—#2 Getting Your Customers to Come Back

1. Win new customers of the right type.

2. Increase the number of times they deal with you.

3. Increase your average sale or ‘transaction value.’

4. Improve the effectiveness and processes within your business to ensure achievement of the first 3!

Most business owners focus their marketing energy on winning customers. But getting your customers to come back to your business more often is more vital to the long-term health and profitability of your business. As is increasing your average sale. And that’s what you’ll learn more about here.

You see, the more frequently your customers purchase from you, the greater your profits. And the greater your profits, the greater the longevity of your business.

Because you paid to acquire that customer on the first sale, every sale after that has no cost to it other than the cost of the goods itself or the labor to complete the service, both of which are covered in the price. So for every sale you make to a past customer, you keep more profits. 

It’s like the icing on the cake. And it’s a huge opportunity for your business.

You see, studies show that it costs 6 times more to win a new customer than it does to have an existing customer come back and purchase again. As such, if you can build repeat sales for your business, you will be even more profitable again. 

Once again, there are many, many ways to encourage your customers to come back. Here you’ll find a list of just some of those key strategies to do just that. 

‘Client acquisition,’ that is, winning new customers, is known as the ‘front end.’ It’s the front of your business, the first time your customers meet you. The front end, or winning new customers, has been the focus of advertising and marketing for many years. Creating a ‘back end’—a reason for customers to come back to you over and over, and making sure they do—is just as critical.

This is also known as ‘customer retention,’ that is, retaining customers and increasing the number of times they deal with you in their ‘lifetime.’

Their lifetime is the length of time they deal with you. For example, your average customers might come back to you 2 or 3 times over a 2-year period. 

Building relationships to build your business

To make it easier for you, we’ve briefly outlined some ideas to help you get your customers to come back to your business more often, and we’ve given you the topics you could be working through with the Business Growth Team at FVBK.

The first and foremost idea in this area is to simply ask your customers to come back to you. 

Most businesses don’t bother. They fail to recognize the profit potential this offers a business. So ask them! Invite them to come back to your business. Once happy with a product or service or a supplier, most customers want to build on that and keep returning to that business. It’s easier for this to happen if customers are given some incentive to do so.

Another great way to keep customers coming back to you more often is to offer awesome service. Offer service that goes over and beyond the industry average for your business. Of course, other issues that keep customers coming back are things like having a competitive advantage or better performance than competitors. 

So do what you do extremely well, offer better or faster services, provide longer warranties or stronger guarantees, give customers some points to differentiate you from your competitors. This will make them want to come back.

You see, 68% of customers leave you for another competitor because of something called ‘perceived indifference’—customers felt you were indifferent toward them. You really weren’t too concerned whether they bought from you. Not asking your customers to come back to you, making them offers, and inviting them to do so—all can be perceived as indifference.

So it’s important to nurture your relationship with your customers in the same way you would any other relationship that was truly important. Nurturing has got to be one of the most cost-efficient and easiest way to win business from your existing customers. By nurturing your existing clients so that they continue to buy from your business, you are, in fact, saving time and your hard-earned money.

Instead of spending mega dollars on cold canvassing your potential clients, use your ‘hot list,’ a list of your existing customers, for direct mail and promotions.

To start with, it’s vital that you collect information about your customers. Phone numbers and addresses so that you can stay in touch. In some cases, it’s appropriate to gather information about other issues, like their date of birth (excluding year!), buying patterns, occupation or income levels, and so on. 

It’s then important to place all of this information in a database, many of which are available for any computer system. At the very least, hard copy records should be kept, although this is usually more difficult to administer than a computer version. This database could, in fact, be your most valuable asset. For example, if maintained well, a good database can add to the value of the purchase of a business.

Once you’ve built your database, take the time to stay in touch by sending regular newsletters, offers, vouchers, calendars, service reminder notices, thank you notes, special articles of interest to your customers, Christmas cards, birthday cards, and much more. Each time, build on the relationship you started at the first purchase.

Remember, too, that when you do write to your existing customers, it’s important to write to them in terms of benefits. And be sure to answer the ‘What’s In It—For Me?’ question in the customers’ minds. That way, they find some benefit in coming back to your business. Also, write to them on a personalized, one-on-one basis—greeting them with their name at the beginning of a letter, for example.

Complete follow-up phone calls to make sure they’re 100% happy, delighted even, with what they received from your business.

Develop ‘communication schedules.’ These schedules outline the dates and times of all communications, verbal and written, that you’ll send your customers over 1 year, for example.

Interestingly, the more often you stay in touch with them, the more often they’ll purchase from you. Hence, scheduling communication to reach your customers will bring more of them back into the business.

Offer ongoing education, advice, or support so that customers do have something to come back to and feel that you add value. This should be aimed at helping customers do, be, or have more because of their purchase. And it should build on the initial relationship you established and increase repeat sales.

