Benefits of Customer Retention: How to Sell More to Current Customers?

Increasing the number of repeat customers and increasing the profitability of each existing customer are really challenging. Businesses should strategize how to extract more value from your existing customer base.

Your goal is to ensure the customers you worked so hard to acquire stay with you. This is possible by giving them a great customer experience and making them continue getting value from your products.

Boosting customer retention

Keep in mind that planning how to retain current customers is just as valuable as finding ways to acquire new ones. Here are some of the ways you’ll be able to gain your customers’ trust and loyalty.

Develop your customer support

Customers hate ineffective customer support systems. It is one of the major turn offs that could make them hate your brand as a whole even if it’s unnecessary. So, you have to be careful and you have to be able to level up your service to them. You can either have a live chat or help desk tool available can turn a customer question into a sale or a customer complaint into a resolution, whether they come in on site, through email, or via social media. The more concerns you solved effectively, the higher the chance these customers can be retained.

Meanwhile, customers see fast, friendly, and consistent customer service as the gold standard. If you help customers avoid problems and get the most out of your products, you’ll be doing both of you a favor.

Establish your own customer loyalty program

Creating a loyalty program can be as simple as rewarding customers on their second purchase. It would be easy to see who your best customers are by dollar value and total number of orders. Additionally, you can opt for automated loyalty apps which can reward your customers for a variety of actions they take in your store. Through this, you encourage them to buying over and over again.

Provide discount or credit to return

Usually, when you discount your products you make your customers expect for continuous dropping prices, which you cannot always cater or else you’ll end up with loss of revenue.

However, when discounts are sent to a first time buyer, they tend to actually love it. Sending a discount code for their next purchase with a first time order is a great way to motivate them to come back. At this point, discounting becomes effective in bringing back customers that haven’t purchased in a while.

Keeping customers is the key to grow your business

You can always have a new customer every day. But it will never be as rewarding as being able to keep and maintain current buyers which would supply you with constant purchases. Having them purchase over and over again with different kinds of your products will make sure you have a steady flow of revenue. Plus, if you treat well enough, they might even be your ground marketing agents promoting your brand for free.

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What Is Social Proof and Why Is It So Important?

We may have heard the term social proof when talking about marketing or advertising. It is effectively used on commercials and other materials that promote brands and trying to persuade people about buying the particular product.

But, what is it really about? How did it become a successful marketing strategy? And how does it influence consumer decisions?

Theoretically, social proof is that describes our tendency to rely on the opinions or actions of others to inform our own. Social proof captures our attention because we’re naturally curious about what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what the correct behavior or response is.

Social proof works because it validates a choice, saying that it’s worth your time, money, or interest by using other people as proof.

Types of social proof

Social proof can be generated on any online platform where you have a presence, including your site and preferred social networks. It can be diverse in how it manifests, and can cover a wide range of actions on different channels from different groups of people.

Public Praise or online bandwagon

Nowadays, you can often see this through reviews and ratings which are collected and displayed on online sites, through an app, and even in open forums such as Facebook or Google. Both product reviews and general company reviews are beneficial as customers trust what most of their peers have to say.

It can also take the form of testimonials from customers posting and sharing their personal experience with your product or brand on their personal accounts. They may tag you or use your hashtag. This is not the same as sponsored content, which makes it seem more authentic, and users trust it more.

Popularity

Social proof can also be quantifiable nowadays. Through number of followers, likes and comments on social media accounts, brands are able to establish credibility and gain interest from their target audience.This also include viewership numbers on live broadcasts on Facebook or Instagram and number of subscribers on your email list to get your audience to opt into it.

Endorsements from credible personalities

In this era of online influencers, endorsements through their shared content would be useful. It would be wise to seek the help of micro-influencers who may have an influence that overlaps with your target audience for their endorsements would benefit you.

Proof of demand

This form of social proof invests on the fact that customers are not only interested in what you’re saying, but they’re actually buying from you. A large volume of sales showcases demand, and in a snowball effect, it can create more demand and sales as a result.

The easiest way to use this is to be able to show how many orders you’ve fulfilled, incorporating it into your copywriting.

