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Keeping a Customer vs. Creating a new One
Often marketing professionals get tunnel vision and subsequently solely focus on creating new customers. Although new customer acquisition is extremely important, the value of keeping a current customer should not be neglected.
SEOMoz has a great post that outlines 6 tips for keeping your current customers happy (and subsequently paying). The tips are primarily for e-commerce businesses but even if you are not in e-commerce, the tips can definitely get your head in the right place surrounding the importance of customer care.
Some tips I whole heartedly agree with
Stay involved - You may be using a drop shipper to manage inventory storage, shipping, and handling…
It is all too easy to pass a customer along to someone else in your organization. Try sticking with individual customers throughout the sales process and beyond to help build a personal relationship. Relationships are harder to walk away from than a series of single emails from different people.
Use dynamic pages designed specifically for each visitor- Best example? Amazon. My home page is different from your home…
Here at Performable we have always felt that creating a personal experience for each web site visitor is an extremely effective way to create passionate customers. So much so that we build our marketing CMS platform to make this quick and easy to do.
Other great tips in the article include providing great customer phone support and over-delivering. Read the rest of the tips here.
It is also very important to point out that a great customer experience can lead to passionate customers and referral, which in the end will provide your business with new customers.
Although I say “tunnel vision” at the beginning of this post, a more accurate statement might be “funnel vision” as in the traditional marketing funnel. The traditional funnel focuses the marketer on simply moving web traffic along to the next stage and de-emphasizes the individual and their ongoing experience/relationship with your company. Here at Performable we find customer lifecycle marketing a better alternative and more focused on the customer.
