7 Key strategies for business success: Customer Loyalty

Hi Brian Jowers, here we are at the end of another month, are you looking after your customers? These days customer loyalty is very important, as we shall see. What can be done to improve customer loyalty, read on for 7 possible strategies that are key to your success.

What has been happening recently?

Well back to the treadmill, bills to pay etcetera etcetera.

No major happenings here, thankfully, just back to the grindstone. Gettin back into the routine now that the building work has finished and we have most things sorted out.

Last few days have been interesting though, we have had about 4 – 5 inches of snow and temperatures are low as low as -5 to -8 degree Centigrade at night, still freezing during the day. This is quite unusual here and has brought a lot of things to a standstill, literally. Schools closed, offices closed (frozen pipes) and some chaos on the roads and rail.

Customer loyalty, what do we mean?

The key to your business success is to build customer loyalty. That is holding on to your existing customers. It is very important as acquiring new customers is expensive (and time consuming – advertising costs). Customer loyalty is the key to your business growth and maintaining profit. Because loyal customers generate a continual revenue stream through repeat purchases, they bring your business-increased profitability at a lower cost.

Like in any other marketing system, you will need to understand all the secrets that are available to keep growing your business and to apply them as soon as is possible.

A Business Relationship to Gain Customer loyalty!

Everywhere you go online they tell you that you must have a list to succeed. That’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. Until you understand exactly what makes subscribers eager to pay for your products, success will remain elusive.

If you don’t know how to build a business relationship to keep your subscribers enthusiastic, eagerly waiting for your email/blog post/newsletter and ready to rush to buy your products, your list is worthless.

Hands down the main key factor of a responsive email list is the Trust Factor. If you earn your subscribers trust, you will have much more success when it comes to advertise to your subscriber list. Without the trust of your subscribers, they will not be willing to pulling out their credit card to buy from you.

Following we have 7 tried and tested strategies for improving your percieved value, trust and customer loyalty.

1 – Earn your subscribers’ trust

Honesty is essential to earning customers’ trust, and that trust is the key to gaining customer loyalty. Earning customers trust is important to the success of any business. Being honest goes with being open and truthful.

Let your subscribers know your Identification and contact information, such as your name, physical address, email address and telephone number. It is important that you let your subscribers know how to contact you for assistance. The more they know you as a person, the more they’ll trust you. And when it comes to asking for money, nothing is more important than trust.

Warning: Be sure to be selective in what you promote to your subscribers. If you suggest a product that turns out to be a scam, your subscribers will likely blame you first for recommending it to them. You really can’t afford to take a hit like this to your reputation.

2 – Give Them What They Want

When your subscribers sign up to your list, they are doing so for a reason. They want the information you are telling them they will receive. Keep giving them that, and they’ll be happy as can be. Diverge from that, and you could find yourself losing subscribers quicker than you can get them.

TIP:

Ask Your Subscribers what they want to know about. Don’t guess what their pain point is. This great, easy to use online tactic will help to find out exactly what your subscribers are looking for, and will buy from you. Also useful for finding out what subject they want to learn about:

You could hold a contest. Give the winner a quality prize and/ or gift that he can’t find elsewhere.

By sending them simple questionnaires or surveys will give you a sense of your niche’s needs.

Getting your subscribers involved like this will also keep them interested in your emails and help get more emails opened.

3 – Don’t flood with marketing messages.

Two thing you really need to watch, as a publisher, is how to advertise your product/ service and what product you endorse. Nothing ticks off a subscriber more than thinking a publisher is only in it for the money. This will happen if you blanket advertise too much, or if you choose to advertise the wrong or inappropriate products. Products must be checked by you, or from a source you know to be reliable, to avoid scams.

Sending out an newsletter or ezine with too much ads and little or no quality information will hurt your reputation. Stuffing your Ezine, email, blog or website with ads will put off potential subscribers.

The ads in your Ezine aren’t the only things you have to worry about. This also includes any ads you send out that are separate from your regularly scheduled newsletter. Sending out an ad each day is not the way to go if you want to build customer loyalty. Yu need to maintain a balance between marketing messages and information if you do not want everyone to unsubscribe from your list.

4 – Make your subscribers your friends!

Give your subscribers a good sense of who you are. It’s important that your subscribers see you as a real person, not some anonymous entity, this helps to launder trust. You never know, they may well go out of their way to meet up with you in person at some common event. One thing every successful publisher does is just talk about whatever is on their mind. This may be in their ezine, blog or regular email. They may talk about their family, their favourite sports team, politics, the weather, anything that’s going on.

They usually ask the reader to write back a few comments about it, or the reader will just write back without being asked to. This creates a bond between the publisher and the reader that could result in future sales and future partnerships.

5 – Over Deliver – give bonuses

Nothing makes people happier than knowing you pay attention to them. Delight your customers and potential clients by giving them more than they expected. After they order your product or sign up for your publication, give them a gift or a bonus that wasn’t advertised. This is in addition to any gifts or bonus that where promised when they ordered. I’m not talking about any ebook or software they can download from any website. Give something that no one or only a few other people are giving away. This kind of gift and bonus says that you put a lot of attention and thought into helping them succeed.For example, if selling a product have a training or a checklist, particular to that product as a gift.

To grow strong relationships and help them stay loyal customers longer then consider that from time to time and for special occasions, send free gifts just for the heck of it. By continuously over delivering, your subscribers will realize that you are trying to help them learn what they need to know, and they will appreciate it when you give them the tools and information they need to succeed.

NOTE: The gift must have value, not something from a freebie bucket article site.

6 – Help Them Out

Besides giving your subscribers what they want, helping them with whatever they need help with is the best way to earn customer loyalty. If one of your subscribers sends you an email asking for help, help them out as much as you can. Don’t just give them a quick, one word answer. They’ll probably just come back asking for a little more information, or ask somebody else. Just go ahead and tell them what you can, and be nice about it, even if you think it’s a stupid question. Remember you where a newbie at some point.

While this works on an individual basis, instead of taking care of all of your subscribers at once, the people you are able to help will be very grateful, and will probably tell their friends, colleagues and neighbors about you. Positive word-of-mouth is a powerful way to acquire new customers and build customer loyalty.

7 – Don’t Hype up products

Unfortunately this is becoming too common. It seems to be everywhere you look people trying to hype-up their offer to make it sound better than it is. Most people just want you to be straight with them.

If you just stick to telling the truth about a product, without making it look like hype, I think your subscribers will have much more respect for you. Personally, I think its stimulating when someone sends me a sales letter and outlines how I can benefit from it without trying to make it sound better than it is. Most people can tell the difference, and will probably be turned off by the hype.

There is also a tendency to have tons of bonuses, which are often cheap and next to worthless and end up filling your hard drive.

The bottom line

The combination of these key strategies will help you to build a strong relationship with your subscribers, and lead them to staying loyal customers for years. All you need to do is find a way to include these key items into your business marketing strategies, and you’ll soon find yourself building relationships with and earning customer loyalty.

Specifically for you, a FREE book, just check out the link below:

Did I say it was FREE….

Regards
Brian

Until next time

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