“Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” ~ Chip Bell
…and Chip is right. The customer is everything to a business.
Now make no mistake, big or small – when a business thrives it does so on the backs of the loyal buyers. When a customer has a great experience, they are likely to share it with their friends, family, and colleagues. When the customer has a bad experience, they are even more likely to share it with everyone they can get their hands on.
Let that never happen to you.
It is the responsibility of the business to ensure that from the moment the prospect interacts with the service until the moment they convert to a paying consumer, the flow is flawless. That flawless transition from potential customer to paying customer means you did something right. Doing something right can translate into not only repeat business but to new customers and increased sales.
- Consider your customers. Consider your business to consumer flow.
- How are you ranking with your customers?
- Do you know what’s being said about you?
Here are three tips on how to keep your customers talking the right way about your business starting today:
Connect With Your Community
In the day of mass media there is no reason for you not to have social media working for your business. Regardless of what you have in place, the customer wants to speak with you about their experience and they want to share with everybody around them. By creating a business page for your organization or brand you allow the customer to share their experiences with you, tag their friends, include their family, connect to other streams of social media and spread the good (and hopefully not BAD) word!
Make sure you are connecting back by:
- Responding to customer requests.
- Tagging customers in the occasional welcome message.
- Getting involved in community conversations.
- Being “customer accessible”.
Promote Like It’s a Party
Customers love promotions – who doesn’t?
When you create customer targeted promotions you are going to grow your prospect base, gain visibility and potentially grow those sales! Consider what it is that your customers are asking for. What product or service is trending right now? What kind of promotion could you offer to your customers that would get them talking right now? What could you do to get your customers to increase your shares, likes, and exposure?
Here are some ready-to-run ideas that you can start using tomorrow:
- Video Testimonials – The BEST video testimonial with the most comments or votes wins the promotional item or discount of your (or their) choice! *TIP* Need a way to publish those testimonials to your WordPress website? Go here for more information: http://wordpress.org/plugins/testimonials-widget/
- Tag It Tuesday – The customer that has the most tags and responses wins their own online video commercial that will display on your website!
- Pin It to Promote It – The customer that pins their favorite product and gets the most pins wins the promotional product of their choice, a gift card, or the service of their choice!
Share, Share, Share……BUY!
Believe it or not customers want to share what they are buying from you! Look at your website and consider ways to improve the customer’s shopping experience. Do you have all of the tools the customer needs to immediately recommend a product or share a product image? Do you have your website ready so that a customer can comment on a service and get an answer from a salesperson?
Here are the points on building a shareable experience:
- Encourage shares by enabling social media on your website. WordPress has fantastic plugins for sharing pages, posts, and pictures via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn…etc..
- Create shareable visuals by using Pinterest Boards or an Instagram account – when your customers can see the products or services that they’ve purchased, they are more likely to recommend it by pinning it to their own boards, loving it on Instagram, or Tweeting it out to their followers.
- Ask your customers to recommend a friend! Is your product or service something that you know your buyers will want to show other people? Let your customer recommend a friend by simply placing a form on your website that allows them to enter the name, email address and name of the friend that recommended them.
It’s really that simple.
In the end, even if you are the master at promoting there is no better promotion than good old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing. If your customer loves you, your customer will be loyal to you.
…and so will their friends!
Do you need help connecting with your customers? If so, click here to contact us today and see how we can help with your business needs.
