As a small business owner, you understand more fully than others the importance of customers to the success and viability of your business. It stands to reason, then, that you should do all you can to retain customers once you’ve gone through the hard work of attracting them.
Without enormous marketing budgets and teams devoted to customer retention, however, keeping customers long-term can seem to be a monumental challenge. Fortunately, there are steps you can take that are unique to small businesses that allow you to turn new customers into long-term devoted fans.
A Personalized Approach
One thing you have going for you as a small business is that you’re able to understand each of your customers’ individual needs. This allows you to personalize your outreach to your customers to ensure it hits the target, every time. Whether it’s a coupon sent to an individual that you know lives and dies by coupons or a friendly “hello” to someone you know is feeling lonely, it’s important to avoid depersonalized mass marketing whenever possible.
Diversify Your Communication
Just because you’re a small business doesn’t mean you can’t utilize numerous methods of communicating with your customers. In fact, given your personalized knowledge about each customer, you can use these multiple methods to communicate with each customer in ways that you know will maximize the effectiveness of the communication.
For example, if you are reaching out to a younger customer, then using SMS services for small businesses may be effective, given the likelihood that communication using a text message will be read and interacted with.
Solicit and Utilize Feedback
It seems as though every business you interact with has some sort of method for you to submit feedback on your experience. The motivation behind these methods is two-fold. First, soliciting feedback helps customers feel as though they matter to the company since the company wants to hear what they have to think.
Second, the company can gain valuable insights that will help them improve. In the case of a small business, feedback can be especially valuable, given that small businesses tend to be more nimble and able to make changes based on customer feedback.
Take Care of Employees
Your business’s employees are the front-line workers who regularly interact with your customers. If you have employees who truly enjoy their work, therefore, they are more likely to give your customers a positive experience. Given this reality, then, it’s crucial that you go above and beyond to take care of your employees and reward them for a job well done. When your customers are treated well by a happy employee, they are far more likely to return.
Small is Not Bad
As you can see, though there are certainly challenges for small businesses when it comes to retaining customers, there are also advantages. By making the most of your small size, nimble architecture, and personal touch, you can quickly grow your business by creating customers for life.
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