Repeat customers are the most profitable customers of your business. They act as the brand ambassadors of your business. Research shows that the client acquisition cost (CAC) is 5 times higher than retaining an existing customer. The cost of acquiring a client includes the operational expense, ad spent, and marketing expenses that your business incurs on securing a new client. Therefore, if you already have existing clients it’s a viable decision to keep them engaged and nurtured to turn into loyal customers.
The spending behavior of repeat customers is a lot higher than new buyers due to brand loyalty. Repeat customers spend 67% more than first-time buyers. Thus it’s a win-win situation for your business. With their higher spending habits, coupled with lower acquisition costs, repeat customers maximize your overall profits.
Before we dive into the topic, let’s look into some interesting facts about repeat customers.
- Repeat customers nearly cost 5% less than a new customer.
- They are the brand ambassadors of your business, who promote your business on an autopilot basis.
- The lifetime value of the repeat customer is higher than a new customer
- Selling to repeat customers involves a lot less cost than acquiring a new one.
Turning your first-time buyers into repeat customers has to be strategic. In this article, we will explore techniques and tips that you can implement to turn your first-time buyers into repeat customers. Let’s get started.
Begin Loyalty Programs
Offering loyalty programs is a great strategy to keep your first-time buyers engaged. You can provide special offers, occasional discounts, points, gifts, etc to attract customers and retain them for the long run.
Loyalty programs keep the customers invested in your brand. If you keep on providing rewards for their purchases, they will keep coming back to buy your services/products. 77% of customers avail at least 5 loyalty programs and 90% of them have redeemed rewards in the past six months. This keeps the customers engaged and excited at the same time.
Promptly Act on Customer Feedback
Your clients love to be heard and taken care of. Analyze customer feedback on various channels, particularly on social media. Watch out for the positive and negative reviews. If any of the customers are not satisfied with your service/product, offer them personalized assistance to sort out the specific issue that he has faced. This is important because your client has invested money in your brand, and he expects you to take the matters as seriously as he does.
Integrating a social wall allows you to actively monitor and respond to customer feedback in real time. By aggregating posts, comments, and mentions across social media platforms onto a single display, you can promptly address both positive accolades and concerns. Promptly responding to customer feedback wins their trust. Always use a professional tone in responding to customer feedback. You can use brand monitoring tools to identify what a first-time buyer has to say about your brand.
Focus on Providing Great Customer Service
Whether a customer subscribes to your SaaS product or buys your service, they always need support throughout the buying journey. Offer great customer service to make their buying process easier and seamless.
- Support via chat: Offer support via chat on the website, and have a dedicated support agent. You can use AI tools to ensure better productivity and time-saving.
- Provide email support 24*7 to ensure you never miss out on any customer queries.
While you can automate these strategies, too many customers walk away because many brands do not have a real person speaking to them. Have a person on board who can handle all your customer queries on the phone.
Create Irresistible Referral Programs
The old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing never goes out of style. Your first-time buyers can bring you a lot of business if you engage them with your marketing strategies by creating referral programs. The referral programs allow them to earn rewards by recommending your product/service to their friends and family.
Referral programs help businesses in two ways. Firstly, they win the hearts of their existing customers, and they also improve brand awareness on an autopilot basis.
Ensure Social Media Listening
Social media listening involves the following key steps.
Run an Initial Assessment
Social media listening is the same as monitoring customer feedback/concerns via social media. Initial assessment is crucial to avoid any backlash or trolls that result in a reaction. It includes identifying the severity of the situation and offering the right support.
Offer Them Solution
Firstly, admit the mistake. Reach out to their inbox to offer help. Get on a call to discuss their grievances regarding your brand/service. Send their way a gift hamper as a token of apology, if needed.
Act Promptly
Social media listening has to be quick. Effectively handling social media critics is crucial to safeguarding brand personality and avoiding any trolling. Use brand monitoring tools like Hootsuite, mention, or Brandwatch to ensure you don’t miss any crucial social media criticism.
UK’s Airline Industry
The following is a response to the UK’s flight system when it crashed in 2023 resulting in massive cancellation of the 500 flights. Below is a sentiment analysis of the people who have been documented using social media listening tools. These tools use NLP to analyze the responses of customers on social media.
This analysis strengthens brands to monitor and effectively deliver solutions to customers whose emotions have been hurt significantly. In response to this, the airlines can provide personalized support and compensation to travelers.
Provide An Experience-First Approach
Adopt an ‘experience-first’ approach to turn your first-time buyers into repeat customers.
Great buying experiences are the goldmines to build long-run businesses. Reshaping the buying experience needs factors like prompt responses, consistency, connection, and convenience. Building a great customer experience for first-time buyers has to be creative. Ensure to provide a simple and convenient buying process that’s seamless, easy, and user-friendly. This can be achieved through well-designed website wireframes.
90% of customers prefer convenience over any other factor throughout the buying process. Be consistent with your approach to providing personalized support throughout the 100s of touchpoints. Offer a personalized approach throughout the buying process, and provide after-sale support. The after-sale support is where you win the hearts of your customers.
Educate Your Customers
Once a customer buys your product and signs up for your service, you get all these important details including email, phone number, and social profiles. Use that data to educate your customers regarding your service or product through content marketing to give them confidence in your brand.
You can send them weekly/daily newsletters, social media posts, email campaigns, etc to keep them engaged and educated. Share expert opinions through whitepapers and market yourself as an industry leader. Educating them regularly builds up trust and confidence in your brand.
The AI Journal
AI Journal offers consultancy to businesses that are at the awareness stage of AI adoption. The AI Journal is a prime example of how you can become an industry leader by bringing the latest updates, trends, and statistics through content marketing.
The whitepapers are backed by statistics, expert opinions, and case studies. This keeps its readers engaged. Besides, people trust AI Journal because of its capacity to bring knowledge and value directly to their emails where they can access it with confidence, and trust.
Conclusion
Turning your first-time buyers into repeat customers requires consistency, authenticity, personalization, and monitoring. Use tools, strategies, and proven techniques to keep your first-time buyers engaged to scale your profit and build an incredible brand.
Turning your first-time buyers into repeat customers is a strategy that most businesses should take advantage of. Repeat customers promote your business on an autopilot basis. Your efforts to convert first-time buyers into repeat customers go a long way. It can save thousands of dollars in the long run.
Your first-time buyers carry an incredible opportunity to scale your business. Leverage them with care and professionalism to improve brand awareness, scale profits, and build brand loyalty.