If you’re working on lead generation, it’s easy to end up focused on the new: new leads, new customers, new ideas. But what about your established clients? It’s easy to overlook established clients, assuming that they’ll remain loyal – and that’s doing you both a disservice.
Be sure to continue nurturing your existing client relationships if you want your business to grow and succeed. Loyal clients’ word of mouth endorsements are one of the most important forms of business promotion, and you only get that support when you give it back.
Create A Timeline
One way to ensure that you’re regularly engaging with your clients is by developing a timeline for your interactions. You have an established sale cycle, but are there points at which you can add more value? By adding additional sales interactions to your timeline, you keep your clients engaged with your brand.
Chat It Up
A growing number of companies are using chat software to engage with existing clients, to the point that customers actually expect to have access to such services – and the benefits go both ways. Chat software makes it more likely that you’ll receive immediate customer feedback and reduces your workforce costs compared to other service modalities. Customers also tend to feel less stressed when seeking support via chat than over the phone, and this is particularly the case among younger customers.
Set Up Trigger Moments
While you can add specific sale goals to your client timeline, another way to maintain a connection with existing clients is by setting up email autoresponders that are triggered by specific onsite actions. When a customer views a certain product, puts things in their cart, or otherwise engages with your content, they receive an automated yet personal email with a special offer or added information.
Though this tool is also helpful when onboarding new customers, it tends to be more effective with established clients.
Offer A Sneak Peek
We all know the saying, “out of sight, out of mind,” and when you’re out of sight, it’s easy for customers to forget about your business. Keep yourself at the forefront of their awareness by giving customers insights into your daily operations.
Have you formed a new partnership with another company? Did you just complete a big program upgrade or launch a new product? Let them know about these landmark moments because, remember, you’re doing this work for them.
Think Beyond Loyalty
Ultimately, today people rarely talk much about the businesses they’re loyal to. No, they head online to hype up the companies that they love. It’s time to take a step beyond the loyalty paradigm, then, and encourage your customers to share their passions and enthusiasms. One way you might consider doing this is by letting a high-volume customer take over your social media account once a month or by developing a client-produced media program. These elements, of course, need to be secondary to your value proposition. If established customers cease to view your business as innovative and filling a serious need, you’ll fall behind.
Market disrupters get a lot of the love.
Conclusion
Customer loyalty is indispensable, but you can never trust that your clients will stand by your side. Instead, you need to lead the way and partner with them first.
Keep connecting, share your successes, and let your customers know that you’re working for them – because loyalty, and love, go both ways.