Bringing more loyal clients to your business isn’t easy. But it is critical.
Finding the diamond in the rough clients can take years of hard work. Relying on referrals and expecting a client to fall into your lap is risky. If it happens, that’s great, but if it doesn’t work out, you’ve wasted time that could have been spent actively acquiring new clients.
Here are three simple ways to bring more loyal clients to your business starting today:
Build a client-first foundation
When it comes to building a brand where clients are loyal and engaged, trust and service are critical factors for success. Providing great customer service and a client-first foundation lands customers and keeps them happy for years to come. Building real relationships with your clients is how you build loyal customers.
Don’t believe me? More than half of Americans have switched to new brands due to bad service.
A reported 33 percent of customers would switch companies after a single instance of poor service.
Nowadays, service is arguably more important than ever. So, how do you build a client-first foundation and cement your brand image?
Let’s cover a few easy ways that you can change your service game.
Related: 6 Simple Hacks for Building Loyal, Long-Term Clients
Use customer support software to build loyal clients
One of the best ways to provide a client-first foundation is by utilizing some form of customer support software, which helps you streamline the support process from start to finish. You can manage user profiles and provide helpful information instantly, while also keeping track of historical support records for future reference.
Building a loyal client foundation requires better support, and without software that maximizes your potential, you can’t expect to meet expectations.
Simply juggling platforms is a surefire way to respond too slowly or with improper information to solve the problem. Your customers deserve better. And if they don’t get it through your business, they’ll get it elsewhere.
Focus more of your budget on existing customer development
Marketing has shifted toward inbound marketing, a goal of bringing in new leads to find great customers. While this strategy is fantastic for scaling, it also can damage existing customer relationships. If you are putting too much of your budget into finding new leads, customer development becomes secondary, resulting in lower lifetime values and decreased revenue.
Take a hard look at your current marketing spend and see if you can and should allocate more to customer development. For example, can you improve the current user experience with your products and services? Can you improve your website design and usability for better convenience?
Let me give you an example: Let’s say you are driving tons of existing customers to good sections of your website filled with content, including blogs and tutorials. What sections of your blog content aren’t working? Which elements are resulting in stagnant scrolling and frustration for your customers?
Invest time and money into improving existing user experiences to maximize the money you make online before attempting to acquire even more customers.
If you don’t, you’ll just be spending money on new users who will bounce or become dissatisfied quickly.
Develop content for your audience
Content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing efforts, yet generates three times as many leads. If that isn’t a reason enough to start developing content for your audience, I don’t know what is.
But the tricky part is, four million blog posts are developed daily. Not just any piece of content will do anymore, and depending on your niche, different types of content may work best with your particular audience. No matter what, your content needs to serve a purpose in your niche, enlighten consumers and drive them toward your brand.
A great example is Orbit Media’s Blogger Survey. The company’s CEO, Andy Crestodina, puts 150 hours into this study every year, and it’s been shared thousands upon thousands of times since its launch.
Another example? Codeless’ content farm Olympics, in which the company spent thousands of dollars testing sub-par content from content writing services, writing over 13,000 words and compiling tons of data.
These efforts can easily be repeated in almost any niche. The idea here is to produce value with your content that is hard to replicate. Develop some original research, write extraordinary copy, put effort into your content and you will see big returns.
Remember, content doesn’t have to be just blog writing, either. Consumers are spending more time than ever before on social media. So, craft some engaging social media content! More and more people are consuming content in the form of video or audio, like podcasts, too.
The options for content creation are almost endless, and that’s great news for bringing in more loyal clients. You can now cater to their needs on every platform from blogs to social media to podcasts and everything in between.
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Drive big lead lists with Facebook Ads
If you want to drive more loyal clients to your website, you will likely want to consider investing in Facebook ads. While ads can seem spammy or annoying, they give you a great platform for growth. If you haven’t optimized your blog and website for SEO and organic traffic, ads can help you keep a consistent lead list and funnel.
Plus, most ads you run on Facebook are still pretty cheap. And you can use social media analytics platforms to understand what your followers engage with in order to custom tailor your messaging.
Take for example, this business, which was able to generate over 600 leads with just $90 in ad spend on Facebook.
Set your budget at a limit per day that you can reasonably afford and test the waters. If you aren’t sure where to start or what amount of money will drive X amount of leads, do your competitive research. Fire up a tool like SpyFu and plug in your competitors URL. Here, you can find exactly how much they spend each month on ads and what their total conversions and ROI looks like.
This is a great jumping-off point. Then, start collecting leads and following up with each of them, treating them with great customer support and showcasing them content that solves their pain points.
Conclusion
Getting loyal clients requires building relationships, and building relationships requires you to provide excellent service, value and a base to launch from. Start focusing your brand on becoming client-first. That means providing excellent service, developing person-to-person relationships, and ensuring your existing customers are satisfied at all times. Develop content for your audience that continually educates your customers and provides value. Lastly, continually generate lead lists to keep traffic coming through at a cheap cost. This will ensure you always have a growth platform.
