Retaining your
customers is never an easy task. In fact, sometimes, the more intrusive you
become, the less likely it is to convince people that you are a reliable
business partner. Speaking from my personal experience, nowadays people have
got tired of direct advertisements, saying “We are the best...”; “Buying
our products means that you're buying a better life” etc. Well, perhaps
several decades ago this used to work. But honestly speaking, in the past
people were not so suspicious. The market used to offer a really limited number
of options; the competition was
definitely not so merciless and the average consumer was not so satisfied.
But as we all know,
today the situation is completely different. Take my company, for example. When
I first started my business, which was at about seven years ago, I realized
that it was almost impossible to establish my brand new business on the market.
Bigger companies, which were far more experienced and respectful than me, smashed
every single move I made. Eventually, my marketing strategy completely failed
and I had to start all over again. With a brand new plan!
In this article I
decided to share with you a few useful tips on how to get your business to the
top. The modern world gives us a great variety of business opportunities and
you can achieve success only if you know how to take advantage of them.
Email Marketing
This is my first
suggestion. As soon as the concept of Internet marketing got on stage, the ball
automatically fall in the court of the so-called Email marketing. This
is something, which I was familiar with, but the truth is that I have never
considered to include it in my marketing strategy. For some reason, it didn't
seem to me that this is a reliable and effective way to grab the attention of
my customers and build relationships with them. But a couple of years ago, on a
business lunch with one of my best customers, she managed to convince me that
it is really worth the time and efforts.
I spend a month doing some research about this type of advertising and decided
to take a shot. And it worked – after some time people really knew about me.
Social networks
Well, that was another thing that I was not quite sure about. Twitter,
Facebook – all these seemed really childish to me. Especially when it comes
to business marketing. But once again – I was wrong! My accounts in the social
networks have become my greatest source
of new customers. In fact I found that when you reasonably consider people's
interests; when you understand what they want to read more or less about, it is
much easier for you to retain them as clients. Also, social networks are a great
way to attract some potential customers.
Be up-to-date
Here's the thing –
world's market doesn't have time to wait for you to wake up. You either find
some way to catch up with the latest technologies and advertising innovations,
or simply miss the train. For example, as soon as the smartphones became
popular, I immediately made my business website available for mobile devices. You
can be sure that your clients will really appreciate such strategy.
