Attracting and converting leads is, of course, crucial for business success. But are you underestimating just how important your current customers are?
Sometimes retaining customers is cheaper than acquisition. And don’t forget that it helps you build strong relationships based on trust and commitment. Unfortunately, you may notice that your customer retention metrics aren’t where they should be.
This article will walk through the top five reasons why you may be losing customers despite your best efforts, alongside ways to turn things around.
One of the biggest and most detrimental mistakes brands make is marketing to the wrong people. It does happen. It’s tempting to continue marketing to leads, even if they’re not high-quality or you know they’re not your ideal customer. Unfortunately, this wastes a lot of time that you could be spending focusing on retention.
Make sure you have created complete buyer personas so you know who fits best with your products or services. Also, define what a poor fit would look like. Make sure you can always solve the problem faced by your ideal audience members.
Today’s world runs on data, but you have to make sure you have the right numbers. Most of your marketing efforts are probably digital now, which opens up even more opportunities for tracking and analytics. But, many brands just don’t have a clear picture of their audiences or of their content’s success because they’re not looking at the right data. And this mistake hurts customer retention big time.
Create a plan specifically for customer engagement. You should track metrics like clicks, page views, conversion rate, customer satisfaction score, customer churn, and other related numbers that tell you information about why customers might be leaving. When you can pair a decrease in customer count to another downward metric, you can pinpoint the problem and address it.
Remember, to retain customers, you have to give them attention after they’ve converted or made a purchase. Just because they supported you once doesn’t mean they will again. If you put all your marketing efforts into attracting new customers, you will see a dip in customer retention.
Focus on ways you can keep engaging customers after you’ve already impressed them. Send out surveys to gather feedback you can continue to learn from. Offer special promotions to existing customers to show them you’re there for them. Reengage your customers with follow-up emails and take advantage of automation techniques that will automatically trigger re-engagement communications.
Customers can be extremely valuable to your brand long after they make a purchase. In fact, existing customers can quickly become brand promoters. But, if you’re not engaging customers and assume that they’re less valuable as time goes on, you’re missing out on big opportunities to boost customer retention.
Focus on turning prospects into promoters with the right content. Incorporate the flywheel model, which helps you generate not just customers but major fans of your brand. Your goal is to keep your brand’s name in the back of their mind, get them to refer you to other people, and get them to talk about you on social media.
Integrate better interactive experiences online with these customers, like quizzes, webinars, videos, polls, and surveys. Create content exclusively for your current customers, encouraging them to promote or talk about your brand to other people, whether through a review or referral discount.
Finally, check in with your approach to content. Even if you have a plan in place for retargeting and re-engaging your customers, if your content is lacking, they might move on to a competitor. Some businesses simply don’t realize just how important it is that your content itself—your words, images, and videos—are personalized, well-written, and relevant to your customers.
You need a better plan for your content, period. Your content marketing strategy should encompass your email newsletter, social media, website, eBooks and white papers, webinars, and blog posts. These outlets should all work together to create one brand voice, establishing your credibility and authority online. For instance, when you put up a new blog post, you should promote this content on your social pages.
But, you should also be utilizing user engagement tools on social media to truly delight your audiences. Post on your Story regularly. Take a poll. Ask a question. Post a funny video. These small gestures will keep your customers around.
When you’re ready to get serious about customer retention, work with the content experts at ContentBacon. We will meet with you to understand your goals and create a content marketing strategy that will continue to engage your customers. Our strategists, writers, editors, and designers ensure that you’re always putting out high-quality, delectable content that delights, inspires, and converts.
Why wait? Contact the ContentBacon team today to get started.