Bitesize Marketing is currently working with a number of small businesses and we wanted to share with you 10 customer marketing tips:
1. Capture (and backup) all your customer data. Here include name, postal address, email, service purchased, birthday and communication preference (email, post, phone etc..)
2. Analyse and segment your data. Group customers with similar characteristics together and think about what programmes you can send each segment where you can offer them additional products/services
3. keep communicating with your customers- every 6 weeks try and touch them with an email, letter and/or phone call (here remember what they’ve told you and their communication preference) when you do communicate be interesting
4. Speak to your customers and find out what they like, what they don’t like and what they want. You should also think about conducting a survey once a year where customers can fill in a form (paper or online some great free tools out there including survey monkey http://www.surveymonkey.com/) Offer an incentive to encourage response
5. create a customer loyalty programme where you reward repeat businesses and encourage your current customers to become brand advocates (and recommend others to you)
6. send your customers birthday and Xmas cards – you will be surprised how little things can go along way
7. If you have a blog on your website add articles and topics of interest and ask your customers to comment. If you don’t have a blog they try Google Word Press it’s free and easy to use
8. Create customer references and case studies to show other customers and new businesses where you have helped your customers! this is powerful marketing as your customers are doing it for you
9. offer exclusive events for your customers only- they will feel important and rewarded (obviously how you do this will depend on your service/offering)
10. the most important thing is to listen to your customers- seek feedback and stay dynamic
Remember is costs 6 times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing customer. Treat all your customers like Kings and they will in return stay loyal.