A young lady walks into your store one cool afternoon, looks around at your wares, picks up a souvenir and purchases it. You politely smile with light chatter and send her on her way, out the door to the next stop in her travels.
That's great, you've made a sale. But you did that poor young lady a great dis-service.
You know you have lots of other things she will be interested in based on her purchase, and you know that in 2 weeks time, you will be getting more stock in that compliments her purchase. So how are you going to get her moon-walking back into your door if she doesn't know what else you have to offer?
Besides impeccable customer service which is the biggest requirement, we have come up with 7 easy peasy ways for you to do just that.
1. An awesome Facebook page
Build a Facebook presence that is irresistible.One that your customers and potential customers love to visit, week after week to see what new information you have for them. A Facebook page is the perfect place to let customers know of new stock that's arrived, the latest items on sale and events you are running. It is also a great place to collect customer feedback, testimonials and of course to handle any negative feedback a customer may give you. Once you've got a great Facebook page, make sure you promote it. Put a poster up in-store telling people to visit you on Facebook, put your Facebook URL on your business cards, put it on your flyers, where ever you can. Important:Make sure your Facebook page is fantastic before you tell everyone to come see it. Otherwise when they get there, may be a little disappointed.
2. Collect their details
When a customer walks into the store and then makes a purchase, ask them if you can add them to your mailing list. Tell them what benefits they will receive in return for handing over their personal details, and let them know that they can unsubscribe at any time if they wish to (that is VERY important).
Also add an email subscribe form on your website and Facebook page Once you've got their details, you can email them or send them a letter letting them know of new stock, upcoming sales, which items are discounted etc.
3. Run an on-going competition
Did you know you can collect someones details without having to physically (with your own mouth) ask them?
People love to win things, so running ongoing (or regular) competitions is a great way to get people to hand over their details, and come back in-store month after month to enter the next competition.
An extra boost to your competition? Connect it to Facebook via a special check-in app so people can share about your competition and your business to all of their friends!
Did you know the average person has 135 friends?
That's a lot of word of mouth marketing! Not sure of what the prize should be? Start off with an iPad 3, people WANT to win one of those.
4. Utilise your dockets and receipts
Those little paper things that fill up your wallet, handbag and car, why not leverage those and add a little pizazz into them?
By pizazz, I mean turn them into something that customers actually want to look at.
Receipts are marketing tools that many businesses overlook, they're not just pieces of paper people save for tax time, budgeting and legal requirements.
You can put a QR code on them that links to your competition, an email subscribe form on your website, a special offer landing page, a promotional video...
By putting a QR code with a special offer or competition on your receipts and dockets, you are inviting customers to come back, use their special offer and/or purchase again and again to receive more entries into your competition.
Sounds interesting doesn't it?
5. Create a loyalty program
Not just any old loyalty program where you have a card and get it stamped or clipped at each visit. One that customers are honoured to be a part of, that they feel like VIPs every time they walk through your door, a loyalty program they tell their friends about as if it were a secret club they were exclusively invited into.
Do you think your customers will feel super important and shop with you exclusively?
To create such a program you need the following basics:
- Impeccable customer service (includes learning all your loyalty club members names and greeting them as such)
- VIP products available only to your loyalty club members
- Closed door sales
- Exclusive, significant discounts
Now these basics should be enough to get you started, but build on them as you go along to create the most immaculate loyalty program possible. Once you've got it set up, you will need to promote it. Digitise your program so it can be shared via social networks and your website, it will be easy to join online and you can collect personal details more efficiently.
6. Run a survey
By now you should have a database of your current customers email addresses and if you're really savvy, their postal address. If you don't have at least their email addresses yet, refer back to steps 2 and 3. A survey is a great way to collect information from your customers that you can use in future marketing when working out strategies on how to get them back in the door and buying from you. You can ask customers what ever questions you need the answers to, provide a nice little thank you gift to thank them for filling it out and use the information they gave you to improve your business. You can run the survey from your website, your Facebook page, through your email database and physically in-store. For online based surveys, a great tool we recommend is SurveyMonkey.
7. Be a social media superstar
Social media is your business' best friend when it comes to marketing, communicating, building relationships, lead generation and even sales.
So there really is no excuse for you to not leverage social media for the sake of your business.
Whether you have a personal aversion to social media or not doesn't matter. If you hate social media, suck it up and just do it (or pay someone who actually likes doing it).Your business will love you for it, and in time, you will love social media for all the good it will do for your bottom line.
So be a social media superstar, learn the ropes, the tricks of the trade and the lingo. You don't need to invest hours a day into your social media presence, that's what professional social media strategists are for. What you do need to invest in social media is passion and drive. A passion to over-deliver and the drive to keep at it.
These are only 7 ways to get your customers moon-walking back in the door. Do you have any other ways to entice returning customers? Please share them with us in the comments below.