So you’ve made the sale! The long tedious process of closing your leads, converting them into customers is over. So what happens now?
A rookie mistake would be to forget about these customers once they’ve written you a cheque. You wouldn’t forget about your partner once you married them, would you? Many companies put a strong emphasis on making sales. However, they often do not place as much importance on providing customer service, and hence unsuccessfully retain said customers and enjoy their continuous patronising.
Objectively speaking, there are a number of reasons why you should maintain a healthy relationship with a customer, such as:
Word-Of-Mouth Promotion [Customers -> Promoters]
Customer evangelism – This occurs when your happy customers unreservedly praise your products/services to their friends and connections. This usually takes place on social media.
Customer referrals – Conversely, this is when customers refer you to friends or contacts, and your product will generally be better received as opposed to it being outbound-marketed (advertised) to these people as they are being introduced by a familiar face.
Continuous purchases [Customers -> Repeat Customers]
Customer retention and loyalty – Often, purchases aren’t a one-time thing. Loyal customers will regularly choose your product over its competitors, which is definitely a good thing.
So, how do you delight existing customers?
- Provide good customer service, and it starts with truly knowing your customers. The HubSpot marketing software has great capabilities that empower marketers to track customers by their online behavior such as the type of content they mostly read, the links they click, what they say on social media, their predominant interests as expressed by the content they published, etc.
- Market customers other products based on their interests. Based on what you know about their buying habits or areas of interest, you can tailor your marketing approaches to market them product you know they’ll like. You can do this using a combination of smart CTAs and workflows.
- Be creative in your marketing. Offer exclusivity (e.g. sneak peeks) or give them better prices to show that you value their ongoing loyalty.
* Inbound marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves SEO, social media, blog and landing pages to generate sales leads.
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