When using social proof, you have to establish trust, reputation, and authenticity. Keep in mind that the more value you provide to your customers, the more willing they will be to encourage others to try dealing with your business.

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How Hashtags Help Connect With New Followers

Regardless if you’re using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest, you will discover in all of them that Hashtags are important.

How?

Well, it is what makes you find and be found easily on these social media sites. It helps categorize stuff so they can easily be searched. In some cases, they are the basis to know what are the trends and hot topics over the internet.

Applying it to e-commerce, Hashtags can be used to extend your reach, engage your audience, and even boost your brand. However, there’s a need to have strategize to make use of them effectively.

How hashtags work

Hashtags are used as attachment to posts while in some social media sites, it can become clickable phrases and topics. Any word or phrase can be turned into a working hashtag, as long as it has the # placed in front of it.

When users click these hashtags, they’re taken to its discover feed, or other similar contents where it was used. It can also show all the public content attached to it. People will click on or search for hashtags they’re interested in as a way of finding content.

Hashtags are used to find content. So, being able to use the right hashtags can make you discoverable to your target audience, even if they haven’t connected with you before.

Users can also follow or select their favorite hashtags which they’re interested in. This ensures that the next series of content which would appears in their feed regularly are related to those hashtags.

Using hashtags to connect with your audience

Understanding which hashtags you should use is a crucial part of developing a strong hashtag strategy that maximizes your reach and increases engagement. There are different types of hashtags that each serve a purpose, and any strong strategy incorporates a combination of them.

Types of Hashtags that you should use

Though hashtags are useful, not all ecommerce businesses will benefit from every type of these hashtag. Every brand with a particular kind of business should adopt those that will work best for their identity and their target audience.

The dark side of Hastags

There are such things as banned hashtags. But no, they aren’t curse words and outright obscenities. Instead, these are hastags that are detected to be frequently used alongside some sort of illicit content. Social sites don’t post new content to a banned hashtag’s feeds, if the feed even stays up at all. So, be careful and make you also make yourself knowledgeable of hastags that are not useful at all.

More likely, those social sites will reveal these banned hashtags. Well, that depends. But what we know is that once these are banned, they’ll lose their essence and function, making it nonsense to use them.

Best hashtags for your brand

Hashtagging is considered as an important element of online marketing. Using it strategically and wisely would help you extend your reach and keep your audience engaged. You just really have to know identify the right hashtags that you can use to promote your business.

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Effective Caption Writing To Drive Engagement and Sales

There’s no denying that social media sites or the so-called online market is now in such a success that it is a venture that shouldn’t be missed by businesses.

Nowadays, online-selling won’t be complete without pages and accounts created on various social media sites for businesses and brands. This is not only to advertise but really to market and actually sell.

However, though they may be a lot of good marketing materials such as photos and videos, businesses still won’t make a difference especially without proper and effective captioning.

Captions serves a lot of different purposes from promoting the brand, introducing products, explaining mechanics to calling for action (buying, following, liking and commenting)

What makes compelling captions?

Caption length

There’s no right or wrong length when it comes to caption writing. If your post adds value or is interesting, people will read it. However, if you’re in doubt whether a post is too long, you’re better off erring on short side.

Most sites don’t have much limit to captions (except twitter) so you can make longer ones if you like. Just make sure they were creative and enticing because most users don’t have time to read long and boring captions.

Making the most of the first sentence

Whether you like it or not, this holds your only chance to grab the interest of potential buyers. So, if you fail to succeed on making your first lines interesting, then people would probably just scroll past your posts. Plus, some sites cut the length of captions and hide the other parts to be revealed only when clicked. So, you really have to think thoroughly about what needs to be put on this first line.

Including a call to action or ask a question

Aside of describing or narrating, your caption should also have a sense of purpose and intention, such as leading the readers to do a specific goal such as visit your website, buying a specific product, share the post with friends, shopping a promotion, enter a contest or giveaway or even snap photos and share using a specified hashtag (this is a great way to collect user generated content)

Your goal is to encourage engagement in order to initiate constant dialogue and conversation. Know that most sites have an algorithm which looks at engagement as a metric to serve your posts to followers. Encouraging engagement also increases the likelihood your post will appear in other users’ feeds as a “recommended account” to like or follow.

