#incite creative

You can’t build a successful business based on selling to a wide audience of one-time customers. You might make a quick buck if you have a superior product or service and a great marketing plan. But you’ll run out of customers or you’ll burn through your marketing budget pretty quickly trying to bring in new business. Then what?

The optimal scenario for your company is to create a growing base of loyal customers who not only buy, but buy frequently, who buy increasingly profitable products/services over an extended life span, and who refer new customers to you.

Sounds perfect, right? But how do you transform a new buyer into a loyal client?

Here are six steps to building a customer loyalty program whether you’re a single-store B2C retail shop or a multi-location B2B service organization.

1. Set up rules and guidelines for your customer loyalty program.

Loose, subjective rules that require impromptu decisions as to who qualifies for your loyalty program and what benefits they receive can create more problems than profits. By defining your program before you launch it, you will increase customer appreciation, which will ultimately help improve your brand identity and awareness … and your bottom line.

Here are three key elements to consider for your program:

Set your goals on creating deeper relationships with customers, better reviews, and greater exposure for your brand.

Consider tiers for your program based upon how much customers spend, the number of prospects they refer to you, or the length of time they’ve been with you.

Focus on customer benefit over company sales.

2. Choose the right reward.

Not every industry or customer-type has the same motivation for choosing to remain loyal to a business. While customer loyalty programs can help strengthen your brand and build awareness, focusing on rewards that offer the most value for your customers is far more important than mass-produced gifts stamped with your logo on them. By focusing on making your customers feel special, you will create a far more positive impact to your bottom line than if you create rewards that seem to be merely an incentive to buy more.

For example, if you operate a family restaurant, you may want to create a “Wall of Fame” where you put up a plaque with your loyal customers’ names or pictures. Or if you’re a hi-tech corporation, you might consider creating a program whereby your best customers get access to advance releases of your products/services before you roll them out to the general market.

While these specific forms of appreciation may not be right for your particular business, the same principles apply. When you can elevate your customers to a celebrity-status or provide them a competitive advantage, it increases the chances that your customers will return the favor by bragging about your business to their circle of friends and colleagues, which helps create better visibility and likability for your brand.

3. Create an easy-to-use system.

Ease of use for your customers and employees is critical. Think about your ideal customers that you want in your program. What’s the easiest way for them to join? Is it to fill out a paper form that ships with a product, or to complete a form online? Once they become a member of the program, can they access the benefits with a loyalty card, or do you provide them with a special log in to your system where they can access the rewards when they want to? Whatever methods you choose, remember to make it easy for your customers.

4. Train your team.

Second only in importance to ease-of-use is your teams ability to make your loyal customers feel special. When you create a loyalty program, train the people on your team who have the most interaction with the customers. This includes any staff, from salespeople, to servers, and any customer service staff who may have a direct interaction with your customer base. If your customers have questions about your loyalty program, you want to be able to provide them with quick answers and service. Your frontline team should be able to handle these scenarios without passing your customers on to multiple people.

5. Market your program.

When you’re creating the marketing for your program, take a multiple “touch” approach. First, market your program to customers for awareness and incentive, followed by additional marketing when they join the program with new information about your business so they know of all of the great products/services you offer that they can take advantage of as a member. In a typical sales cycle, you need to “touch” a customer multiple times before they make a buying decision. When you provide them with a specific reward, you’re far more likely to catch their attention and get them to take action quicker. This will reduce your marketing spend, generate additional sales, and create ambassadors for your business who use word of mouth and social media to spread the good news about your business.

6. Track participants, rewards and ROI.

Tracking activity and progress is essential to maximizing your ability to create better relationships with your customers and achieve maximum profitability. To make your customers feel truly special, you need to go beyond welcoming them into a program. It helps when you interact with them if you can refer back to their last visit or purchase, and make recommendations for current products/services that match their particular wants and needs. Plus, if you do create a tiered program, you can build excitement by notifying customers as they approach a new level and welcome them to their new status as a preferred customer when they achieve it.

And let’s not forget about the bottom line. A well managed program creates greater opportunities for success. By tracking the ROI of your customer loyalty program, you will be able to adjust your marketing, the rules of the program and the rewards accordingly to create a win-win for your business and your customers.