Creating a ‘Team Commitment’ can also impress your customers enough to keep them coming back again and again. A team commitment outlines your team’s very real commitment to the customers. It makes certain promises of minimum ‘performance standards’ and could explain your business ethics and what you commit to do for the customers. For example, on-time delivery, answer questions and queries at any time, backup services, and more. This tool further differentiates you from your competitors.

Another idea is to establish ‘Until Further Notice’ agreements, whereby you withdraw an agreed sum via direct debit until you receive further notice from the customer to end the arrangement. This fee might be an ongoing service charge, monthly refills on a product, or any multitude of items. These arrangements make it easy for your customers to continue to buy from you.

What makes ‘until further notice’ agreements so useful is that your debtors consistently remain in control. With these arrangements, you don’t have to chase the money; it’s simply transferred from their account to yours every month like clockwork. And your customers begin to forget they’re paying. Because it comes out automatically, it just becomes one of their fixed monthly expenses, usually not one to be altered. 

Newsletters are another great tool to get your customers coming back to your business over and over. One word of warning though, your newsletter shouldn’t be just another piece of marketing ‘blurb.’ This kind of newsletter is all ‘us, us, us’ and is merely designed to blow the company’s own trumpet without giving anything of real value.

It’s vital to focus your newsletter in on the customers’ needs and answer the question ‘What’s In It—For Me?’ from the customers’ perspective. If you do that, your customers will look forward to every issue.

Make your newsletter interesting by offering news; hints and tips; how-to’s; guest column writers; offers; latest stories and articles contributed by specialists, team members, industry professionals, and even clients. (Photographs are good, too). Your newsletter needs to add value. It must help the readers in some way. 

Adding value is one the easiest and most cost-effective ways to nurture your clients and make sure they keep coming back to your business. For example, you could add value by gifting them ‘soft dollar’ products or services. That is, items that have a high perceived value in the customers’ eyes and a low hard dollar cost to you.

You could send them special reports or make your clients feel special with advance-notice events or a hotline service that goes above and beyond the industry standard. 

You can use offers, vouchers, and special invitations to reactivate old customers and clients, or you could establish a loyalty program right from the start. Here, every customer is given an incentive to continue to come back and purchase from the business. 

For instance, a business card could be stamped every time they buy something. After a certain number of stamps, they might receive something for free.

Or you could develop a ‘customer club’ that offered certain advantages to regular customers, like special promotions or privileges.

Another way to make sure the right customers keep on coming back is to classify your customer base into A, B, C, and D clients. A clients would be your best customers, B clients have the potential to become A’s, C clients are not ideal, and D clients might be referred to your competitors! This classification process means that your ongoing communication and promotions to these various types of customers will be more appropriate for each group. Here, only your A clients might be invited to join your ‘customer club,’ for example.

Nurturing your customers from the very first phone call, through to thanking, offering guarantees, and reassuring them after their purchase can help you avoid post-purchase dissonance. (‘Post-purchase dissonance’ means that someone takes goods home or purchases services from your business and then regrets it.) In fact, you can attract those customers back to your business.

The same can be said if you have some specific techniques to turn complaints into praise. This can be done by establishing policies about how to look after unhappy customers. You and your team should agree to do everything possible to turn that customer around.

One way to do this and to avoid this kind of issue in the first place is to always ask for feedback from your customers. Asking for feedback makes them think you’re truly interested in them and, as such, makes them come back to you more freely. You will come to mind before anyone else, largely because you bothered to ask their opinion! Often, your competitors won’t ever have bothered and so your customers will be suitably impressed. Aside from this, people just like to be asked!

‘Client Advisory Boards’—where you invite groups of clients to talk about the service they received, what could be improved, and feedback forms—can be useful tools here.

Interestingly, outstanding debts can be a deterrent to purchasing from you again. That is, if they owe you money but still need goods or services in your field, some customers will choose to go to your competitor. This is simply because they’re embarrassed that they haven’t paid the bill, or that they can’t afford to pay the bill despite needing more goods or services.

A video store is a perfect example of this. When people rent videos, many return them late. As such, many stores charge late fees. Often, if a regular customer knows they have late fees due at one store, they will simply go to another and join up!

This issue can be avoided if you keep a tight control on your debtors, keep them at a minimum, and never let them accrue too much.

Even on briefly reviewing these ideas, you’ve probably found many ways to keep your customers coming back more often. Some you may have heard of or tried, others not. Regardless, it’s important to start implementing these ideas. It will also be critical to really learn, understand, and implement these ideas in full. That way, you can achieve the greatest profits possible, and your customers will be happier, too.

Your Action Plan: Have your customers coming back more often by reviewing these ideas in depth