What do you do to help your business grow and improve? When you run a business you need to think about a wide range of factors, from creating clear marketing strategies to trying to attract new customers and all these elements are focused on ensuring that your business is always growing and improving. But the most important thing that you should be doing is paying attention to your loyal customers. Loyal customers tend to have a stronger impact on your business than new customers do. In fact, it can cost 5 times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain a loyal customer, and the latter are more likely to make repeat purchases. Another study, by Bain and Co., found that increasing customer retention rates by a mere 5% resulted in increased profits of 25% to 95%.
When you grow a loyal customer base, you will find that they tend to become brand ambassadors for your business, so they recommend your products to other people without any expectation of a reward from you. This is great as it gives you more exposure, helping to draw new potential customers to your business. For most businesses one of the main goals is to grow and reach new audiences, so brand ambassadors can be very useful – and they are much cheaper than paying for pay per click advertising.
This shows the how valuable your loyal customers really are – but how do you make sure that your customers stay loyal? One great way is with a strong content marketing strategy.
Content marketing can help to encourage customer loyalty as it creates a strong, positive brand image that people can relate to and respect. For instance if you project an eco-friendly, useful image via your blog it will appeal to people who are environmentally friendly, so they are more likely to become loyal to your brand. A blog will also give your loyal users and bonus free resource that they can use, which means they are more likely to check your website frequently.
It can also be useful to promote a customer loyalty program via your blog, as this will show that you appreciate your loyal customers - and everyone likes to feel valued. There are lots of different ways to reward your customers, but one of the best methods has to be starting a customer loyalty program. For instance you could offer prizes to customers who post about your company on social media, or you could offer discounts to members who have been on your mailing list for more than six months.
A strong content marketing strategy combined with a customer loyalty program will help to improve your customer retention rate significantly, which will lead more engagement with your brand. This is ideal for any company who wants to grow, and it is also ideal for the people who love your brand. So it is a win win situation – and the best thing is that you don’t even have to spend too much money to launch a customer reward program.
