Growth Hacks to Retain Your Customers: Growth hacking is not just for getting more and ever more business. It actually involves processes that would retain the clients that growth hacking so speedily makes.
Let’s look at it simply this way. Your foray into a business; you attract a massive number of users with your hacks, and convert them into customers successfully. What now? Do you get complacent now that you have your clientele? Wouldn’t this massive clientele run away unless you decide to retain them? Surely they would.
Your business, then, is bound to become a leaky bucket. As you keep pouring in more water, it keeps emptying at the very same time. The clients are bound to leave you at the eleventh hour, if you do not retain them. Losing customers is like losing more leads.
It is always people who have been catered to in a satisfactory fashion that will fetch you more business. In an age when social media is proving to be quicker than Reuters, it is the loyalists that will bring more traffic.
It is plain to see that all the stages of the funnel keep on working together. So, most times a 20% escalation in retention is likely to equal 20% increase in overall traffic.
However, see where the difference lies. The expense incurred on increasing 20% traffic by generating new leads and making new conversions is much more than increasing the client retention by 20%.
Knowing how to retain traffic, only makes sense if you know why you must do it. So, here are 6 best of the best growth hacks to retain your customers without spending a fortune that you may, on advertising and direct promotion.
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Keep Your Promise
Whenever a lead is converted into business, it happens upon a promise; a promise like – the customer experience will get only better; the benefits will be immense within a promised span of time or at an offered condition.
The customer will stay once that promise is fulfilled. It may take a few days to do that; but the sooner you do it, the more you will be successful in retaining business. It is actually called the “Aha! moment”. The earlier a customer can experience it, the sooner will she/he become loyal.
Also, find out if there are stupid cluttering features hidden in your promise. If the terms and conditions confuse or dissuade the buyer, you must get rid of them.
Not keeping your promises and changing your policies to your convenience is definitely going to chase the traffic away. It is terribly easy to lose clients; much more difficult to keep them.
Strengthen Your Email Campaign
Emails work, and drip emails definitely work!
Not all email is spam, and if people have bought stuff from you, they sure want emails, for nobody wishes to lose out on offers that may have been devised especially for them. So, do not hesitate from strengthening your email campaign for the present buyers.
This miraculous thing called the drip campaigns are the best way to stay fresh in the minds of the buyers. Keep dripping in emails at a set pattern of intervals. Day 1, day 3, a week, a fortnight. It definitely works.
Keep giving updates when you have a launch of a new product or a service. You send a note of gratitude when you cross a certain milestone. You could send event based notifications exactly how Facebook does it, so that the post cannot be accessed without logging into your website.
But make sure that you are never overtly pushy; that you do not disturb them too often; that you do not mail the same thing ad nauseum and ad infinitum. All this would do is, increase the chances of the “UNSUBSCRIBE” button being hit. So, use your discretion if you may.
Make Customers the Most Deserving Guests
This may be an old marketing tactic, and may involve a bit more expenditure than the other hacks but it works like a magic wand. People like to be treated specially.
So, you can try giving away freebies to your, say, first 100 customers. But remember; let that freebie be a quality product. Giving away sub-standard things can do the opposite of what you want.
You can run a contest for one good, free gift, within the best select few loyalists. It could be some trip; an entry to an event, or simply a gift voucher.
Sometimes, in order to gain retention, once your service runs out you can offer them your services at a lower price than it was before. This works well in insurance as they can use software that can save clients money by identifying cost-saving action items and exposing places they can save them and the client money, like P&C claims. The lower prices give the customer more of a reason to retain your services.
Stay Dynamic
Staying dynamic is the idea that keeps you customized according to what the buyers want. One product or service cannot be good for all times to come. There are additions that you will need to make and subtractions too. The best way to do it is to keep taking the customer feedback at regular intervals.
Even if three out of ten people tell you that a new feature is needed, go ahead and add it. Adding new features does not warrant as much expenditure as making an entirely new thing.
Same is in the case of assessing your business for a feature that has, or is about to become obsolete. Make sure you do get rid of it.
Community Makes People Stick Around. Social Proof is Almost Everything Today
What are Facebook and LinkedIn all about? Why do people connect so much to them? Why do you need social media followers who may never even buy? Because they are like a family, and they are your social proof. Humans beings, largely social, relate to this concept of community. Communities keep people bound and give them a sense of belongingness that goes much farther than just the feeling of being a consumer.
So, make Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google + as your major fighters for the cause. The reach of these social platforms is unfathomable today. Share yourself on these; and add clients to your connections and participate by sharing, pinning and re-tweeting their posts. That is what bound them as a family. And, the best part is that it costs nothing at all.
Provide them with a real customer support and make sure that it not just for the sake of it. Whether your clients put in a query via mail, phone, or chat, they must be answered at the drop of a hat; and answered to their full satisfaction.
You Can Learn from the Customers Who Didn’t Stay
Taking cue from the exit polls, now we have the exit interview!
The thing about feedback is that the existing loyalists like you, and so, will not tell you what you lack. At least, not many of them. So, you are at risk of falling prey to bad sampling.
The ones who haven’t cared to join you; or the one who joined and left; or those who chose to remain dormant, are the ones who will be stark honest in giving you unflinchingly true feedback. Banking on this, operates the art of the exit interview. Your email these very groups of people, and get to know what went wrong so that you could not retain them.
Nevertheless, you have to be sure about how much you must elicit from them. Since they have already shown so much of disdain for you, odds are that they may not be up for filling out a detailed questionnaire. You may simply ask them as to what they did not like, and a brisk but important answer may come your way as briskly.
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It may at least get their minds back to you. What you could do as a sequel to it is, make a special offer, or extend a special discount. It works more often than not. People tend to give honest feedback, and, no matter how it hurts your ego, it does show you the actual problem.
How I see it from here, these growth hacks can be summed up as contributing to one thing – making customers happy. That is what will always be responsible for adding and retaining traffic like, and more than you wish to.
Investments always need be made in all sorts of businesses, but devoting your budget lopsidedly can only lead to imbalance. Nonetheless, these growth hacks help you keep what you already have at a cost which may be pretty nominal for any business. The ultimate aim is to boost the growth. Maintaining the traffic is just one of the ways that contribute to the actual progress of any venture.
So, give these a chance and see what different they make in the growth of the business. The premise is that all the other areas of the funnel, besides traffic, should also be looked into. It not only makes a lot of sense now, but will also seem absolutely remarkable when the results make themselves conspicuous.
