Customer retention hasn’t always been in the forefront of marketing efforts. In fact, many business owners put it very low on their priority list. Most focus on ‘driving sales’ – which makes sense, who doesn’t want new business? However, there is actually evidence that existing customers are more valuable than new customers!
Consumers today have shorter attention spans and seemingly a lot more options. That’s where we as small business owners and employees have to adjust! According to a study, increasing customer retention by just 5% increases profits by 25%-95%. And it’s A LOT cheaper to execute that, than gain brand new customers on a consistent basis.
But how can you place more emphasis on the current customer in your marketing efforts? We have a few ideas:
Redefine how the customer is measured – what is their true value? Customers are clearly willing to invest with brands that provide value to them. To create a loyal customer base, companies must invest in their customers, too, beginning with redefining how they measure customer value.
Hard reset – take a look into your current structure and how the employees are performing & handling their customers. Performance reviews for employees and results for campaigns should be structured to measure different metrics, not just focus on sales increases.
Learn about your customer – analyze what your customers think about your business, ask them questions, survey them! Do whatever it takes to get a better level of understanding of how your customer interacts with you. Do you really know what your customer is like?