Tag: Customer

  • How To Build A Brand That Customers Love

    Every startup aspires to become a renowned group brand, but only some manage to survive beyond 2 years. Even fewer go on to cement their status. The reason is simple, brands aren’t built, overnight billionaires. It is easier to make money out of your startup than to build its identity. To build a brand, you must first know what a brand is.

    According to you, a brand is a popular name on which goods and services are sold, and that with time, companies eventually become a brand. Another definition may be of an organization that sells a given product and has a symbol/logo in conjunction with a name. Well, a brand is way more than just a name and the simple textbook meanings mentioned above. To achieve the coveted status of a brand in the market, you need to think beyond ordinary. It doesn’t mean you mimicry what big brands do right away but do what the big shots did before becoming a household brand name. There is nothing like building a brand that customers love because it attests to a sense of attachment and fulfillment when people are satisfied with your product or service. Here’s a list of ideas to achieve popularity and love amongst customers while building a formidable brand.

    Pay Attention To Your Business

    You need to carve a unique identification of the brand for your product or service. Don’t engage deeply in one segment while ignoring others. Putting more into marketing and image building but less in sales or vice versa has pessimistic effects. No company focuses on branding first and sales later. Selling your service should be at the top of one’s priority pass list. Provide the best to your customers. Likewise, not focusing on your strategies also leads to problems. Heed to all aspects of your brand.

    PAY ATTENTIONPAY ATTENTION WHILE BUILD A BRAND
    PAY ATTENTION WHILE BUILD A BRAND 

    Also Read:-Email Writing for Awareness Stage


    Be Prepared Always

    “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax, ” these words by Abraham Lincoln summarize the secret to crafting a successful brand. This simply means to prepare yourself and work smarter instead of harder. It is the quality of a product or service which differentiates a good brand from an average brand, a great one from a good one. Customers trust a brand based on its offering’s quality.

    To become a prodigy name, businesses must consider three elements: past, present and future. The first two elements must be used to craft strategies for the future. They need to keep themselves prepared for the worst. Whether it is the threat of a new competitor in the market or drastic action changes in the fundamental concept, brands revered by customers work on all possible scenarios and rebound no matter how severe the situation may be. A brand is thus the result of constant efforts and betterment applied over time and this makes it a preference for customers.


    Also Read:- Online Marketing Tools Which You Can’t Live Without


    Exceptional Customer Service

    The key is to keep customers happy and content. An organization needs to build a loyal customer base that comes back to them each time. Such customers can even increase your brand publicity through word of mouth, forming a good image of you and a prodigy brand identity. Make your customers feel valued; be it in the form of a gift, a monetary incentive or some other add on. This way, your business enters the list of their all-time favorite.

    CUSTOMER SERVICE
    CUSTOMER SERVICE

    Also Read:-Types of CRM


    Understand Your Brand’s Soul

    A brand is more than a company—it is an emotion, a feeling. You must have seen people talking about certain products with very high involvement. Women showing off their Gucci bags and kids flaunting their Air Jordans. Endorsing a brand gives them a feeling of standing out from the crowd. Your brand should have a meaning for you as well as its customers. This ultimately becomes the core of your functioning circuit. The crux of your business should be loud and clear. A tagline with a logo is the best way to represent it. It exudes your concept and shows the spirit of doing the business. An example is Nike’s ‘Just do it‘, which promotes the spirit of confidence. Any athlete is likely to buy a Nike product since the brand is strongly linked to sportsmanship qualities.


    Also Read:-Best Sales and Marketing Books


    Authenticity

    Your brand must possess authenticity. Originality is a differentiator. Don’t imitate existing, successful brands word-to-word. You may borrow an idea or two but some aspects should set you apart. Straightforward mimicry is harmful, and customers are quick to judge such steps taken by companies. This also portrays your brand as hostile and fearful of the competition act.


    Also Read :-How to Remotely Manage your Workforce?


    Affordability

    AFFORDABILITY
    AFFORDABILITY

    It may sound weird since branded products are all high priced but this is when they are already established. They’ve been standing up to the reality of the expectations of their customers for a long time. To command, a high price for your products or services, start by becoming a brand that offers the best in quality at reasonable prices. Keeping lower margins, in the beginning, will increase your sales and with time, these can be adjusted with the rise in standards services.

    It can be an enormous task to build a brand, but if you are passionate about your product and you, it becomes easier to convince people. Whatever you offer them, they have double to offer you. Credibility, authenticity check and quality lead you to unmatchable grounds of the market where everyone loves your brand. But for this, you need to love and live your brand.

  • Ideas to Boost Customer Retention

    Customer churn is the SaaS kryptonite. It is what scares SaaS founders the most, and they are always innovating ways to beat it. Customer Retention is one of the most crucial and cost-effective SaaS retention strategies.

    Customer Retention = (Number of Customers at End of Time Period – Number of Customers Acquired During Time Period) X 100 / No. of Customers at Start of Time Period)
    For example: Imagine you start the year with 10 customers, gain 5 new customers in the first quarter, and have 1 customer churn.
    Customer Retention = ((14-5)/10)) x 100 = 90%

    If you’re not doing customer retention right, it can result in a loss as you acquire more customers. The SaaS model gets you profitability over time, and if your users churn before completing enough payment cycles to break even on the acquisition costs, all your growth strategies will be ineffective. Customer retention, in this sense, means getting your customer to stay and engage with your product long enough till it becomes a habit/ part of their daily lives. As they become long-term users, it will give you more opportunities to upsell, increasing their LTV (lifetime value).


