Many small business owners toil away everyday at their jobs, trying their hardest keep everything in the black and wondering if maybe there isn’t some secret to this whole thing that they don’t know about. The good news is that there is a secret. The bad news is that it is a little harder than it sounds.
The secret to small business success is repeat business.
There are tricks to getting repeat business, of course. Here are a few of them.
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You have to get their business the first time.
And this means having a brand that entices them to walk into your store, and then having a store that is consistent with your brand. If you can handle these two tasks, you are well on your way to repeat business and success.
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Get in your customer’s mind.
You should already know who your target customer is; that’s part of the branding and business planning process. However, do you know what would make them return to your business? Play through a typical sale in the mind of your customers. What barriers and frustrations are there? What would make these barriers lower or at least a little less annoying? What would make this customer want to come back?
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Keep a database.
If you can get your customer’s information, you should keep this on a database. Then, routinely contact them with special deals and offers. Make being a repeat customer with your business a type of club, one that offers a little prestige and a lot of benefits that make being a member well worth it. This database will also help you evaluate how your actual customers match up with the imaginary ones that you planned for.
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Be personal.
You would be reluctant to skip a party you were invited to because the people involved would miss you. Getting to know your customers and calling them by name can partially produce this effect. Just like Cheers, people want to be where everybody knows their name.
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Look for measurable results.
Before you spend a dime on marketing you need to have a plan for testing the effectiveness. You need to know what forms of marketing are bringing in customers and, more important, which are bringing in repeat customers. There is a good chance that the repeat customers are responding to an aspect of your brand that is not present in less successful advertisements. Knowing what marketing efforts work will help you increase your sales per marketing dollar.
According to experts, it takes six to eight times as much energy and money to get a new customer. This means that hanging onto customers and getting repeat business can singlehandedly drive your business to success. Many of your customers won’t even produce a profit until they are repeat offenders! So the only way to getting consistent profit is to keep the customers you have. Now that you have a few tools, this shouldn’t be as difficult.
