Customers | smallbizdream blog

5 Ways To Better Connect With Your Customers

It is easier and more convenient than ever to connect with your customers in order to grow your loyal customer database. But with so many tools and resources, it can also get complicated and overwhelming to make those personal connections with your customers.

Social media is a way to connect with your customers if done correctly—creating interesting contents that your customers want to share—but spamming your connections with your product updates, urging them to buy your products, is the quickest way to lose them.

To be able to help you make those better and loyal connections, here are five simple and effective ways to better connect with your customers, while growing your brand and business at the same time.

1) Know Your Customers

The first thing that you need to do to establish a better connection with your customers is to know them on a personal level. This allows you to identify the following information:

demographics (age, location, gender, hobbies and interests)
personal wants and needs
occupation
income

With these details available, you can strategize your marketing approach and ways to promote your products and services. This can also help you decide whether you need to modify the products you provide as well as the services you offer to your customers.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools to collect data from your customer. Information from Google can help you start a targeted customer database. You can discover what kind of customers you have and what they need from you. These details can also help you with identifying their online habits which can assist you with knowing the proper time to begin marketing your products and promoting them.

Facebook also has some great analytics tools to get to know your customers. If you look at the insights, you can find out all types of information about your audience – down to their interests and hobbies – and you can better connect with them.

Other social media platforms like Twitter and Pinterest have analytics tools, but none of them have caught up to Facebook in terms of usefulness or ability to capture as much customer data as possible.

Aside from these tools, you can also do market research by doing a survey and listening to their feedback in your comment section, and from review sites and online forums. Learn who your customers are by doing an analysis of your collected customer data and segment them accordingly to be able to personalize the connection.

2) Engage on Social Media

With the growth of social media, it is one of the better ways to have a connection with your customers online. Social media have become the essential online tool for customers to search for products and services they need. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other available resources are avenues for people to engage and for brands to grow their business.

Facebook can be used to build brand awareness and personally connect with customers. You can create a Facebook Page where you can post videos and images explaining your products and inform them the benefits they will get if they avail them from you. You can also check customer complaints and deal with them personally.

Try running competitions on social media where your customers can get a chance to win free services. These can be fun and help you win a ton of extra true fans as well.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a way for customers to post their feedback. Hear what they think personally about your products and engage with them by answering their queries directly. You can also keep your followers up-to-date by sharing news immediately. Twitter can also help you track what your competitors are up to.

If your customers are on Twitter and they post about your company then you better respond – whether it’s good or bad comment!

A great place to market your brand with a simple visual element is Instagram. With currently more than 300 million daily users, Instagram is quickly climbing up the social media hierarchy of best sites to connect with customers. With a simple yet rich media content, it can engage more users with a strategic use of search keywords through using hashtags and also with a good skill on photography. There are several tips on how to have eye catching images to boost your online presence and your social media posts.

3) Start Live Business Events

You shouldn’t just focus all your efforts online. Face-to-face engagements are still very important and can help connect your business to your customers. Register to business expos where you display your products and market them to existing and potential customers. Get to see their response and feedback while they sample your products or test them through demonstrations and exhibits.

If you have a physical store, invite your loyal customers to your launching parties. You can also get to know your leads and engage with them to build partnership. These customers, while they have the chance to visit your store, will share their experience on social media or will spread their thoughts by word of mouth — the cheapest and most effective way of marketing.

Of course, for a live business event, you need to plan first. Choose a venue with good atmosphere and filled with interesting activities. Don’t forget to let your customers get involved. Learn from them first hand, see their reactions personally, and talk to your customers to leave a good impression about your products and your brand.

4) Keep Them Updated

Send them emails, newsletters, or push notifications on their mobile devices for announcements on new product launching, promotions or a new published post on your blog. Keeping your customers in the loop is the easiest way to reach them whether on social media or on traditional media like newspapers and magazines.

Update your social media channels through a tool like Small Business Dreams and send out a newsletter. With the Small Business Dreams app, you can send automated and semi-automated messages to let your customers and leads know what’s going on in your industry or other news. The app prompts you when it’s time to reach out to a customer so you never have to remember and risk forgetting.

You can also utilize social media advertisement services like Facebook Ads to promote the updates on your brand and your products. Never miss to encourage your customers to also share your updates to family members and friends who can possibly be potential customers.

Keeping your customers updated lets them know more about business and how you can bring them values into their lives.

5) Provide Good Customer Service

There is no better way to keep your customers coming back to buy your products and avail your services than to have a good customer service experience. Customer service is a necessity to an emerging customer-based industry. This means attending customer on a timely manner on your social media channels, forum sites and emails whether they have questions, inquiries, or concerns.

Giving your customers a superior customer service is one of the ways to engage and to build a better connection with them. This is also ideal when trying to convince potential customers to get your products and tell other people about how they affected their lives. According to a survey, customers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase due to bad customer service. Potential customers also check Net Promoters Scores (NPS) to see if a brand and the products and services they provide will make a difference to what they need.

