How to
Effectively Tap Repeat Customers for Your Business
Attracting a customer and turning them into a buyer can be a costly and
time-consuming process. Hence, small or home business owners must maximize
and increase the value of every customer. Learn five ways you can turn your
customers into repeat buyers.
by George Rodriguez
Contributing Author
Your existing customer base is a goldmine. These are people who already know
your business, and are familiar with you. These are people who have already
established a relationship with you by buying your product or service. But
are you maximizing your customers?
Attracting a customer and turning them into a buyer can be a costly and
time-consuming process. If you are running an e-commerce business, you may
have spent dollars on pay-per-click search engines to find that buyer. Or
you may have taken the time to write an article for your local newspaper in
the hope to get word around about your business. You may have advertised in
another web site, a trade magazine, or even purchased a direct mail list.
Hence, it is extremely important for a small or home business to maximize
and increase the value of every customer.
How are you trying to tap your customer base? There are a number of ways
you can get additional business from your existing customers:
Through cross-promotions by offering complementary products or
services
Upgrade of the product or services they’ve purchased
A study made by TEST Marketing Group and whose results were published in
Response Magazine (November 2003) offered a number of interesting ideas on
how to approach your customer and turn them into repeat buyers. While the
study focused on the direct response marketing industry, the suggestions
below would work well for any type of small or home businesses:
1. Make an offer as soon as possible.
If the original purchase is fresh in the mind of the buyer, the greater is
your opportunity to sell again to the same buyer. The study showed that a
buyer’s expected response level based on the age of original purchase is as
follows:
Days After Original Purchase
Expected Response Level
0-30
Very responsive
30-90
Responsive
90-180
Moderate
180-365
Limited
1 year +
Very limited
2. The amount spent on the original purchase.
The higher the amount spent, the more likely to turn them into a repeat
customer. Customers who have previously bought a premium product or service,
or bought items from you in bulk have already invested significant goodwill
in your business. These are the type of customers that will be easier to
persuade to purchase more.
3. Offer the customer a great value.
Even though you have established a previous relationship with your customer,
you still need to establish an amazing value unavailable anywhere else. The
customers are more likely to buy if they think that they will get an even
better deal than what they previously got.
4. Approach should refer to product affinity.
Whether you contact your previous customer by phone, email or in person,
your chances of selling again to the same customer increases if you refer to
the original purchase or product. This will help refresh their memory
(particularly if the original transaction went smoothly) and allows you to
create an instant relationship with them. Your email will have a greater
chance to be read; or you can keep the customer on the phone listening to
you much longer.
5. Objections should be addressed.
One challenge in trying to sell to a previous customer is overcoming
objections. This is particularly true if the buyer was not fully satisfied
on the original purchase – e.g. the e-book purchased may be long on promises
but short of actual new learnings; the gift basket may fall short of the
buyer’s expectations; or the buyer may be having problems listing the web
site that you designed in the search engines. Let’s face it: you cannot
please all customers, but how you prevail over their objections can mean the
loss or gain of additional business from them.
If you tap less-than-happy previous buyers, the best approach is to
overcome objections before they even have a chance to come up. Acknowledge
the problem, and offer solutions to the problem. The intent is to elicit
trust in your buyer through your honesty and candor.
