Terri Ramsey Beavers Everyone has their favorite brands they swear to never stray from. From the loyal Apple iPhone user to the dedicated Nike wearer, the market is full of products and brands people idolize.
In a world already so full of popular brands, how do you get the recognition you so rightfully deserve? The good news is, it’s easier than you think to turn those casual customers into loyal fans. The following suggestions will help you do just that:
- Reward Your Customers’ Patronage
Recognizing your customers’ loyalty is a great way to keep them coming back again and again. If you’re a smaller company, you might want to give small personalized branded corporate gifts to say “thank you” for their continued support. If you’re a larger company, implementing a program that rewards them with each purchase is a great idea.
- Offer Competitive Prices
The first thing a new customer is going to notice is your prices. If yours are higher than those offered by your competitors with no obvious point of difference to make the extra cost worthwhile, you’re likely to start losing customers. This means you need to offer competitive prices and create marketing material that makes your unique selling points clear.
- Make On-Time Delivery a Priority
Being late causes feelings of mistrust, and that’s the last thing you want your customers to feel. Make it a priority to deliver on time, every time as this gives customers a reason to come back. Timeliness is one of the most important aspects of customer satisfaction!
- Ensure Quality Every Time
Consider this: would you continue to eat at your favorite restaurant if the food was great one day but under-cooked the next, and you never knew what you were going to get? Probably not, right? The same is true with your customers.
If you don’t make sure their experience with your brand is always a good one, they will quickly lose trust. Regardless of how big or how busy your business is, always ensure quality with each product and service you provide.
- Listen to Customer Feedback
It’s not enough to simply provide a way for customers to leave feedback. You must listen to what they’re saying and take action to deliver a solution. If a customer has an issue with some area of your business – be it a broken product or a poorly conducted service – seeing you take action to solve the problem will go a long way toward turning that dissatisfied customer into a loyal fan.
Remember, people are more likely to share the bad experiences they have with brands than the good ones, so don’t give people a reason to leave bad reviews. Always go above and beyond to satisfy an unhappy customer.
- Use Social Media
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, customers turned to online platforms like Facebook to look for the products and services they needed. Being active on social media puts you in the same place consumers are shopping, and it allows you to interact with them in a more personal way.
If you don’t have the time or confidence to create a thriving social media presence for your brand, consider hiring someone to handle your social media accounts for you. A strong online presence makes you appear more of an expert in your field and helps foster a trusting, long-lasting relationship with your loyal customers.
- Provide Decent Support
As well as all of that, you’ll also want to make sure that you are providing your customers with decent support in whatever way you can. Ideally, you will actually have a few different kinds of ways of doing this, as that is going to help ensure that you can always be for them in the way they need you to. This is always going to be one of the main ways in which you can hope to get your customer base to come back for more.
How you will do this will always depend on the kind of business and who your customers are – as well as where they are. If you run an ecommerce store, you’ll want to look into the best shopify helpdesk apps and live chat. If you have a real life store, it might be more face to face. The point is to make sure you are providing them with the support they need, when they need it.
At the end of the day, it’s your loyal fans that keep you and your business afloat. Follow the tips above to turn those casual customers into loyal fans and watch your business grow!
Photo: Clay Banks/Unsplash