Month: Feb 2012

  • Your business needs to retain the loyal customers you already have

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    Sales funnel

    Customers are the lifeblood of any business, for without customers there would be no business. We constantly strive to grow our businesses, however, if you only have the resources to satisfy your current customer base, it’s better to delay any planned sales programme until you are in a position to satisfy any new customers you may acquire.

    When you look at the sales funnel on the right you can see it’s much easier to plug the bottom rather than finding new customers to keep the top full.

    The above paragraph is why customer retention is so important, it’s been proven that it takes five times as much time and effort to get new business as it does to satisfy existing clients.

    Customers in general will fall into three categories: dissatisfied, satisfied and loyal.

    Dissatisfied customers are those customers who feel that they are not being treated as fairly as other customers, they feel whether real or imagined that they are being victimised. For every complaint that is received from discontented customers, there will be umpteen who will complain to their friends or on social media sites earning nothing but negative word of mouth comments for your business.

    Satisfied customers are customers who are open to a better offer from the competition; they feel that the product or service they are receiving is up to standard but no better.

    Loyal customers don’t leave even for an attractive offer elsewhere. At the very minimum they will give you the opportunity to meet or beat the other offer. Maintaining loyal customers is an integral part of any business. Over time it has been proven that your loyal customers will spend more with you and they will refer you to their business acquaintances.

    The goal of any business is to move the customers up along the customer chain; dissatisfied customers move to satisfied category, the satisfied customers move to the loyal customer category and they continue to look after the loyal customers as these will drive growth in the business.

     

  • Social media platforms are vital for growing your business

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    The area of social media has become hugely important to businesses over the past number of years. When you look at the figures of how many people are using social media sites, you can understand why a lot of businesses have created a social media presence. Businesses have long since realised that they have to meet their customers where they are and on their terms.

    In Ireland alone there are 1,900,000 Facebook users, You tube has 1,3 million regular users with up to 400 million views every month, LinkedIn has 420,000 users and Twitter with 180,000 users of which 30% log in daily to check their accounts.

    In this day and age it’s not enough just to have a social media presence; social media should not be used in isolation, it has to be used as part of the overall marketing strategy for your business.

    Your online strategy will have to encompass the following

    Who: Who exactly are you targeting to receive your message? You will have to decide on the demographic that suits you, such as gender, age, income-based, mobility, employment status, or location?

    What tools will you use: What social media tools will suit your purpose best? Will it be a blog, newsletter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account?

    When: When is the best time to start your social media strategy, the simple answer is that now, social media takes time to generate a following.

    Where: Where will you find the demographic you are looking for? For this, it will be necessary to carry out research. It may be as easy as talking to your present clients and identifying where they network online.

    Why:If you’re not talking to your customers where they are networking, you can be sure that your competitors are; at no other time in our economic history has competition been so fierce.

    How: This is the most important step in your strategy; you have to understand how social media works. In every social media, there are ethics that need to be understood in order for you to successfully achieve your goal. A sentence or paragraph out-of-place could make your messages reek of spam.

    There are 3.8 million Irish consumers interacting on social network sites. There has never been a better time for business to target their current and future clients without the high cost that have been associated with traditional marketing.

    It must also be said that there has never been a better time to be a disgruntled customer.