Most businesses don’t rely on single-time customers. It’s really only niche products/services and tourist-zone businesses that can do that. In most cases, businesses can only be successful if they have repeat customers. It takes a lot of work to get a customer, and eventually, you’ll just run out of people to attract. The only way to build a long-term successful venture is to get those customers coming back again and again.
Happily, that’s not something you have to just hope happens. There are strategies you can use that’ll make it much easier for you to develop an ongoing relationship with your customers. We’ve aggregated some of the most effective methods below.
How To Connect With Your Customers
Understand Them
The better you know your customers, the better you can connect with them. Of course, it’s not feasible that you’ll get to know all of your customers in an intimate way, especially if you’re an online business. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t just generally know who they are. After all, you’re probably targeting a particular type of person — and those potential customers will share a bunch of characteristics that make it possible for you to create your ‘ideal customer profile.’ Once you’ve got that, you can work on developing content that resonates with that profile.
Build Your Story
All relationships work on a two-way street. You’re going out there hoping to connect with customers. At the same time, your customers are looking for brands that reflect their ideals and beliefs. If you’re going to connect with them, then you’ll need to craft a brand story that truly reflects who you are. A good place to start is by looking at the 12 archetypes, which will help to guide your brand persona. From there, you can feed all of your marketing materials, brand imagery, and content through the voice and style of your chosen archetype.
Be Consistent
Customers want consistency. They don’t want excellent quality one week, and poor performance the next. They also want reliability. Even if a customer likes your product, if there are question marks over the delivery, payment methods, and other factors, then it won’t be all that surprising if they look elsewhere.
Standardizing your working processes will help ensure that your customers get exactly what they expect, every single time. Plus, it’ll also help boost productivity.
Work With Your Current Customers
Businesses often make a key mistake during growth periods: they begin to treat their existing customers as afterthoughts. And while you can see why they do it, it does tend to have a negative impact on the customer relationship. In the pursuit of growth, they’ve become little more than a number. While growth is fine, it’s recommended to do so with your customers. Your growth can involve better meeting their needs and wants, rather than simply going after new customers. New customers will arrive in time, and when they do, they’ll arrive alongside happy existing customers.
Remember, it’s much easier to keep a customer happy than it is to find new customers.
