Nomad Marketing Blog

New Year’s Resolution:  Keep your customers!In this frustrating economy, it’s more important than ever for small businesses to solidify their existing customer relationships.  Losing customers and having to replace them is more costly than ever.  The added cost of attracting new clients vs. keeping existing clients has been well documented.Making a fresh commitment to current customers is a great way to start the new year.  Keeping their loyalty helps preserve top line revenue and reduce marketing expenses.  Here are three suggestions for maintaining your customer connections and getting them to work for you:

• Communicate!  

Start the new year by thanking them for their continued loyalty.  Tell them about your plans for the coming year.  Invite them to share stories of their work with you.  Testimonials are always valuable.  Think about starting a regular newsletter or blog.  Whatever you do, let customers know you appreciate them and want them to stick around.

• Create incentives for extending relationships

Loyalty programs are a great way to reward loyal customers and can help attract new customers.  These programs don’t need to be expensive.  Offering early or preferred access to products and services encourages loyalty, helps in production planning and costs little.  Early notification of new products and frequent flyer discounts are other valuable and low cost loyalty rewards.

• Ask them for help

Satisfied customers are usually more than willing to put in a good word for you.  Referral programs encourage customers to do that in an organized way.  A small reward for a new customer referral goes a long way.  The new customers you land from these referrals are more likely to be good long-term partners, too.Social media offers many opportunities for customers to promote you, as well.  Getting them to follow you and interact with you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. can expand your sphere of influence and increase your brand awareness.

Start 2009 with a fresh commitment to your current customers.  Your customers will reward you with continued loyalty.

Marketing,Nomad Marketing,Loyalty,social media,new media,Facebook,Twitter,LinkedIn,New Year’s Resolutions,referral programs,e-newsletters,blogs,economy

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.