Acquiring new customers is a difficult journey with much disappointment and expense. It is far easier to retain your existing customers.
Evidence shows that customer retention is more important to success compared to customer acquisition. Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company found that a 5% increase in retention can result in an increase in revenue by 25%.
But how can you increase your customer retention?
One key strategy for achieving increased retention rates is Relationship Marketing.
What Is Relationship Marketing?
Relationship marketing is a strategy to cultivate more meaningful relationships. Leading to long-term satisfaction and brand loyalty. It’s not about short-term wins or sales transactions. It focuses on delivering value to your customers for the long term, with customer satisfaction and service quality at its core.
There are obvious advantages for businesses:
1. Strong and stable relationships deliver favourable word of mouth,
2. Justify price premiums.
3. Increase customer satisfaction.
4. Improve retention rates.
5. Lead to higher conversion rates.
6. Creating lifelong brand advocates.
All of which leads to higher profits.
Many firms waste resources on disloyal customers who may never offer a positive return on investment. Using your limited resources to attract a mix of loyal customers will positively benefit your bottom line.
Related Article: Building a Customer-Centric Culture in Your Small Business
How to Create Loyal Customers?
But how can you create a loyal customer base? It takes more than just great service. This is what businesses strive for. It is what your competitors are striving for. Where customers can find your competitors easily and read great reviews. You need to stand out from the crowd.
Building ties between you and your customers is key. Customers with a connection to a brand have a higher lifetime value, stay with the brand for longer and will recommend a business at a much higher rate.
The internet has altered the business landscape, with more online transactions. The concept of business-to-business or business-to-consumer has broken down. Transforming to business to person.
But how can a business ignite an emotional connection? Companies are discovering new ways to create and sustain emotional connections. With brands using such avenues as content marketing. Offering engaging and useful content, whether that be blog posts, white papers or e-books. Or any other content that offers value to their audience.
By creating value for customers, a business can create barriers to competition. These barriers are difficult to overcome and create loyalty from your customer.
There are other avenues to pursue as well. One of the tried and tested methods is the use of promotional merchandise.
Related Article: Customer Retention Strategies for Small Businesses
Using Promotional Products.
Gift-giving is an effective means to strengthen interpersonal relationships. Enhancing customer brand relationships. For example, after a customer buys a product or a service from your company, as a thank you, you could send them a promotional mug with tea, coffee and biscuits. Not only is this a nice surprise for your customer, but it will also make them feel appreciated and help develop that all-important emotional connection. Who doesn’t love to get a free gift? But also, a branded mug or other branded items can act as a situational cue in the future. Reinforcing purchasing habits.
If your customer is regularly using branded merchandise from your company, when it comes to re-ordering, you will be the first name on their list. Conversely, such situational cues can undermine or break habits. The use of promotional gifts can be used to promote complementary products and interrupt habitual purchases. Seeing your company name in front of them on a daily basis will reinforce their emotional connection with your brand. This makes switching to a competitor more challenging because customers would have to replace their previously formed knowledge with competitor-specific knowledge, which takes time and effort.
You can even help your customer on the re-buying journey. For instance, on a printed mug, you can incorporate a QR code within your design which, once scanned, will take your customer to your website.
Allowing your customers to engage with your content. Helping to deepen your relationship and achieve a greater customer lifetime value.
Buying Promotional Mugs.
Prince William Pottery is here to help with all your promotional mug needs. If you think branded mugs can help you with your customer retention strategy, please contact us. We can help you choose the best option to suit your needs and budget.
We have large stocks of mugs available and as all decoration takes place in-house we can offer fast lead times. You can learn about the different mug printing techniques available here.
We are sure once you order mugs you will want to order again from Prince William Pottery.
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