Show Notes
Getting the customer is perceived as being the hardest part in business, and while it is pretty difficult sometimes, keeping them delighted is crucial. We don’t want to lie about statistics here, but it is roughly 2-3x harder (if not more) to go find a new one than it is to keep your current.
1. It’s all in the follow-up experience.
2. When someone becomes a client you have to nurture a relationship. After their purchase, follow up with questions about feedback and hear about their experience and how it could have been better.
3. Keep them on your email list and add value to them over time, sending offers every once and awhile.
4. Deepen the relationship with new layers. Moving this customer from an in-person relationship to your email list and then over to Instagram adds layers to help you deepen the relationship. Find a way to WOW them.
5. Do the small things that make a big impact. Small gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, just because, and hand-written notes.
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Transcript
Aaron [00:00:00] Customers perceived as being the hardest part in business. And while it's pretty difficult, sometimes keeping them delighted is crucial. We don't want to lie about statistics here, but it's roughly two to three times harder, if not more, to go find a new customer than it is to keep your current one.
Christian [00:00:31] So we have here wanted there were five different things on how to retain repeat customers for a local business and number one. It's all about that follow up experience. What kind of tips you have for us on the follow experience.
Aaron [00:00:46] So full of experiences like, you know, we go to say, for example, we were just as scotty piece, a really good follow up would be for them because you got your phone number and email for them to send you a message and say, hey, you know, how did we do here? How is your delivery? Did you get everything you needed? We know deliveries sometimes, you know, takes a little while, but you know how.
Aaron [00:01:06] Here's three questions. And thanks for filling it out. Next time you come in and get a free dessert, get a free cookie, whatever. And that just I think that's one shows us shows us that they care. And then, two, it gives us an incentive to do something. It's like, oh, hey, next time we go, we're going to get free cookies. And I remember the cookies are really big. And if they were smart on their survey, they would show a really big cookie. Me like, hey, you can get this cookie, just answer these three questions and then come see us next time. Like, that's a good experience for me. And like they care about us and we get something out of it.
Christian [00:01:35] Yeah, we've started recently using active campaign and I believe that the campaign would be a perfect solution for an automated follow up experience, especially if it has to do with anything, any transactions or anything like that where you can set up an active campaign. And it's very visual, actually, a very visual tool. When someone purchases or makes a purchase automatically, either send these emails or send these text messages in order to keep that customer top of mind and get those reviews as well as part of that follow up experience.
Aaron [00:02:09] Absolutely.
Aaron [00:02:12] I was going to say I was trying to think of an example of somebody who had a good follow up experience.
Aaron [00:02:19] Mm hmm.
Aaron [00:02:20] Yeah, there's not really a place that I guess comes to mind, but this. We talk more about like a like a place you go to eat, but there's also a works for like your retail customers as well. So you see a lot of people who come in in like, for example, you were buying like gift cards or something like that at Fuego. I don't even know what was in the Attic or something like salt. Yeah, Attic. Salt.
Aaron [00:02:39] So you went there, you bought something, but there wasn't anything afterwards. I mean, you may not go back there for six or seven months now, if not more. The only reason you went there now is because you're like, I'm on a Google, something that's like going to have some bone I need.
Aaron [00:02:53] And so you only find out because of Google by happenstance and then they didn't follow up with you. So your experience with them was I was good. I got what I wanted, but they're not top of mind now. So that's really where retail. So I could come in and play and, you know, really add that experience or have something that's at the store. If you go there physically, that really makes them say, wow, this is such a cool place. Which was a cool place.
Christian [00:03:14] Yes.
Christian [00:03:15] You need to go. It's right over here at the outlet mall.
Christian [00:03:18] Allen Yeah.
Christian [00:03:20] It's gonna be one of those stores that has, you know, a little bit of everything here and their kind of pop culture type stuff.
Aaron / Christian [00:03:26] Okay. Cool socks, local socks. Yeah, some cool dinosaur ones and all those in there. Yeah. I mean it is a, you know, kind of random stuff, really frugal store.
Aaron [00:03:40] Interesting. So it followed that experience for Christian. Could be it could have been a little bit better. Or like wowed him like hey is this your first time coming in? It is awesome. Everybody loves ah whatever insert go take one.
Aaron [00:03:55] We have him for half off or go grab one. We'd love for you to grab this or hey, we have this sticker and every time or this card, every time you come in or whatever like show this card and you get a free high five and something else. I don't know.
