6 Ways to Increase Customer Retention

Shared with consent of our partner Survey Local….

Managing your customer retention may be the most important factor in growing your business. A Harvard Business study found that increasing retention rates by 5% can lead to increased profits by 25%-95%. With so many outlets for customers to give their feedback, both good and bad, giving customers an exceptional experience will lead to growing sales. This is all well and good, but what are the factors that can increase your customer retention rate? Here’s six of them.

1. Brand loyalty starts with shared values

It’s more likely than not that you have a direct competitor that provides essentially the same product as you. Sure there can be minor differences, but in most cases it is rare that a business exists in a monopolistic market. The key factor in retaining your core customers is to build strong connections. Not every customer is going to want a direct relationship with your business, but of those that do 64% site that shared values is the primary reason for they’re loyalty.

Maintaining your value structure can be as simple as supporting small businesses or being invested in an employee volunteer program. Simply by conveying that you stand for something other than making money can be the deciding factor between you and a competitor. Feeling unconvinced? Ask yourself, if 2 coffee shops of the same quality and price were competing, but while one focused on giving proceeds to charity while the other did not which location would you choose? Most likely it would be the shop that stands for something.

2. Focus on attracting the type of customers you want

There is such a thing as a bad customer, and as a business owner, you have likely come across one. By targeting and advertising to the type of customer you want to work with and molding some of your business practices to please them, you can retain those customers that will help and not hurt your business.

Targeting ideal customers is a balancing act. You do not want to put your business in too small of a niche, but too broad of marketing efforts can be a costly mistake and a waste of resources. In online advertising use key words that convey your ideal customer, and when in selling in person make sure to ask the right questions. For instance, if selling a SAAS product make sure the customer is computer savvy enough to use and appreciate the product.

3. Build a personal relationship with each customer

As important as values are to the customer, having a personal connection to the customer can be a factor in retaining the customer for the long haul. There’s a saying that goes “People don’t invest in things, people invest in people”. The same goes for customer retention. As we’ve already covered, more businesses will have a direct competitor. An easy way to up the switching cost is to know your customer well. Whether in the selling, converting, or customer service stage invest in your customers to get to know them.

Let’s return to the coffee shop scenario. When getting your morning coffee, are you more likely to stick to the shop that the worker knows your order and asks about your day or switch to a new business that you are unfamiliar with? Even after one or two bad experiences, the connection to the employees and ease of familiarity will keep a customer loyal.

4. Bring back the “lost sheep”

This goes back simple economics; customer retention is cheaper than new customer acquisition. In fact, according to marketingwizdom 25%-60% of lost or dormant customers will be receptive to your attempts to earn back their business if you approach them right away with an enticing offer.

It’s importing to find the reason this customer left, and to make sure you can meet their expectations. Ask the right questions as to why they left, and keep them informed on company updates that may solve the problem and keep your business in mind.

5. Set realistic customer expectations

Simple. Don’t oversell what you can’t deliver. Overselling the product can lead to distress and mistrust of the company from the beginning, which is an easy way to induce churn. Sugar coating weaknesses in your product can be an easy way to gain immediate sales, but cost the business profits in the long run. Make sure you educate the customer on the value of your product, make sure it aligns with their needs, and close the sale with a strong assurance that you can deliver.

6. Frequently survey customers for feedback

96% of dissatisfied customers won’t complain. Instead they will simply walk away, and spread experience with others. Frequently surveying customers is one of the most effective ways of strengthening your relationship with your customer. Asking current customers for feedback, and actually listening, can do more than improve your retention rate; it can make you a better business. Customer complaints give you an opportunity to solve the problem and show that you care about your product and your customer service. A great company to not only gather customer feedback, but to increase your customer recommendations is with our partner SurveyLocal (my completely unbiased opinion). Both our companies, Dominate Local and Marketburst, use this service along with SEO and social media to create a complete approach to managing your reputation.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

Remember, you’re not going to be able to save every customer. There will be times you cannot solve a problem, or even times you have to fire a customer. But customer retention management can and will increase your profits if done with care.

