When your business is first starting out, you obviously want to capture as many customers as possible. But gaining customers is only the first challenge; after that, you need to make sure that you keep hold of them and make sure they keep coming back for more. That’s a challenge that lots of new entrepreneurs overlook but that’s a big mistake. Here are some strategies for keeping hold of those early customers.
Stay Friendly and Approachable
First of all, you’ll want to make sure that your business is friendly and approachable at all times. It costs nothing at all to offer a smile and a friendly welcome to customers or potential clients. It immediately sets you off on the right foot and makes your target customers willing to engage and more likely to return to the business in the future as well.
Work to Reduce Friction
It should be one of your top priorities to reduce the amount of friction for the customer when using your services or buying your products. The last thing you should ever want is to make life more difficult for your customers. If you do end up making things more difficult for them, you’re only going to end up losing those customers to other companies that really do make life easier for them.
Ask for Their Feedback and Act On It
It’s always a good idea to ask for the feedback of your customers and to listen to what they have to say. These are the people you’re trying to impress and keep hold of, so it makes sense to want to know what they're thinking and how they feel about the performance of your business. When you get your feedback, make sure you act on it in some way too.
Give Out Free Bonus Items to Customers
If you want to make sure that people stick around and really fall in love with your business, one of the best things you can do is give them something for free. You can create your own merchandise and have it made with the help of wholesale embroidery services, and then give out those promotional items such as t-shirts to your early customers. You could give away merchandise with every purchase, for example.
Stay in Touch
Finally, you should try to make sure that you stay in touch with your customers after they make a purchase. That way, you can ensure they feel cared for and not abandoned as soon as you’ve got their money. There’s definitely a risk of losing customers if they feel that you stop caring as soon as you’ve managed to make a sale.
As you can see, there are plenty of good strategies you can use if you want to make sure that the customers you win in those early weeks and months of your new business are kept hold of for the long term. So try to implement as many of the ideas above and give your startup a more sustainable future.