Building the trust with your customers, no matter how strong your social media channels, how huge your customer database or how engaged you are with them on events will be affected by the experience they are getting from you through your customer service. You need to plan out the section of your business to be able to attract new customers and let existing customers stay with you for the better of your brand and your business.

Connect with customers better and reach out to new prospects by visiting our website at www.smallbizdream.com.

Why You Should Network with Current Customers

One of the best ways to get new customers is to network with those that you’ve done business with. Your previous customers are valuable to the life of your future business.

As you get each new customer, you want to network with that customer again in the future to keep your business in their mind and to keep them on as a walking and talking billboard for your business.

The future of your business needs to evolve to include repeat customers and referral customers, both of whom are vital to the ongoing relationship of your business, the consumer, and the local surroundings of your business.

So now you ask; “How can I network with previous customers?” It’s easier than you might think!

Read: How to Network Like a Boss

Even if your customers are online, you can still network with them. A simple note, or email will do the trick. Refer to them by name, and offer helpful, metered advice. Chat with your customers about the care and maintenance of what they have purchased from you, or what work you have done for them. Ask if there is anything that can be done to improve the process they went through while dealing with your business.

Network with your clients by taking them to lunch, or doing something out of the ‘ordinary’ to express your appreciation for their business. As you continue to acknowledge those clients, they’ll keep you fresh in their minds. They’ll tell others about how you thanked them, and how they feel about your business.

The internet business is going to use newsletters, emails and special offers sent to previous customers as ways of networking and keeping in touch with those customers. Keeping the lines of communication open with a customer is going to increase awareness of your products and services. This in turn is will increase sales, one repeat customer at a time.

In business you can network with previous customers by creating mailing lists and using them with a great CRM to stay in touch. Offering helpful tips about the care and maintenance of a product they purchased with you, or making helpful recommendations for its use are great ways to stay in touch, and your customer will greatly appreciate the effort.

Learn more on how you can maintain good relationships with your previous customers through follow-ups using email automation at www.smallbizdream.com.

Simple Ways to Increase Your Website Sales

If you’re looking for simple ways to increase your business bottom line, you’ve come to the right place.

You might think that you already know what your customer wants. But how sure are you? Instead of assuming that you know, why not listen to the customer and ask questions to find out what it is that he REALLY wants.

1. Tell your customers about benefits, not features.

Your customers don’t want to know the ins and outs of your products or services, they want to know how those products or services could benefit them! Save the details of the product for a secondary page on your website that’s NOT on your home page. You can give some main selling points, but keep the minor details off of the home page. This spot is reserved for benefits of your products and/or services.

Let’s say you’ve got a strategy to get your clients out of debt. Don’t give them the nuts and bolts on the front page on how it works. Instead, give them the abbreviated version and save the small print for another page. Tell them the specific benefits of a life with ample funds and freedom from debt. Would that get YOUR attention if the shoe was on the other foot?

2. Keep communication consistent with potential buyers.

They say that it takes at least 7 views of your products or services to get interested parties to buy them. They’re obviously interested if they’ve managed to get to your site and request information, especially if they’re checking you out more than 7 times. So why not inform them regularly about your news and updates to the site? You may already have a future customer.

It’s also a good practice to use a “bookmark this page” and “tell a friend about this page” tool, to make it easier to get potential buyers in the future. Just because they’re not buying yet doesn’t mean they’re not coming back.

3. Encourage your site visitors to ask questions.

Some people might think you’ll be bothered by them or waste your time answering their questions. Extend your arms to each and every visitor that comes into your site, and encourage them to ask questions.

If you see the same question coming from those visitors over and over again, you should probably create a “Frequently Asked Questions” or “FAQ” page. People usually want immediate answers to their questions, and a “FAQ” page keeps your site visitors from having to ask the same questions over and over again.

4. Make the buying experience easier.

Don’t ask for information that you don’t need. Ask for the bare minimum information from the customer so they can ‘get in, and get out’. Then later on, you can send them a quick ‘thank you’ note and a follow up to see how they liked your website.

5. Don’t make your customer jump through hoops to buy your products.

It will only frustrate them, and make them put off buying for later – and that ‘later’ may never come!

6. Use a good CRM tool to help keep customers in the loop with your business.

Utilizing a good Customer Relationship Tool goes a long way to keep you organized when it comes to communicating with your customers. If you’ve got a sale or special on your products or services that you want them to know about (and they should), your CRM is an invaluable way to bring customers to your business with the click of a button.

Going one step further, utilizing a powerful mobile customer relationship tool like Small Business Dream will allow you to keep in touch with those valuable customers on the fly!

By keeping these lines of communication open with your site visitors and potential customers, you’ll find it easy to gain more trust and credibility with them and in turn, more sales!