By increasing customer retention, you can also boost your profits. If your business has a high customer retention rate, this increases the lifetime value of a customer due to their loyalty.
There are many strategies for retaining customers. For example you could spend a lot of advertising dollars on marketing to acquire customers but that still won’t build loyalty.
Building community is a wonderful way to gain the trust and loyalty of a large group of people. You can do that through your website or a Facebook group.
Community simply means a regular group of people that discuss, support and engage with each other. They are not all over the place randomly commenting here and there. They stick to a particular group or two due to loyalty.
Today I have some tips to boost customer retention and keep visitors coming back for more.
Why Should you Care about Customer Retention?
Let’s talk about why you should care about customer retention at all.
According to Hubspot, “current customers spend 67% more than new customers.”
Those numbers are incredible! Not only do you have to consider acquiring new customers, but you want your existing customers coming back for more over and over again!
There are several ways to retain customers that I’ll get into. But let’s review some industry standards and you can see where you fit.
The majority of direct selling companies average about a 10 percent retention rate. Thankfully, I am with a company that averages over a sixty percent retention rate!
One big reason for that is they have an amazing customer loyalty program and high level of product value satisfaction.
In addition, their customer service is outstanding.
Here’s a great customer service example. I was shopping around for car insurance and out of all the online quotes, only one person called me within the hour. She followed up more than once over a few days and gave me tons of great information.
Over the course of a few days, she was still the only insurance agent that provided great customer service. Although the quote was a little higher than some of the others, guess who I went with?
That’s right! Outstanding customer service is a great way to acquire and retain customers!
Did you know: 71% of consumers have ended their relationship with a company due to poor customer service.
Customer Retention Strategies
“Increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25 percent to 95 percent.” ~ Harvard Business School.
Create Community on your Blog
Does your blog get a lot of “drive by” traffic or do you get repeat visitors? Your blog is a good starting point for increasing customer retention. Even if you are great at SEO and get lots of traffic, what are you doing to convert that traffic into customers and then retain them?
If you get repeat visitors who become customers, the chances are they will buy again. If you get a lot of “one-off” traffic, chances are they may not even become a customer.
If someone leaves a comment on your blog, be sure to respond every time. It’s important that your visitors feel like you care about them enough to respond to their comments.
Then, they will be more likely to visit again and leave another comment.
Use the Law of Reciprocity to Create Retention
Have you ever volunteers to do things for people that have helped you in some way at some point in your life?
That is the law of reciprocity in action.
It works the same for increasing customer retention. If you provide great customer service and help with solutions to customer problems, your customers will benefit you in some way:
- Referring you to others
- Buying from you instead of someone else
- Repeat business
Keep your customers coming back to you by providing customer service that is over and beyond what is usually expected (not much!)
Create Customer Loyalty Programs
Have you participated in a customer loyalty program lately? I have and I usually stick with it for the rewards I get!
You can do the same thing. If the company you are with doesn’t already have an amazing loyalty program like mine does, you can create your own.
Loyalty programs help to change your customer buying habits.
For example, I participate in a customer loyalty program that rewards me when I purchase a certain amount of product within a particular time frame. I love the rewards so I continue to do it.
That’s a habit that the company helped me to develop.
When you focus on helping your customer with their loyalty, they become a higher value customer and therefor higher retention.
Conclusion
Customer retention strategies are an important aspect of business growth and profits. When you have a large number of customers that you turn into repeat buyers, your profits will increase!
Find a customer retention plan that can work for you and put it into action.
Use these suggestions to begin getting repeat buyers. For even more internet marketing tips, click here to learn more.
Hello Lisa, thanks for your post. I found out a long time ago it’s easier and more profitable to keep a customer rather than go searching for new ones. Make it a great day.
Hi Lisa,
Great post on customer retention.
Customers value personalization when it comes to loyalty programs. They want to know the brand understands and cares about who they and what they like. For brands, it’s the opportunity to infuse a human touch to an otherwise transactional moment. It needs to be high touch and ideally solves a desire before a customer even knows they have one.