Social Media Marketing: Connecting Buyers and Sellers

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are considered to be one of the best ways to connect, interact and reach out to friends, family and colleagues. Interestingly, marketing companies have also used this effectively to communicate messages about products, connect with future clients across the world and successfully turn leads into sales.

 

Let’s take a look at Facebook, which is a great way to keep in touch with friends, express your feelings through status updates or photos and meet new people online. In this renowned social networking website, you can market your products to many people within an economical budget. Create a Facebook group related to your product or service and invite prospects to join. Then, send targeted messages to members who are active within the group. This encourages lead generation through discussions, feedback and requests by prospective as well as existing customers. You can also join other’s Facebook groups to get in front of people starving for the knowledge, products, and services you offer. You are thereby creating a group within a group which works to your benefit.

In Twitter, your marketing strategy should be based on sending small but effective messages. You can initiate a debate or discussion by following your existing buyers. If they happen to mention anything symbolic in their tweets, you can use it to start a conversation on a business development call. You can also search for the latest trends and follow them actively on Twitter. You can get exposed to the new products entering the market, the out of fashion or stock products and general ideas that can your products or services more appealing. It will also help you find and use conversational wording so that you can provide better content when a future client is searching for your products or services. It gives you a wider space for sales prospecting on products in the social media networks.

The third most widely used social network for business associations is LinkedIn. When you start developing your requirement by joining the groups in which your clients are active, the sales prospecting increases as you are associating with more people. Ensure that your profile should give out feelers to companies or persons who show interest in your products or services. However, turning your profile into an online resume will not achieve the purpose of informing people about your company. Take the effort to get introduced to “superconnectors or influencers” as it will bring more people to your profile and spread the word about your work effectively.

Email Campaign Management: Our Team, Is Your Team

If email is not part of your digital marketing strategy, then you don’t have a digital marketing strategy. Let’s consider why you should integrate email marketing into your campaigns

Email marketing is cost effective and has a great ROI

Email marketing allows business owners to reach a large number of consumers at a rate of pennies per message. For small-business owners on a budget, this makes it a better choice than traditional marketing channels like TV, radio, or direct mail. It is estimated that for every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment (Exact Target).

Personalization

Email has the power to send one piece of content to thousands of people and still have some level of personalization. But that’s just the beginning, segmentation of your contact list allows you to separate subscribers into groups based on their title, company type, or even based on actions taken. All of these can be send highly targeted messages.

Keep customers informed

Email marketing isn’t something companies do just because they can and it’s easy. There are more than 3.2 billion email accounts today, and with 90% of people checking their email daily. Your customers are more likely to open a message from someone they are familiar with than a random person. Use this medium to update you customers about your latest services, products, software updates, trends and other useful information that will keep your customers educated, informed and happy. In the end, good communicated results in higher customer retention.

Don’t’ forget, it is also one of the few medium that people don’t walk away from. As opposed to social media posts, which disappear on average 1-2 hours before they are archived, email has to be “killed” before it is removed.

It’s easy to customize and integrate into other marketing tactics.

The versatility of email marketing is another reason marketers should keep the tactic in their marketing toolbox. Depending on the depth of the email database and the skill of the crafter, email marketing messages can range from simple to very complex. Email and social media are friends. If you’re failing to see these potential connections, you’re probably wasting great opportunities not only for growth but to establish cross platform initiatives.

Analytics

Email on the other hand has a set of solid metrics that have been the standard for years: Growth, Open Rate, Click Rate, Complaints, Unsubscribes, and you can take it from there and even track sales and revenue.

Why DominateLocal for Email?

We are an expert team of email specialists function as an extension of your marketing team to deliver your brand promises to your customers. Contact us today to setup your email marketing strategy, and start generating business today.

How to Verify Your Facebook Business Page?

The following is an excerpt from an article published by NATHAN MENDENHALL Director of Social Strategy at social media today.

