Why Loyal Customers Matter the Most

Many online businesses make a simple but very important mistake. 

They focus too much on increasing traffic to their website. This is not necessarily a mistake, but it can become an unfruitful strategy unless you take a broader look at your marketing funnel.

Increasing traffic to your website is important but it cannot be the sole focus of your media strategy. 

Why? Because even if your customer conversion rates can benefit from higher traffic input, there is still a lot that needs to happen throughout your sales funnel to get a customer to ultimately convert. 

Against common practice, in order to increase conversion rates in your marketing funnel, you need to start from the bottom of the funnel and work your way up.

Optimizing the Funnel From the Bottom Up.

A funnel needs to be optimized from the bottom up, not from the top down. Why? Because otherwise, you may end up spending money to increase traffic to a funnel full of issues that will still prevent your clients from seeing the value you’re bringing to market.

This is why the first step to optimizing your sales funnel should be by looking at your actual customers.  You’ll be likely to find that the most revenue increase comes from strategies focused on customer retention and not on new customer acquisition. 

The most profitable customers may be newly acquired ones, that need to be managed for retention as well as established, loyal ones that need to be managed to increase brand awareness and social value.  

Lloyalised customers are not only the most important customer types, they are the most profitable, as any business is usually drawing 80% of its revenue from only 20% of its customers. You guessed it. This 20% is comprised of happy, returning clients.

This is why in this post, we’re going to discuss some helpful approaches to managing newly converted customers so that you may turn them into established loyal ones, by looking into some of the things that may help in building up a successful, long-term relationship.

With no further ado, let’s dive into the topic.

How To Communicate Effectively With Your Newly Acquired Customers.

So what is it you should do to manage clients that have already converted on your website, or bought from your store? Well, we advise thinking about these three things.

Keep them Happy. They’ll Come Back for More.

The most important thing is trying to manage the relationship so that they will be happy with the experience they had and will be willing to come back for more. Newly converted clients may have had a positive shopping experience, but they may require a little extra work to get them to engage with your business on a more regular basis. What we want to do is turn a one-off event into a regular habit.

Follow Up on Their Purchase Experience.

The first thing to do to start building up your relationship is to develop a post-purchase service. As we know, customers actually experience two moments of connection with the brand throughout their customer journey, usually called the “Moment of Truth”: the first moment of truth, takes place when they first see the brand or product and evaluate it as a possible solution for a problem they are facing. The second moment of truth instead, takes place when they actually purchase a product (or solution) and test the promise that the brand has made to see if it delivers the expected results. 

While the first MOT happens at the store, the second one happens at home. As such you are not able to access this experience, unless you’re following up with the purchase, to see if there’s anything else you may want to do to support your customer journey. Going that extra mile can really pay off.

Offer Discounts and Upselling Opportunities.

The third type of activity you can implement to make the best out of your customers is providing more information on how to build on the items or services that they have already purchased, with upselling or cross-selling options. 

Without being too sales-focused you can use your customer’s purchase history to look into those who may be expanding on their initial shopping with new upselling opportunities. The moment in which the customer has made the first purchase is usually considered the time in which they are the most susceptible to buy again.

Great! Hopefully, these are helpful tips you can think about. But what about customers who are already loyal advocates of your brand. What then? In the next section of our post, we’re looking right into this customer category to share some ideas on how to empower them and get them to help you grow your brand.

How to Build on Your Loyal, Brand Advocates. 

Brand advocates are in a completely different stage of the customer journey and as such, it’s important to make sure that you are not treating them as if they were normal customers. 

Loyal customers have bought multiple times from your store and are now connected to it in a more personal manner than your regular client. They may even identify with the brand in a personal way. This is why they feel invested in your success and tend to talk about their experiences drawing more business to you.

Here are some suggestions on the types of interactions you may want to foster with them.

Give Them A Tool to Amplify their Message.

Brand advocates and loyal customers have now built a strong relationship with your brand or products and as such you don’t have to provide the same retention and nurture services that are a part of retained customer engagement. This is not to say that they need less attention, on the contrary, they need as much of your time as any other customer, but by now a bond has already been created. 

The goal of your communication with your brand advocates is to empower them and give them a tool to talk about your brand, as it is now close to their hearts. 

Use Social Discounts and Social Commerce.

A way to do this is to leverage social networks and social media to identify opportunities to have their positive experiences influence, other customers. By using social media, loyal customers can spread awareness of your brand by sharing their purchases with friends and family.

It’s important to consider that using social commerce features can be an additional hassle for your users but you can offset this additional hurdle by providing discounts for those who share their sales on social media platforms.

Simplify the Way They Can Create User-Generated Content.

One of the most influential forms of content is what is called “earned media” or media which is created by third parties but is still discussing your brand. 

What your customers say about you is extremely influential on people’s opinion, because as a third-party communication, a more objective look is expected. 

So how can you enable your customers to spread good opinions? 

Well ideally by making it easy for them to share user-generated content. 

By creating personalization features, or by simply developing a few branded hashtags you can work towards a more persuasive media presence, thanks to the contribution of your loyal customers.

Great! Now that we’ve covered all relevant points it’s time to draw a few conclusive remarks.

Conclusions

There you have it! In this post, we’ve discussed how your loyal customers are the most profitable for your business. Not only that, but it is also safe to assume that those trusted clients are the bread and butter of your revenue, as the 80\20 rule suggests how 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients. 

As you connect with this audience and build a stronger and stronger relationship, remember to not treat them indistinctively. As we’ve seen in our post, it’s important to give value to their position in the customer funnel and empower them with tools that are in tune with their and your own goals.

If you’d like to learn more about customer journeys and inbound marketing strategies, we’d like to share with you a book that can help you learn more on the subject: Smash the Funnel: The Cyclonic Buyer Journey–A New Map for Sustainable, Repeatable, Predictable Revenue Generation

Moreover, on our blog, you can find a wealth of content that can help you explore the many fascinating nuances of the fashion business. Enjoy!