What to do if you attract customers but struggle to keep them

by Startacus Admin

If customer loyalty and retention is proving to be a challenge for your business, these tips should help...

Is your business making sales, but you aren’t seeing many – or any – of your customers return after their first purchase? If so, you could probably do with better strategies for increasing customer loyalty and retention.

If this sounds like your situation, continue reading. In this article, you will learn powerful strategies for retaining customers and making them buy from you again. 

1. Find out why your customers don’t return

If customers don’t come back to your firm, there must be a problem with the core product or service you offer, or with related services like customer support. 

Your urgent aim should be to identify and resolve the issue as soon as possible. You can identify it in a variety of ways. You could, for instance, look at the customer reviews your business receives, read them, and see if any ask for improvements. 

2. Improve your customer service  

Customer satisfaction depends heavily on a high standard of customer service. You can imagine that customer loyalty results from customer satisfaction. 

You must therefore make sure you provide the best possible customer service. This means being empathetic, quick and professional in resolving problems and dealing with customers’ concerns.

If you offer a paid customer support service, make sure the price is proportionate to the level of service offered. 

3. Offer loyalty programs

At some point, your regular customers are likely to feel the need to be rewarded for their frequent purchases… otherwise, there’s a good chance they will move to another brand that does show appreciation for them.

The right loyalty program can help you with this aim. You can offer your customers different rewards that increase in value as they place more orders or spend more money. Such rewards could include the likes of free delivery, gifts and discounts.

You will be able to strengthen the relationship with your clients through these programs. This, in turn, can help bring about greater customer loyalty, as past shoppers will feel encouraged to return.

4. Use email marketing and social media strategically

Occasionally, customers make a purchase from a given brand, and then forget about the company. You may find this applies to your business as well. The good news, though, is that there are a few ways to prevent this.

It is possible, for example, to create and launch an email marketing campaign to retarget those customers who have not returned for a second purchase. Offer them a personalised discount, and they may be likelier to buy again from you.

You can also leverage social media for this purpose. It is important to keep your customers interested in your products and services by posting frequently interesting and attention-grabbing content. 

5. Make customers feel important

Customers want to feel valued, appreciated and regarded. In order to maintain healthy relationships with them, you should make sure to nurture them constantly. 

You will achieve this goal much more effectively by adding a touch of personalisation – sending them a coupon discount for their birthday or wishing them a happy Christmas, for instance. These are all ways to express how important your customers are to you. 

Conclusions

It can be relatively easy to make sales. Retaining customers can be more challenging, however – and the process of creating and maintaining customer loyalty is a long one that requires time and effort. It is, however, absolutely worthwhile, give the very real benefits to your business if you get it right.

Using the tips and strategies mentioned in this post will help you speed up your cultivation of greater customer loyalty, so that your brand can enjoy an improved customer retention rate.

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Published on: 2nd November 2021