If your business has a Facebook Page that’s in the ‘Local Business’, ‘Company’ or ‘Organization’ categories, you’ll want to verify your Page’s location with Facebook. This gives you a spiffy gray verification badge, makes your Page more likely to show up in Facebook Search and lets the Facebook community know that your Page is an official representation for your business or organization.

In short, if your Facebook Page has an address associated with it, it’s worth verifying it.

Read the rest of the article here.

85% of Consumers Search for Local Businesses Online. Are You Online?

When you want information about a company, where is the first place you look? If you said the Web, you’re not alone. In fact, 85 percent of consumers search for local businesses online.* If your company doesn’t have a website, you’re losing clients and income.

Many business owners don’t have the time or the knowledge to create a website. You need to be out there selling your services, not sitting in front of a computer designing a site. Let DominateLocal do it for you.

DominateLocal is a marketing agency specializing in small businesses who need the expertise of a senior marketing team but without the need of an expert full time, and in house. That means that we can not only build your entire marketing plan, but also develop the campaigns and sales tools to generate revenue for you. From SEO, social media and PR services to web design and training, we have the solution to meet your needs.

As web specialists, we offer unique solutions that others cannot. We are the only web design and development company that:

• Includes search engine optimization in the design of your website
• Can identify who potentially visited your site by name and contact information
• Can write your content as well as develop the website
• Has emergency web design ability for campaign landing pages, hacked web sites, and tight deadlines
• Will work with smaller companies and startups to discount your site design in exchange for referrals / leads or allow your site to be paid for in reasonable installments

Let us create a robust, optimized website that reaches your potential customers and showcases your company. Contact us at 972-922-9483 or info@dominatelocal.net.

5 Of Many Reasons Why Survey Results Should Be Top of Mind for Your Business

Whether shopping for a car or where to eat for dinner, consumers are increasingly turning to citations, ratings and reviews before purchase. In fact, 95% of consumers use ratings and reviews and 86% say they’re essential to making a decision to buy. Below are four of the many reasons why survey results should be top of mind for your business:

1. The more online reviews you have published from customers, the more new customers will find out about you online
2. A huge impact on your rankings in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing
3. Ability to measure customers and identify what is working and potential changes to consider
4. Unbiased feedback, whether good or bad, can be used to your advantage to improve the customer experience

Dominate Local provides the service of surveying your customers, encouraging positive feedback and reviews, then catching the negative ones before they post to major sites. Keep a positive reputation, address issues before they become public, and eep your customers coming back. Contact us today for more information.

4 Tough Questions to Ask a Marketing Agency before Hiring Them

Whether you are large enterprise or a small business, you sometimes question your marketing decisions. Regardless of the number of agencies I have worked with or the campaigns I have run, I question myself right up until the first few leads come in, or articles get written or the first time I have to present the success or failure of a campaign. In the end, I rely greatly on my team and my partner agencies to help assure I have effectively spent my budget and am getting the most from it. That’s why it is important to make sure you do have the right team working with you.

So, what I thought would be helpful is to share some of my learning’s related to choosing the right partner marketing agency to help you through those times when you have questions or need to outsource your entire project to an agency.

Tough Question #1: Who will really be working on my account and will I have direct access to all assigned agency staff?

Well, that depends. Some agencies have a hierarchical process structure that requires a single point of contact between the client and the agency itself. It makes life easier on the agency’s end. From the client perspective, you would ideally have direct access (phone, email etc.) to all individuals working on your account. This includes everybody from the Production Artist up to the person ultimately responsible for your business (usually an Account Executive or agency principal). Ultimately though, that overhead can cost you time and money, which can make smaller projects more costly.

My personal preference is to work with agencies that have a more senior person connected to my account. One that knows the ins and outs of getting things done or is even doing the project themselves. It’s kind of like when I go to a restaurant and order my food. I want a waitress that will listen, identify costs for ala cart items that may or may not be needed, and know that special orders take longer or will cost more. The same works for an agency. What has generally worked for me is to either work with a smaller agency where you get access to more senior staff, or make sure you have an experienced account executive that understands your processes, your business, and their own firm’s cost structure (no ala cart, surprise invoices).