Christian [00:04:07] And I know we're probably gonna talk about something like about this, but I'm actually thinking about something along the lines of the new product or new technological product that you purchase online and having again, a follow up experience, which instead of just giving you the typical, you know, how was it? It's more of a training type session on how to use that thing or new ways that you can use this device or whatever it may be. So that should be also part of the follow up experience. You you can think about maybe unique ways or how other people are using your product. I mean, maybe years. You selling scarves? I don't know. And part of the follow up experience is sharing a blocks on how to wear a scarf. Six different ways, you know. So I think that should be also part of the follow up. I think Glenn Beck's active campaign does all definitely possible to have it automatically done through active campaign. Awesome.
Aaron [00:05:09] All right. Number to nurture, not nature, nurture.
Aaron [00:05:15] Or if you remember, that weird series on YouTube is called Nature Tour. You watch.
Aaron [00:05:20] Now, I think this is so fun, so nurturing the relationship. So out of the purchase that follow the questions, feedback that we kind of mentioned earlier, that all kind of goes with the experience as well. But it also is part of that, that nurturing that needs to happen. So let's say Christian, he got his brownie or a cookie or whatever else it was, he left a feedback. Now he's on the email list and we don't want to bombard him say, hey, come and buy more brownies coming, you know, buy more food. But you could be clever in the way that you continue to be in touch with those people. So you say, hey, you know, maybe send an email once a week, maybe you send, you know, a gift, maybe you send it.
Aaron [00:06:00] I don't think like major chains are going to necessarily do that. But the the nurturing of that relationship, you have to kind of do it as test by test basis for the company or the way that you're doing it based off of like the industry.
Aaron [00:06:13] So like a retail place for like what we went for Scotty piece, we probably don't want to be bombarded with an email every single day. But maybe once a week with like day deals of the week or something that's going to add a little bit more to us. Maybe a lunchtime hunger like they're solving lunchtime hunger and they have like a half off ning and like share it with a friend or something like that. That would be a good way to nurture and just get them to come back.
Christian [00:06:39] Yeah, I think this point was more geared towards deaf feedback. You write about their experience or what you could've done better because this third one it's more about.
Christian [00:06:48] So keeping them in that email list is sort of part of the follow up experience, but either adding value over time and send them in. Sending them offers every once in a while. And I think having them having their email is very powerful because yes, you can use it on your email list, but at the same time you can plug that in into Facebook and be top of mind by creating ads. Once Facebook matches the email with their accounts where it's just another touch point, once someone purchases something online, then you know, let's say it's a journal, right? Six months from when you purchase that journal, maybe that's like the average time where someone finishes a that type of journal, then you could hit him up with, you know, once you have them an email list, you can head him up on the email list. And at the same time, you can run ads, you know, with your email list on Facebook or they will probably be able to see it again, even on Instagram. So you can definitely use your emails to your advantage to send offers or add value to those people either through email or actually running ads with the email list.
Aaron [00:07:55] Right. So it's all it's all part of this follow up kind of experience. And if you feel like there's a company that does it really well, no reason you shouldn't steal from them or you could do it from, you know, take it from a it's like maybe just a page, maybe don't gotta take the whole playbook, but you just take a page out of their playbook and do something that way. But if you get wowed by a customer, just write that down. You never know where that could actually be helpful in your business. You don't have to be the exact same, but maybe just sparks an idea.
Christian [00:08:31] All right. This is part of our podcast where we talk about little bit about BitBranding. So right now we are running this Website cost calculator that I created.
Christian [00:08:41] It's super simple. You just fill out your name and email and you get started. This is only a few questions and answer them honestly and you will get a number, an average number on how much that website the input in there would cost. So if you are looking for a brand new redesign for 2020 on your Website, you want to get more leads, you want to get a free, fresh look on your Website. You want better ways to capture the attention of Website visitors and not lose them very quickly. Then fill out this Website cost calculator. Get to know how much that Website that you want is really going to cost you. And contact us will be more than happy to walk you through our process. The benefits of easing us and the tools that we use and we'll get you taken care of for 2020.
Christian [00:09:30] Again, the link is calculator.bitbranding.co. Forgot about that. Sorry. There it is. calculator.bitbranding.co. Fill it up.