Writing like a real person

People find fun on content and captions that are witty where they can relate. Actually it’s more interesting if you write captions as you speak. You may want to be strategic and intentional, but you also want to come across natural and like a friend to the user. Even if you are taking the name of a brand or business, you can sound like a regular person and you’ll be amazed how people would love to interact with you.

Being strategic is the key because it opens an opportunity to show off your brand personality. The message is the medium. So use it wisely. Also, take note that you have different audiences on different social media sites. Use that knowledge to personal and relate you captions to them.

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Understanding The Effective Use of POP (Point-of-Purchase) Display In Retail

In business, there are times that sometimes are not known even to owners themselves.  Some of these are not just terms but are strategies that can be used to draw more revenue. That’s why it’s a must to widen and enrich their knowledge once in a while to keep up with the trends going around in the retail industry. One of these is the Point-of-Purchase displaying which may be done by many businesses already but is still unfamiliar to some which also makes them miss the benefits of it.

First of all, A POP display is used to highlight and draw the customer’s attention to particular products.  Now it will all make sense why there are signs and particular products placed on random places such as near the cashier. POP displays vary in size but aims to serve similar purpose just through different ways.

Before (and up until now,) POP displays are commonly placed on the side of the cash registers. Commonly you will see bar of candies, chocolate, magazines and others which can easily be grabbed and included on your cart. It is seen to be effective as it adds additional purchases by the last minute, though some had mistaken it as a place where they can put excess or unnecessary products.

But now, businesses discovered some other strategic positions to place it within the store which can also serve the same ideal result. Other types of POP include what is called the “store within a store” where a vendor places a section in the retail store that sets its merchandise apart from the rest. Meanwhile the signage type which is considered as the most powerful and effective due to studies showing that how it outperforms displays without signs by drawing higher sales.

What makes this more amazing is how regular priced merchandise (not on sale) gathered higher sales than products which are on sale or clearance priced merchandise when it was signed while the sale items were not. This shows the important and critical role of signs as a POP display to draw attention to the items which prompts customers to buy the items they have noticed. Signs can be made as hanging displays or posters. Just make sure the signage is not blocking anything or serves as a hindrance to the customer, and then they’ll be effective in draw attention of the shoppers to a new product, or one that’s on sale, as well as seasonal items. Think of signage as a non-speaking salesperson which can keep a customer occupied and interested while inside the store even when everyone around is busy including the actual salespeople who cannot cater all of them at that time.

Know that most of the retail purchases aren’t decided until the customer actually is in the store, so it’s clear that even the positioning of your shelves and products have meaning and impact to your business in general. So, by deploying POP displays effectively, you can make a store environment where customers coming inside would be motivated to purchase.

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Mastering The Ecommerce Business

Some of the most important tasks you’ll encounter in starting an ecommerce business include researching, launching, and growing a profitable ecommerce business. However the formula can be simplified choosing a product, researching and preparing, then starting the business. But, be informed that behind these three easy steps, are set of objectives that you must accomplish to have a smooth sailing start for this new business venture.

Find the perfect product to sell

In building an ecommerce business, you have to start by knowing what the products that you want to sell are. It is one of most challenging part especially because it’s an online business. In this part, you have to be able to think of strategies you can use to find the best product opportunities, and for you to explore the best places to look for product ideas, and lastly, you have to look at the trends to know what products would sell best.

Assess your concept

After deciding on a product, you now have to identify if it will sell. You also have to develop your own approaches just like other active entrepreneurs and compare it to their product and ideas for you to know how you can make yours effective with your potential market.

Obtain your product

After settling on a solid product idea, you now have to figure out where and how you’re going to obtain your chosen products. There are various methods for acquiring your products that you can choose from. They have their own pros and cons. So, you have to weigh it properly.

Research on your competition then write a business plan

At this time, you’re now ready for your own business plan, but before starting on it, you’ll have to thoroughly research your competition first so you will know what you’re up against and how you can put an edge to your business. After a competitive research has been completed, it’s now the time for you to write your business plan. This will be your guide in bringing your ideas together. It is vital in determining your priorities and you can use it effectively to reach new customers.

