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. 

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 labour 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.

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 know as customer retention, that is, retaining customers and increasing the number of times they deal with you in their lifetime.

There are many ways to encourage your customers to come back.  

Here you’ll find a list of just some of those key strategies for building relationships to build your business.

  1. Ask your customers to come back to you.  Most business don’t bother.  They fail to recognise the profit potential this offers a business. So ask them!  Invite them to come back to your business.  Once happy with a product 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.
  2. Offer awesome service.  Offer service that goes over and beyond the industry average for your business.  Of course other issues that keep your customers coming back are things like 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.  
  3. Complete follow up phone calls to make sure they’re 100% happy, delighted even, with what they received from your business.
  4. 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.
  5. Offer ongoing education, advice, or support so that customers do have something to come back to and feel that you add value. 
  6. Newsletters are another great tool to get your customers coming back to your business over and over. However, it is vital to focus your newsletter in on the customers’ needs and rather than blowing your own trumpet without giving anything of real value.
  7. Adding value is easy and cost-effective.  For example gift customers 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. 
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, infact, saving time and your hard-earned money.