The importance of consistently acquiring new customers is often top-of-mind for every business owner.
But I also want to help build your belief to be equally intentional about creating loyal, repeat customers.
Notice my emphasis on the word creating in that last sentence.
Some of the most robust periods of growth we've experienced in our farm operation has been when we've intentionally focused our marketing, our budget, our time and our message on customer loyalty.
Here are some specific examples of how we invested in creating loyal customers:
We invested time as a team to clarify our message
We spent time studying Donald Miller's exceptional book, Storybrand. Our entire marketing team both read his book and completed some self-study.
We then convened as a team to share and discuss our results so that we could clarify our message. We then implemented our clarified message within our website language, the emails we were sending and the Facebook status updates we posted.
The end result was a message that our ideal customer understands quickly and clearly, whether they've been buying from us for years or just found us on the internet and were inspired to become our customer for the first time.
We started giving our existing customers a very compelling reason to buy from us at least once a quarter
We modified a popular marketing strategy called the "Product Launch Formula" to begin hosting 4 to 7 day-long seasonal sales events.
These events build up a lot of education, energy and excitement and then make a very compelling offer that customers must choose to act on before it expires within a period of days.
Our highest value customers almost always participate in the sale, and we often re-activate customers who may have fallen out of habit with being our customer.
(BONUS: we also create a lot of NEW First Time Customers)
We started being more conversational in our email communication
When it comes to such a personal choice, like buying food for your family, we understand that trust and transparency matter tremendously.
We know we can create loyal customers by genuinely caring for our customers, and talking to them in our email communication (and social media) as you'd talk to a friend.
And, since conversations are a 2-way experience, we began asking for feedback and encouraging interaction.
These are just 3 key focuses among many effective strategies we've implemented. I hope that sharing these prime examples compels you to begin thinking about how you can create loyal customers with your marketing.