Name your business and create your logo

Another challenging decision that you have to make aside from looking for a product is determining your business identity. In short, brand name. You have to come up with an appropriate and available domain name.

After selecting a memorable name and registering it with a corresponding domain, you now have to craft a simple logo as a start. It has to be remarkable and think of how it can have a recall with your future customers so that they will remember it easily in the future.

Educate yourself about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Almost done! But, before you finish all your preparation, it’s important that you familiarize yourself with the basics of SEO which would help you properly structure your online sites and pages for Google and other search engines. It’s what will help you be found by interested buyers and consumers.

Now, it’s time to build your store

Just keep in mind that as you start this online business, there are still many crucial considerations. So, make sure you equip yourself with essential knowledge to help you build high-converting product pages, write captivating product descriptions, shoot beautiful product photography, and much more. Don’t rush and make sure your every move is based on a well-thought decision. The future of your business now lies on your hands.

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Why You Need To Level Up With A Data-Backed Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Relevant marketing messages is a crucial issue nowadays; taking the form of ads, most often it annoy consumers rather than rely message. Thus, they were being fought by ad blockers and silent protests which could affect businesses.

We have to realize that a message only becomes helpful when it’s relevant. This is why the concept of omnichannel marketing is important.  This is what will allow you to create not only relevant but personalized messages that customers will receives just at right time through the best channel. Omnichannel marketing is backed by studies proving what it can really do for the customers.

So, How can you now boost your Customer Relations with Omnichannel Marketing?

According to research, over 2 billion messages sent over the course of 2018, and there is also a study how omnichannel impacted both marketers and consumer habits. In a report, there is a full analysis and statistics on ecommerce-focused messages in omnichannel marketing, automation workflows, segmentation data, and email marketing.  As it turns out, there are a ton of great reasons to adopt an omnichannel marketing strategy, and now we have the numbers to back it up.

Higher Engagement & Purchase Rate

Engagement between campaigns using three or more channels and those using just one channel will show that omnichannel campaigns were clearly better in prompting online customers to engage. This means using more the one channel would also lead to more engagement as customers would have more opportunities to engage.

When interacting with an omnichannel campaign, customers tended to engage more with each channel used in that campaign. Engagement rate isn’t the only metric boosted by three or more channels. Omnichannel campaigns earned higher purchase rate than single-channel campaigns. Not only were ecommerce customers ready to engage with omnichannel campaigns, but these campaigns directly influenced purchase decisions for these customers.

Marketers Retain More Customers

Data proves that Ecommerce marketers using three or more channels in their campaigns earn more customer loyalty than single-channel campaigns. Customer retention for single-channel campaign marketers was only at almost 35% while marketers using three or more channels enjoyed almost 70% customer retention rate. This says that there’s about 90% higher retention rate for omnichannel campaigns.

So, when you use multiple digital channels to reach out to your customers, they tend to respond better to it because your products and brand is more visible where they are.

Marketers Earn Higher AOV

Experts will also tell us that customers who interact with an omnichannel campaign with three or more channels are more likely to engage with those channels, purchase, and come back for a repeat purchase. These same online customers are also more likely to spend more when interacting with a campaign that has more than one channel.

The average order value (AOV) of customers interacting with omnichannel campaigns earned 13% higher AOV than single-channel campaigns. The AOV for omnichannel campaigns using three or more channels is said to have about $66.31 per order.

All this data and report tells us that when using omnichannel marketing in ecommerce, customers engage and purchase more often. Omnichannel campaigns also improve customer retention in ecommerce and with omnichannel campaigns, customers spend more when they purchase.

These benefits are truthful and shouldn’t be shrugged off. It’s real that customers are now looking for a personalized omnichannel experience online, and as soon as they find it, they would be ready to purchase with the ecommerce brand providing it.

Regardless if it’s through purchasing, coming back more often, spending more, or a combination of the three, it’s undeniable that this is what the customers expect from us. This is how we will earn their loyalty.

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