Building Loyalty: B2B Digital Marketing and Customer Retention Nowadays

Reaching new customers has never been an easy job. Even with all the advantages provided by today’s technological tools and online channels at your disposal, it’s still a long and expensive journey. It is extremely important to make sure that the customers you’ve already attracted to your company stay with your company. The benefits can be huge.

To be specific, it is estimated that customers, who had bought from you 2 times before, convert (make a store purchase) 9 times more often than those who were your first time buyers. Apart from this impressive conversion rate, the amount of money this segment of customer base spends is quite big: it amounts to 40% of revenue of an average store. On top of all that, the whole process of attracting new customers is 6-7 times more expensive than keeping the old ones.

These numbers clearly suggest that you should always have repeat customers in mind when designing your digital marketing strategy. Taking advantage of the fact that they are much more inclined to buy from you and create a bond with your brand is a must. Of course, broadening your customer base is a task that shouldn’t be neglected, but too often companies forget the benefits of building loyalty among those who already purchased from them.

Here are a few tricks you can use to broaden your customer base:

Adapt to your customers

In order to properly engage your repeat customers, you first need to know who you’re addressing. Nowadays it’s not difficult to get to know them. Information about your customers can be collected quite easily, using even the simplest of CRM software as well as your social media analytics. In this sense, they’re a target group that’s easiest to reach and understand.

By adapting your voice, style and language to them you’re basically showing that you are one of them. This can help significantly with building a community around your brand, and a huge loyalty-booster. However, developing and executing this part of your digital marketing strategy can be quite tricky. Finding an experienced digital marketing agency that has a good understanding of your market can help you figure out how to effectively do this.

Focus on the post-sale process

Naturally, even a top-class digital campaign won’t be enough in itself to retain your customers. Your marketing efforts have to rely on facts and figures, as well as the actual quality of experience that you’re offering. Good advertising is not going to just miraculously make people stick with a company they’re not satisfied with. You need to continue demonstrating value to your customers even after they purchase from you. And in terms of marketing, focusing your efforts on revealing and proving all your post-sale conveniences is the right way to go.

It’s important to convince and remind your customers that you’re not just trying to play tricks on them in order to get them to buy. Proving that you’re there for them after is essential. Find out what your customers are most satisfied with in the post-purchase process and try to highlight these facts in your campaign. If you offer cheap and fast delivery, make sure to emphasize that. Or if you’re known for excellent customer support and education, remind your customers that this is the thing they like the most about you.

If you offer a loyalty program that may appeal to people, use all the appropriate channels to let them know about it and explain to them what it’s about. This will surely attract some new customers, but it can have a significant impact on the old ones as well. They may not even know about this program, and even if they do, you can benefit from reminding them.

Loyalty programs have a specific effect on people, who like to feel they are treated as more than just customers. They eagerly participate in games and contests that offers some kind of instant gratification every time they buy or interact with your brand. What is more, by collecting points or bonuses, people are actually investing in the relationship with your company. Focusing on advertising the loyalty program will get them to recall the feeling of instant gratification and associate it to your brand, giving them an additional reason to stay loyal to you.

All in all, with a solid loyalty program in place, your customers will be less likely to switch to another brand.

Customer advocacy and user-generated content

Let the customers be your most efficient marketing tool. Encourage them to share their experiences and tell what they think about your services. Share the most interesting stories on your social media or your website. This results in a twofold benefit. First, you’re showing that you care about the feelings and opinions of your customers. Second, getting to know about the benefits you offer first-hand can attract new people and further broaden your customer base.

It’s crucial that these experiences are authentic, genuine and concrete – the more details about what you do and how you do it, the better. You shouldn’t necessarily avoid bad comments and negative experiences. On the contrary, share them from time to time and show willingness to help and solve the problem. If you succeed in solving it, this can be a better proof of your loyalty to your customers than any positive comment. Add value to people’s lives first and only then ask something in return (be it a like, share, subscription, purchase, or some other action).

Marketing is not enough

For this reason, exhibiting loyalty and care to your customers at every step of the way, especially during the post-sale process, is the key to customer retention. As for digital marketing (or any sort of marketing, for that matter) it can be used to emphasize this care and remind your customers of the way you treat them.

But, that’s as far as it goes. Without showing actual effort to make your customers happy, there’s hardly a sustainable way you can retain them in the long term. Finally, remember that having a quality product or service is paramount. Your digital campaign comes at the very end, merely highlighting all the good things that you genuinely do for your customers.

Sowing the seeds of success

Customer attraction is important for any business, but retention is that cost-effective strategy that ensures long-term success. Specifically, without repeat purchases, your lifeblood, you cannot sustain your business vision and fuel operations. To gain traction and trust, you have to provide a stellar customer experience. Start by getting to know your audience and use acquired insights to put together a killer digital marketing strategy.

This key document must acknowledge that delighting consumers is a gradual process of building trust. So, never cut corners or take someone for granted. Instead, make an effort to nurture loyalty in the post-sale stage with customer service, various incentives, loyalty programs, and tailored advertising. Following these smart steps, you should be able to tap into a steady stream of revenue and create bonds that stand the test of time.