Customer Retention Boosts Inbound Marketing Success

Your Inbound marketing has been a success, but did you know that customer retention boosts inbound marketing success? Now you have a database of happy and satisfied customers who have enjoyed a good experience with your product or service and who are now promoting your business in their social circles through word of mouth marketing. It sounds idyllic, but this where the real work starts!

It has been estimated that attracting new customers with online marketing costs five to ten times as much as retaining existing ones. Therefore, to make a worthwhile return on the resources you have invested to make your Inbound marketing a success, it is important that you give your customers a reason to use your products or services again and again.

Don’t Devalue your Inbound Marketing Success with Discounts

After attracting new customers with online marketing, it can be tempting to offer discounts for their repeat business. However, whereas a discount might encourage a customer to come back for your product or service once or twice, what you should be aiming for is a lifetime relationship – and price alone is unlikely to achieve that.

Consider the scenario where you have been attracted to a restaurant as a result of their inbound marketing success. If the food, the service and the ambience are all good, you will be more likely to return to the restaurant, irrespective of whether you are offered a discount or not. Offering a discount for repeat business in this case would devalue the return on investment that the owner of the restaurant would receive, and a discount would not necessarily guarantee future customer retention.

Three Steps: Customer Retention Boosts Inbound Marketing Success

There are three steps you can take to increase the value of your inbound marketing success and develop a relationship with your customers. We are going to demonstrate these steps using a restaurant as an example, but the same steps could be applied to most business supplying a product or service that would benefit from customer retention.

Loyalty Programs

After putting a lot of effort into attracting new customers with online marketing, the most effective way to retain them is by offering a loyalty program. Research conducted in United States showed that 74% of Americans belonged to a loyalty program and that 17% of them actually found the presence of a loyalty program “very influential” in their purchasing decision.

A restaurant’s loyalty program does not necessarily have to offer discounts which would devalue their inbound marketing success. Their customers could be rewarded with value-added services, access to exclusive events and privileges such as priority bookings for Christmas or New Year. In this way, the restaurant is preserving its profits and more than likely increasing its word of mouth marketing.

How-To Guides and Newsletters

The second step for developing customer retention and building on your inbound marketing success is to produce and distribute “How-To Guides” and Newsletters – usually through email marketing. In the study previously mentioned, 31% of Americans who received loyalty program communications considered them to be “extremely relevant” and did not consign them to their junk-mail folders.

In the context of a restaurant, “How-To Guides” could demonstrate how to cook and present one of the more popular menu choices (even better when done in the form of a video presentation) while a newsletter could give loyalty program members advance notice of forthcoming exclusive events that they might wish to book for in advance.

Customer Service

Social media is a powerful tool for creating inbound marketing success, but it can also be an open forum where anybody can write a negative comment about your product or service and have it seen by millions. By developing a social media presence and engaging your customers in dialogue about your products and services, you will build a relationship with your customers that not only encourages loyalty but also limits public complaining.

In our restaurant scenario, both bad and good word of mouth marketing can be followed online and addressed as each situation arises – creating a public perception of a restaurant that truly values what its customers think and is prepared to correct mistakes when they occur (and say “thank you” for a positive recommendation). The benefits of earning customer retention through public customer service should never be under-estimated, and this is one area of your social media marketing strategy that should never be overlooked.

Let JZmarketing Help: Customer Retention Boosts Inbound Marketing Success

As an international marketing agency, we are aware that successful customer retention starts with the first contact and not at the point of sale. Therefore, whereas attracting new customers with online marketing is the initial target, developing a lifetime relationship is the ultimate goal. Just remember the title of this article: Customer retention boosts inbound marketing success.

Effective customer retention is essential if you want to keep your (positive) word of mouth marketing flowing. If you would like to find out more about how customer retention boosts inbound marketing success, you are invited to complete your contact details in the box below and someone from team will call back to discuss your options with you.

Risky Business Image by creativedc via Flickr