For more information about how to create an effective customer loyalty program as part of your business’s strategic marketing plan, call us at (410) 366-9479 ext. 2#. 

Developing a marketing plan is critical to your business’s success. It outlines all of your marketing efforts in support of your company’s overall goals and objectives. It has a solid strategy at its foundation. However, you should only develop your strategy after you perform market research and analysis so you can create programs that fit your business and have the highest possibility for ROI.

The purpose of a plan is to focus your efforts. Without it, you’re likely to wander the marketing landscape hoping that you bump into your customers along the way. This often results in wasted money and time, not to mention the missed opportunities.

Some plans fall short because they chase the latest trends or they’re inconsistent about keeping the communication lines open. Others miss the mark because they fail to take a holistic approach. Here are seven communications channels to include as part of your marketing plan, regardless of the size of your company and marketing budget.

1. Publicity

Generating publicity is extremely effective for building your brand awareness and credibility, as well as creating an ongoing conversation with your market. Imagine the value to your business if you had a positive news story or endorsement by a leading publication, blog, or news agency. Consider the industry or street cred you will receive if a top executive from your company will speak at an industry conference or other popular event. The key to publicity is to focus your energies on building a rapport with the people who are centers of influence over large groups of your target audience.

2. Promotional Events

In a marketing environment that continues to develop new opportunities online, promotional events are an excellent strategy for increasing your face-to-face time in a group setting. When you meet in person, you have a greater opportunity for judging perceptions and reactions to your brand. Plus, you can build a better relationship with your target audience, improving your word-of-mouth network. You can hold events at your place of business or host them at an off-site location. Just make sure you give yourself enough time to plan and market your event. Poor planning often results in an event that can do more harm to your brand than good.

3. Joint Ventures

There are multiple options and benefits to engaging in joint venture marketing campaigns. You may connect with a partner who holds sway over a large group of target prospects. This will help you gain quicker exposure than if you were trying to pursue the same group on your own. You may find a partner who has complementary products or services to your own. By working together you can save marketing costs, and offer a bundled solution that can be more attractive to your target base. Before you begin, make sure everyone involved in the joint venture has a clear understanding of the goals and objectives, as well as roles and responsibilities.

4. Referrals

Think of how many times you made a buying decision based upon the recommendation of someone you trust. As you build your base, ask your satisfied customers to share their stories as ambassadors of your brand. If need be, you can create incentive programs to get them to take action.

Look for opportunities to create a referral program with other centers of influence, too. You can develop affiliate programs whereby other people or businesses sell you products or services to their customer base. This will generate additional income for your business, and it will increase your brand awareness with a new group of customers.

5. Internet Marketing

You can’t compete if customers can’t find you online. The Yellow Pages are passé, and even with referrals, most customers do some degree of research online before they choose to connect with companies. Your Internet marketing can include your website, social media profiles, pay-per-click (PPC) and other paid advertising campaigns, as well as interaction on industry forums. Don’t fall into the trap of pursing a plan of ready, fire, aim. If you’re in a hurry to build your online presence, start with some quality market research and analysis, followed by planning, before implementing.

6. Advertising

Thomas Jefferson had a famous marketing quote, “The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” Some companies ditch their advertising because they believe they can’t afford it when in reality they can’t afford to do it poorly. The good news is that the opportunities offline and online for advertising continues to expand. However, this expansion can create some negative consequences, too. With so many options, you need to do your homework to identify key elements, including defining your ideal customers, calculating their lifetime, identifying where they spend most of their time, and where they look for information to help them with their buying decisions.

7. Customer Follow Up

Don’t assume that just because a customer bought from you once, they will buy again. You need to continue the conversation with your customers post-sale. If you have a new product/service to offer, or if your business wins an award, hires a prominent person to the team, enters into a joint venture, or anything else that is newsworthy and can impact your customers in a positive way, make sure they get the message. If you don’t continue to invest in your relationships with your customers, there are plenty of competitors who would be willing to step in to woo them away.

For more information about how to create an effective marketing plan for your business, call us at (410) 366-9479 ext. 2#.