    Also read:


    Now, we will discuss some ideas with which we can boost customer retention:

    Personalized marketing with email

    The first area to search for low-hanging fruit is in the emails you write. Most email programs come with the ability to record personal data alongside email addresses, so you can quickly personalize based on the needs of your subscribers. To use this simple strategy, send an introductory email with a compelling subject line asking subscribers to self-select their interest. Are they using your software for a small business, for personal use, or something in-between?

    Personalized email marketing
    Personalized email marketing

    A subscriber’s interests aren’t the only way you can segment. Turn also to the life cycle of your SaaS product. For example, recent signups might be more interested in learning about your biggest features, while power users will find details, advanced tips, and hidden shortcuts more valuable. Thankfully, this information is easy to gather from within your app analytics. Understand where users are in the customer journey and appeal to those stages.

    Time discounts and offers to free trial progress

    The most powerful feature that distinguishes SaaS companies from other products and services is the ability to provide a free trial. This is the perfect time to optimize your emails and take advantage of the buying mechanisms at play—urgency, a sense of trust, and the excitement of starting with your product. This is also a good time to offer a discount or other promotions related to the soon-to-expire trial offer. A great example is Zapier’s email reminder, which you can see below, lifted straight from the inbox:

    Zapier's email reminder
    Zapier’s email reminder

    The email is customized to each user, reminding him or her how many tasks have been automated and providing a custom recommendation for which upgrade to choose based on usage. In short, it’s the perfect email to convert a free trial user to a happy paying customer.


    Relevant read:


    Reward your most profitable (VIP) customers

    Information gathered in the CRM software can tell you which of your accounts are your most profitable. These are the customers you really don’t want to let go of, your key accounts. For this purpose, let’s call them the VIPs. Knowing who brings you most revenue allows you to allocate your time and resources efficiently, as well as increase your chances of cross- or up-selling.

    Example: Let’s say you have a number of incentives to give away. Use them to reward your VIPs to further increase their loyalty. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes

    Pareto principle
    Pareto principle

    It’s easy: just create a list of your VIP customers in your CRM software. Now, you can start to follow up and let them know about the rewards and incentives in order to make them feel special, so they continue to be your most profitable customers, which, if you consider the 80/20 rule, this investment is bound to pay off!

    Customer Referrals

    If you’re not already tracking customer referrals, you need to start. Your best customers are also your best salespeople. When they are happy, they will provide testimonials, leave reviews, and most importantly, refer their friends, family, and co-workers to your brand. Having a lot of customer referrals indicates that customer satisfaction is very high. Affiliate or refer-a-friend incentive programs are very powerful tools that marketers have been using forever.

    Not only do they reward customers for providing you with new business, but they provide you with several valuable insights. In addition to detailed tracking of your customer referrals, affiliate programs provide you with insight into why people recommend your brand. Referral programs might not be ideal for all types of businesses, but all businesses should be tracking customer referrals to determine if it ever could present a word-of-mouth marketing opportunity.

    Use automation to re-engage customers

    Automation is allowing some of your routines to be handled automatically by a software. The most popular is “marketing automation.” Monitoring and keeping your customers abreast manually are time consuming. Because there are so many processes to be repeated daily, in order to keep your brand fresh in the customer’s mind.

    Marketing automation
    Marketing automation

    The idea here is to use automation to re-engage your customers. Sure, you’ll see a boost in conversion rate as you engage customers manually, however, you can communicate stronger and faster through automation. Through automation, you can manage your customer contacts, drip feed education emails, schedule promotional emails, text messages, and event notifications.


    Know more about:


    Improve customer support.

    Excellent customer support makes a difference to your business’s success. Using chatbots for minor inquiries can help reduce the time taken to meet such concerns. Information like tracking updates, delivery details, reservations, and more don’t need human intervention. Chatbots save time when users need information that can be extracted from a database.

    Customer support vs Chatbot
    Customer support vs Chatbot

    Your live customer support staff can focus on critical issues, giving attention to problems that matter. You’ll offer faster support, saving time and resources. A chatbot strategy can improve your customer support and influence a customer’s decision to stay with your business. This leads to greater loyalty and improved retention rates. Successful businesses are the ones that recognize that customers form the backbone of their business. Support your customers with retention strategies, and they’ll support you.

    Leverage customer feedback surveys

    Surveys are powerful tools for building customer engagement. Surveys may look boring, but people like it. According to Fluid Survey University, “The Average Response Rate for email surveys is 24.8%.” Hearing from customers directly to know how they feel about your products and services is a great way to cement the bond that already exist. In essence, it can help you develop engaging custom content for customer retention. When customers are given the chance to express themselves, they reveal their minds and feelings about your brand.

    In their complaints, be sensitive enough to catch the pain points. Get to know the areas they’re not satisfied about and why. Adjusting in those areas will turn things around. Remember that through feedback, you can re-engage a customer that’s about giving up on your brand. No matter how you look at it, automation can help your business in so many ways. Most striking is the fact that it can help you engage and retain your customers.

    Conclusion

    The goal of inbound marketing is to build a mutually beneficial relationship between brands and customers. This opens the door for special offers that extend far beyond a coupon. Keeping your customers happy is more than continuing to receive their money, it also helps you improve your company to make them even happier – and in turn, they’re happy to spend more money. By the way, which of these customer retention strategies have you implemented, and how did it work for you?