The most important thing in marketing is to retain your profitable customers

• Nurturing customer relationships should be a primary objective to building your business.

• Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal customers

• Loyalty programs and promotions can be modified to both your budget and marketing goals.

  
  

  The most important thing in sales and marketing is to attract and retain your profitable customers.
  

To successfully achieve this, you must develop and incorporate a strategy that is focused on building, fostering and nurturing relationships with your customers. Keep in mind that your company will only achieve profitability once your earnings from your retained customers exceeds that of your acquisition costs. 

Background

There is a significant relationship between long-term business success and long-term customer relationships. In order to achieve and retain success, you must capitalise on every stage of the consumer life cycle, from acquisition, through retention to growth. Once trust has been established, it is proven that customers prefer to remain loyal to a company’s products and services. 

Customer selection and acquisition is only the initial stages of the relationship life cycle. Your business should focus on high-value and low attrition-risk prospects. Remember, the cost to acquire a new customer far exceeds that of retaining an existing customer. 

When entering the retention phase of the customer life cycle, a business must focus on delivering on its value proposition. This ensures that the customer does need to look any further to find value in the service they are seeking. When your customer relationship is based on trust, cooperation and collaboration, they are more willing to listen to new ideas, try new products/ services and consider you as a long-term solution. 

An experienced business owner knows that it pays to nurture existing customer relationships. This makes it easier to up-sell and cross-sell your products/services. For B2B, if your customer’s business is growing, there is a strong possibility that there will be an increased need for your products/services. 

When in the growth stage of the customer life cycle, it is important to focus on increasing the value of each existing customer. Always think in terms of what the customer’s “lifetime value” is. Customer growth strategies generally focus on increasing the share of each customer's expenditures by expanding its company's range of products/services.

Although retention is of vital importance to your long-term business strategy, it is important not to lose sight of acquiring new customers. Becoming dependent on only a few existing customers can also put your business at risk. Ensure that the growth in purchases of only a few customers represent a large proportion of the total sales. Your business must find an effective balance between acquisition and retention. 

Customer relationship management

Creating and managing this balance can pose a set of its own challenges, but using customer relationship management (CRM) tools could offer a solution to that challenge. CRM is the process of tracking and managing the interactions a business has with its customers, such as new prospects, sales and additional support services. 

Here are just a few customer touch points that you can use to strengthen your relationships and keep your customers informed and engaged:

Email messages, newsletters, and surveys: Provide product/service updates, promote goods and services, and communicate news/events. Let the customer know what's happening at your brand and why they should know about it.

Feedback: Ask for, capture and act on your customer's input. Customer surveys are a very important part of improving relationships with clients. Create surveys with an incentive to gather feedback on what your brand is doing right and wrong.

Insight: Research your customers' markets, strategies and goals. Big data analysis tools should be part of your sales team planning. Market trends shift often and you need to know what strategies to increase shares or enter new markets.

Customer loyalty: Implement loyalty, affinity and rewards programs. Build brand loyalty with programs that give discounts and freebies to those who use your company repeatedly.

Relationship building: Talk and listen to customers to maintain a dialogue and to build a trust-based relationship.

Be accessible: Make it easy for customers to reach you. When customers reach out, make it a point to return calls and emails promptly.

Customer satisfaction: Implement a customer satisfaction policy that provides a way to resolve/remedy problems and issues.

Involvement: Engage customers in product development /enhancement via beta tests, focus groups and pilots. Survey results can also be collected for this purpose.

Anticipate customer needs: Learn their business, their purchasing patterns and their requirements for effective proactive solutions.

Become an indispensable resource: Look for ways to add value, to be a real partner and to help your customers achieve results.

Help lines: Provide support, service, advice and information. Train team members on how to manage calls efficiently and effectively.

In building customer relationships, remember to value the "personal touch." Make an effort to get to know your customer as a person. You will be surprised at how much you may have in common. Establishing personal bonds goes a long way toward building lasting relationships.

Your efforts will be rewarded with repeat business, referrals, and satisfied, loyal customers.