Four Ways to Nurture Your Customer Relationships
Every business owner knows that keeping your customers engaged and satisfied with your products and services is a must for the success of your business.
Most companies use lead nurturing strategies for marketing programs, with the goal of moving prospects through the sales funnel using email communication and social media channels. Customers will also appreciate being communicated to in person, and taking a personalised approach by remembering the customers name and interests.
The type of business you own will determine how much time you spend on nurturing customer relationships and searching for new clients to help with lead sales generation.
Customer interactions
Customer engagement is crucial for business retention rates.
Send out a “welcome to the family” email or welcome back to new customers. They will love the personal touch. Include business contact information and highlights about key services and benefits. Keep them up to speed with ways to get support and engage them with interesting articles and blogs tailored to their interests. Inbound marketing allows a business to gather enough data to nurture its customers with a strong focus on analytics to help drive future customer nurturing campaigns, from social media to email content to help improve customer relationships.
You can also interact freely with your customers on social media. If someone asks a question on your business page for example, or mentions you in a post, this is a great opportunity to share this and expand your audience base. Show your customers you are attentive to them and quick to respond.
Satisfaction or Product Improvement Surveys
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
People love to be heard and listened to so prepare a survey, or feedback questionnaire to help with your business NET score ratings. Take care of your customers at all levels, as all it can take is one bad experience to send your customer base elsewhere. Pay attention to the feedback your customers give you, especially constructive criticism which is the most effective and cheapest way of advertising your business and brand.
Loyalty and Customer Referral Programs
Think about your long-term goals.
Prospects always love to hear from customers. Set up a refer-a-friend program and add this to your customer emails and newsletters and incentivise them with discounts, promotions or gifts as a reward for referring you. Building meaningful relationships takes time and you will be wanting to find new innovative ways to leave a lasting impression on your customer base.
Most businesses rely heavily on referral programs to better understand customer needs and ensure all employees are kept in the loop, as listening is just as important as selling. Express your gratitude to your customers that take time to give you feedback and complete your surveys, by sending them a gift in the post, or a gift card and discount off their next online purchase.
Regular News and Product Updates
It is important to always keep your customers fully informed.
Your customers will always be keen to know what you’re up to next in terms of any new product launches and news updates. Keep your customers fully informed by providing newsletters periodically via email, social media and via post. Nurture and educate your audience base, by focusing on and forming your content marketing strategy. Create content that helps you answer customer queries directly, and show you are invested in their success as well as your own. When customers know they can rely on you for relevant content and useful information around emerging trends they will start to trust you as a business.
What Next?
Business relationships are much like any other relationships. They are built on the foundations of loyalty and trust and need to be nurtured in order for them to be successful and last long-term. When as a business, you can deliver a great customer experience, customer satisfaction levels will rise and nurturing customer relationships will become much easier in the long run.
The next step in building and nurturing your relationships with customers is to train your employees on the techniques you use, including forms of communication and ways you interact with your customers, to that it becomes an integral part of your company culture.
