Creating Customer Loyalty for Your Business

Strategize and Plan For Loyalty!

These four factors will greatly affect your ability to build a loyal customer base:

1. Products that are highly differentiated from those of the competition.

2. Higher-end products where price is not the primary buying factor.

3. Products with a high service component.

4. Multiple products for the same customer.

1. Market To Your Own Customers

Giving a lot of thought to your marketing programs aimed at current customers is one aspect of building customer loyalty.

When you buy a new car, many dealers will within minutes try to sell you an extended warranty, an alarm system, and maybe rust proofing. It’s often a very easy sale and costs the dealer almost nothing to make. Are there additional products or services you can sell your customers? Three years ago my house was painted, and it’s now due for another coat. Why hasn’t the painter called or at least sent a card? It would be a lot less expensive than getting new customers through his newspaper ad, and since I was happy with his work I won’t get four competing bids this time. Keep all the information you can on your customers and don’t hesitate to ask for the next sale.

2. Use Complaints To Build Business!

When customers aren’t happy with your business they usually won’t complain to you – instead, they’ll probably complain to just about everyone else they know – and take their business to your competition next time. That’s why an increasing number of businesses are making follow-up calls or mailing satisfaction questionnaires after the sale is made. They find that if they promptly follow up and resolve a customer’s complaint, the customer might be even more likely to do business than the average customer who didn’t have a complaint.

People love to have access to things that other people can’t get. It makes them feel special, and it
is a marketing tactic that really works. Granting access to secret pages works well on the Internet.
It works best when it is limited. For instance, you can grant access to only a lucky few, or you can
have a time limit for accessing the pages. You can grant access to secret pages on your website with
an autoresponder.

The way this works is quite simple. You create a directory on your website that is password protected, with one login and password that everybody can use. You then create some valuable content for that directory. You can call this your secret vault or your private stash or anything else you want to call it – as long as it sounds like something that your visitors may really want to get their hands on. For instance ‘the secret tools that helped me earn thousands each month’ would probably entice many people who want to learn how to make money.

Once you get the directory and the pages set up, put the URL of the pages and the login name and
password in an autoresponder. Write a sales page and distribute it to your opt-in list, or have other list owners distribute it to theirs. Make sure you ‘limit’ the offer. Don’t let people assume that you are going to share this secret information with the rest of the world – they want to be the only ones with this special access!

It is a tough world out there, especially in the world of cyberspace. The internet has brought with it many technological innovations, yet with it came along an influx of websites. The opportunities to make money online are there, but the competition is tough. The best option for survival is to have a solid relationship with your subscribers.

Internet marketing is obviously different than offline marketing. In order for your website to stand a chance against all the million websites that are out there you need to know how to generate traffic. This may sound like an impossible mission but the answer clearly lies in opt-in list building.

It is understandable that most first time visitors on your website will not make a purchase. That is why you have to be willing to give them something that will make them want to fill in their email address. This in fact is the concept of an opt-in mailing list.

An opt-in list can be quite crucial to any site or internet based company. Even for a small venture such as a niche profit site an opt-in list can make a world of difference and also add some extra income for your pocket. Rarely would you see an e-commerce site, big or small, that is without an opt-in list.

An opt-in list allows for a company to market their wares and site via an e-mail. With an opt-in list, a site and a subscriber consents to sending and receiving a newsletter from your company. Through this, you can keep your subscribers abreast of what is currently available in your site as well as whatever is coming out.

And because there is mutual consent between the two parties, any mail sent to the list is not considered as spam mail. There is a great number of successfully read promotional materials such as catalogs, newsletters and such that are sent because the subscribers themselves have signed up for them, meaning, they do want to be sent those items.