Tough question #2: How will the agency measure marketing success?

That’s an easy question to answer, but only if you ask it. There are many ways to track results via software and systems…quality of campaign responses, number of new customers, media coverage, internet conversions, web traffic, email clicks, etc. But, the first question you need to ask is, what is most important to me as the client, and is that what is important to my “boss”?

Before moving forward on a project, ask yourself, what is most important to measure, and then what results would be adequate to justify the time and cost involved. Be realistic though, and look to your marketing agency to be a partner, not a vendor. For example, you may have the goal of generating 100 qualified opportunities, but have only a limited budget, a small market, or don’t have the sales resources to follow up on leads generated. This is also why an experienced Account Executive and marketing team is essential. They help you set your goals so that you can meet them as a team. Once you have set your goals and objectives, you can then build a plan to address the cause and-effect relationship between your marketing program and your results. Lastly, I cannot stress enough that you communicate them often to your sales team, executives, and marketing partners as each will play a role in their success.

Tough Question #3: Should I market to sell or educate?

Let me answer this question with a question. Do you like sales pressure? I don’t. If you are looking to build a long term relationship with a customer, then without question, the better method to use is Education-Based Marketing. People are tired of selling and sales pressure. Trust needs to be built. You do this through demonstrating that you are a leader in your field and have solved the problem for others who are similar to themselves. Prospective customers want information and advice, which is the foundation of Education-Based Marketing. And until business owners realize what customers want — and give it to them — many companies will continue to get a poor response to their marketing.

Look to multiple techniques to get your message across. Training videos on YouTube may work for some clients, where white papers on the same topic, delivered via email may work better for others. Today, common educational techniques include blogs, white papers, case studies, articles and videos…and most can be produced at a fairly low cost. Just make sure you are giving people what they want in the medium they want it in.

In looking for marketing support, look for people who specialize in education as well as selling. It will help your reputation, your relationship and your SEO results.

Tough Question #4: Is it better to work with a marketing person/team on an hourly rate, project rate or retainer?

A project may take 10 minutes or 10 weeks. That being the case, if I were to charge clients by the hour, I’d have to know exactly how long the project will take and that there would be no surprises. An hourly rate means you will be billed exactly on the time it takes me to do the job.

In the end, some agencies have to charge for additional time, so must recoup it in other areas. I am not as big a proponent of an hourly quote because

#1, different skill sets have different rates (ie a Production Artist will not be billed at the same rate as the Creative Director), #2, I have to track hours tied to specific projects. An administrative hassle.

Now of course, for larger agencies, clients may have an advantage in that clients can selectively bypass the higher-tiered employees for ones with a lower billing rate but you don’t want to ask a Production Artist about overall marketing strategy.

For small projects, ask to be billed in increments that are smaller than 1 hour. For larger projects, many smaller customers like to be quoted on a project basis. Together we develop the plan, I provide a quote, and the project is then completed and paid in stages. It is a good balance when you want to test an agency for performance and build a longer term working relationship between client and agency. It does, however, mean the agency is less likely to negotiate terms of an agreement since the long term relationship may be uncertain.

As an agency owner, I personally prefer a retainer. Why? Because it allows me to allocate costs and hours appropriately. And for the client, he/she can count on me for X number of hours allocated to them. This allows for some negotiating room with both parties. For example, when using a retainer, my discussion with the client would be that I would usually charge X for this amount of work but in the interest of developing a long-term relationship, I’ll charge X minus Y%. Furthermore, in the spirit of fairness, I wouldn’t quibble if the amount of work in a given month went a little over (and I wouldn’t expect that the client would complain if a month was a little light. In the end, it works out even.

One alternative in how I offer projects versus other agencies, is that I bundle my services into larger projects with a set price structure. This allows the client to get the advantage of a retainer model (a cost reduced set of integrated deliverables) with a set quote for completion of the project.

The Tough Conclusion

I know this is article may be a bit controversial for some of my agency friends. Some may not agree with me at all. Regardless, I want to hear from you. Are these the tough questions you would ask? Send me more.