Aaron [00:09:42] All right, we're back. And yes, I was going to tell you like they they need that bad link. Yeah. That's important. It could be. All right. So this next tip is called Deepen the Layers. And I go back to Shrek and everybody remember Shrek. I remember Shrek. You remember the donkey? Yeah. Donkey, donkey, donkey, donkey. My little niece loves Shrek. They went to like a play and she, like, Love Strike now. You know, it's just like five times a day. I'm not really that many. But every day is like not going to watch Shrek. Why? Oh, I love Shrek. Shrek. I don't like. My gosh. Anyway, so in the movie, the first movie, he meets Donkey, which is Eddie Murphy, great character. And they're talking about like layers and like people having like layers in their lives and, you know, just different layers of their personalities. And Shrek was like, yeah. Layers like cake and donkey. It goes like layers like onions. And he's like, no, onions don't have layers there. They're just onions. You just peel.
Aaron [00:10:45] And it's really go back into a big conversation about it. Anyway, most people listening probably already know this scenario because they watch Shrek. Hopefully you had watch that. But what we're seeing here specifically is not onions. We're talking about keeping your relationships with your customers on different layers. And what we mean by that is like if it's an in-person relationship or an online relationship, mixing the two of those if possible. So if they could become a customer who say, for example, you go to their store and they had a good experience, make sure you follow up with them, but then make sure that you have them follow you on social media. And then as they follow you on social media, engage with them. You, the business owner, engage with the customer. Ask them questions. Talk to them like their pictures coming on their content. And that adds that new layer. So you've kind of like a what is the better words for like gaming this? You've unlocked a new layer of like level with your customer level. Level. Yeah. You move you leveled up with your customer.
Christian [00:11:42] Yeah. I mean, it could works both ways. And, you know, going from in-person to online or online to in-person as well.
Christian [00:11:50] And there's a lot of different things that you could do to, you know, spread, spread, that you could even do some some sort of competition, things like that, especially when it comes to having people, people who've already purchase your product. So you know that they're, you know, a good people to to be following you on social media to get them to actually like and engage with what your content online. Absolutely. The last thing we have here is do the small things that make a big impact. Now. This might be more for maybe service based companies where you actually have a relationship with with your customers and what we're talking about, you know, small things. It could be a card, a handwritten note. It could be a small gift for their birthday. It could be a just because you're an awesome customer gift. Small things like that go a long ways with your customers. And for them to be able to, you know, come get them to come back. And even I'm thinking about like a boutique type place where you have the data of the people who spend the most money with you. Right. And it'll be awesome just to send them a handwritten note of her Christmas or on their birthday. You know, they get a special discount. And you know what? That just creates not just customers, but like a loyal like what Heflin says. Super, super fans. All right. So all those little things definitely help you retain those repeat customers. Keep them come back, keep them happy. And I guess it does. Yeah, those small things just make a huge impact.
Aaron [00:13:34] Yeah. That's. Yeah, that's absolutely the best example.
Aaron [00:13:39] And I think that you could do that, too, if it wasn't necessarily service based like you could do it for, like they have a company called Five Stars where you could like, you know, Christian checks into this place. And then, you know, because of that, he could also get notified of like when it's birthday or like there's a little kiosk things you can put on your birthday that way. That's one way that retail stores could do something. But does it kind of automated? So like what Christian saying, I think that was a really good example of your top customers, if you can find those top customers really making them feel special because it really is that. What is the 80 20 rule? 80 percent of your business is coming from 20 percent. Well, you can focus on that 20 percent and really make them feel special and they'll continue to add to the 80 percent profit line. So you're awesome.
Aaron [00:14:21] All right. We hope you guys enjoyed this episode on how to retain a repeat customer for your local business. If you liked this episode, we also have something similar, a video version of this. We had interviewed a lady over on our YouTube channel.
Aaron [00:14:34] Go check it out, YouTube and then just search for a BitBranding, just as you would normally. So B I T B R A N D I N G over on YouTube. And you can also check out some of the videos that we have on there as well. If this is your first time listening, make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any episode. We released new episodes every Monday and if you've been listening for a while, please make sure that you go. Leave us an honest rating and review on iTunes. This helps us grow. This helps us figure out how to make better episodes. And really it makes us better for you so you can enjoy more of what you're listening to. All right. We will talk to you guys next week. Bye.
