24 Ways to Build & Maintain Customer Loyalty

How to build brand loyalty

1. Deliver on quality and value (more than what is expected)
2. Talk to your clients/customers regularly.
3. Be consistent with everything.
4. Become known in your community or vertical.
5. Focus on customer experience and service, not on sales.
6. Provide (unexpected) incentives.
7. Stay on your toes.

Developing your company brand is key to driving customers to your business. The more a consumer resonates with your brand, the more likely they are to buy from you again. Creating this loyal following of customers can ensure continued success and help drive sales of your company’s products and services forward.

• Offer Discounts.
• Reward Customers.
• Promote Your Rewards Program.
• Encourage Referrals.
• Create a Point System.
• Partner with Another Company.
• Set Up a Subscription Service.
• Ask for Feedback.

How to use customer loyalty to grow your brand

1. Solicit customer feedback. It’s normal in business for customers to come and go.
2. Celebrate your most loyal customers on social media.
3. Incentivize repeat business with reward programs.
4. Encourage loyal customers to spread the love with referral programs.

5 Ways to Inspire Loyalty Through Customer Care

1. Listen. It’s easy for companies large and small to rely on assumptions and impulses to tell them what their customers want.
2. Respond. People want answers to their questions and comments.
3. Be Human. Our society today has evolved into a more casual communication style.
4. Remove Barriers.
5. Keep Your Word.

6 Ways to Influence Customers and Grow Sales

1. Make them feel uniquely special. Smile and truly welcome your customer.
2. Offer lots of information. Consumers look for trustworthy, knowledgeable individuals to educate them on a purchase.
3. Customers need to be involved in the decision.
4. Tell the story.
5. Make realistic promises.
6. Provide a high level of service.

I’d recommend selling the pen below in 4 steps.

1. Ask the person what they do.
2. Acknowledge how important their job is and get them talking about the last time they used a pen.
3. Highlight an emotional use for the pen.
4. Hand them back the pen and close the deal.

4-step process to get people to buy your product

1. Drive traffic to your website. This whole shebang starts with getting your product or services in front of your target audience, which at this point you must have identified.
2. Make a great first impression and encourage your visitors to discover more content.
3. Win their trust.
4. Present your offer.

There are lots of reasons a customer could choose your businesses, but we found it often boiled down to three main options: customer service, competitive pricing, or the product/service itself. Of the entrepreneurs we asked, 50% think their customers choose their business due to their customer service.

There are a whole range of reasons why customers buy a product or service. They usually buy to solve either real or perceived problems. They want to feel better after having made the decision to buy a product or service than they did before. Customers will buy from you if you meet these criteria.

There are four main customer needs that an entrepreneur or small business must consider. These are price, quality, choice and convenience.

A want is simply something that we’d like to have for whatever rational or irrational reason. Expectations are the anticipated circumstances of a purchase. Needs, wants, and expectations are the key motivations that drive the customer, and for that matter, any person.

Here are just a few examples of customer expectations — at least, for now.

• Speed: Most customers don’t want to take a ton of time deciding what to buy.
• Authenticity: Customers want no games, no gimmicks, and no fine print.
• Care: If customers merely want a transaction, they’ll buy online.

Expectation is defined as believing that something is going to happen or believing that something should be a certain way. An example of expectation is a belief that you will be getting promoted. An example of expectation is a belief that you should behave as a proper lady or gentleman.

Customer expectations are created in the minds of customers based upon their individual experiences and what they have learned, combined with their pre-existing experience and knowledge. Customers will have both explicit and implicit expectations regarding the product or service which they have purchased.

Losses in profits, bad publicity and damage to the company image are some of the negative consequences that can result from not fulfilling clients’ expectations. Finding solutions that are feasible, consistent with your brand and guaranteed to meet the expectations of customers is not as complicated as it sounds.

6 ways to manage your customer expectations when times get tough

1. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth.
2. Adapt how you speak to your customers.
3. Go where your customers are going.
4. Make sure your customer service team is well prepared.
5. Be as flexible as possible.
6. Listen to what your customers are saying.
7. Putting the customer above all else.

It gives you an opportunity to make right changes at the right time to improve upon the customer journey and meet their needs. Excellent customer service is a sure way to exceed customer expectations as it creates loyal customers for life who will even refer your business to friends, family and colleagues.

Generally, when you buy products from vendors, you get discounts for higher-volume purchases. If you under-buy and don’t meet demand, you miss an opportunity to get a better cost per unit through a larger purchase from your supplier. Forecasting demand accurately allows you to more easily make large purchases.

For most companies, the steps in the demand planning process go something like this:

1. Preparation of data.
2. Initial forecasting.
3. Incorporation of market intelligence.
4. Consideration of sales goals and financial reports to reconcile bottom-up forecasts with top-down financial and sales forecasts.
5. Refine a final forecast.

When both demand and supply are graphed on the same Price and Quantity axis, they intersect. It is that point of intersection that shows us the optimum price for quantity. Areas where either demand or supply exceeds the other are represented as either a shortage or a surplus.