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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.

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How To Increase Sales by 100% With Almost No Effort At All

There once was a little carpet store in Richmond, BC (Canada) that hired a family member, (let’s call him John, name is changed to protect the awesome!) to come in and try to help with the carpet store’s sagging sales.

The carpet store was one of the smallest in a larger carpet store franchise, and things just weren’t going well for it. A much larger sister carpet store in the same franchise kept bringing in the big sales numbers, but his poor little carpet store just kept plodding along with very little sales growth, or improvement in profits.

Now, John joined the carpet store to help out, and he had extensive sales experience. The rumour was that he could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. (Canadian joke eh!)

For months and months John tried and tried, but just couldn’t change the carpet store’s pitiful sales numbers.

He had a friend named Dennis who owned a small business consulting company, that offered to provide John with a “secret weapon” to turn sales growth ON and increase profitability FAST!

During the conversation, Dennis told John that he could save him time in the sales process during his day as well.

Low on belief, but trusting of Dennis, John agreed to learn more. He didn’t tell his family he was doing this, just in case the “secret weapon” didn’t work.

So what was the secret weapon he was offered? Sorry, not so fast! Let me start by telling you about the magic that happened to sales as a result of this “secret weapon”!

The carpet store franchise is quite organized as far as giving recognition for both the stores, and to their salespeople for being outstanding.

John went from nearly a year of obscurity in the carpet store franchise sales rankings, never once making the top of anything, working in a carpet store in the smallest category that also never made it to any of the top performer lists, even against the carpet stores of the same small category, to accomplish some truly amazing things.

John became the top selling sales rep in all the top level carpet stores, and the other salesperson in the carpet store who also secretly used the ‘secret weapon’ became 2nd! This was within 60 days of employing it on the retail floor of their carpet store!

The store became one of the TOP 3 performing carpet stores in the chain! NOT just in their weight group!

How?

What was this secret weapon?

It’s much simpler than you might think.

It comes from thinking outside the box, and doing something that many would say is NOT recommended as a carpet store sales strategy!

The “secret weapon” was Small Business Dream, a mobile and web app. Not just any old mobile or web app, but a mobile app AND a web app. Quite a simple yet comprehensive sales and marketing automation and mobile CRM software suite.

John set about to secretly increase the carpet store’s sales using Small Business Dream. He spent a few days tweaking and playing to establish a good sales method, funnel, flow, and follow up that included comfortably getting carpet store customers to take a short survey and agree to give their email address to get more information and stay in touch with John and the carpet store.

He had configured a number of email auto-responder follow up series to follow up with people interested in particular items like Carpet, or Hardwood Flooring, or Linoleum etc.

A week later, John had about 35 contacts who had gone through his simple survey. He had automated emails based on their chosen flooring interests that were triggered based on what they indicated their interest was in the survey questions.

John did NOT give his mobile phone to the prospect, he filled in the Survey for them to keep it frictionless. When the carpet store was too busy, he had them fill in a small 1/8 size piece of paper asking the same things and collecting their data to enter into the mobile CRM later.

The following week he had made 3 sales he knew he never would have chased or followed up with without the sales automation due to the small order size or feeling the person wasn’t serious about purchasing. (This is a critical error of any salesperson, NEVER prejudge, we ALL know it as sales professionals, but we all still do it!)

More exciting, was that suddenly a lot of communication had opened up by email vs. needing to try to contact each other on the phone. Quick AND efficient.

He started to use Small Business Dream to follow up on in store visits, measures, installations, and the whole 9 yards of the carpet business. Suddenly John was the “Go To” guy in the carpet store for anything, as the carpet store’s paper based systems were so impossible to use, and finding quotes or previous paperwork was close to impossible.

Due to the Small Business Dream mini CRM that John was using, all of that info was at his fingertips, in real time. He even got calls on his days off to answer carpet store questions as only he could get the answer quickly in his mobile app!

His carpet store sales were up year on year and month on month, from the very first month that the app was secretly employed. The carpet store owner couldn’t figure it out.

Fun things started to happen!

A guy walked into the carpet store on John’s day off and says to the other rep on the floor that day…”I don’t remember who I talked to over a month ago when I got a quote for $2900 worth of flooring from your store, but he has followed up with me by email constantly to see where I am at. Please sell me that flooring!!” So cha ching… John on his day off closes a $2900 deal at 9% for an unexpected extra commission of $261 and decides to have steak and lobster for dinner!

As things progressed, John kept talking to Dennis, and Dennis suggested John push the email follow ups further than the few weeks that John had done so far. Dennis suggested a 3 month and a 6 month follow up email to be sent on each category.

John wasn’t sure, and put up some resistance, saying nobody in Carpet or Flooring waits 3 or 6 months to buy, so it’s a waste of time. Dennis suggested to add a few emails which would only take 20 minutes to write and upload, so what did John have to lose?

Dennis also knew that in Vancouver, a building permit could take 4 to 6 months in some cases, so if the renovation that needed the carpet or flooring was delayed due to the permit process, it was logical that a 6 month later follow up could possibly yield results. And guess what?

IT DID!

Within a week of adding the 3 and 6 month automated follow up emails to the series, a customer came into the store asking where the guy that kept emailing him was. John felt like hiding, the guy seemed angry. The other sales rep, not wanting to be mistakenly singled out immediately pointed at John and said, it must have been John!

The guy walked up to John, re-introduced himself, and said he was ready to go, that the permits had finally come in on that $14000 carpet job. Almost ½ of John’s monthly quota for the very slow month that the sale came in! $14,000 x 9% = $1260!

He then also said very clearly that John was not the cheapest carpet store he got a quote from, but he was the only salesperson still following up, and he felt if the service before the sale was so great, the service after must be excellent.

So, John simply took a little time to get prospect and customer data and put it into a mobile CRM, by actually taking the customer’s time to do it right in front of them. Many say you shouldn’t do that.

John’s experience? Customers loved the follow up, they loved that they got emails from John which reminded them of questions they had to ask, and could easily ask vs. having to phone John.

They had a “Truckload Sale” on area carpets, imagine the family’s surprise when by they time they got in, the truck was empty as John had sold every single one by sending out a simple email blast to the 620 or so previous customers, and existing prospects with a time limited sale offer for that truckload of area rugs.

Now John’s carpet store is rabidly awaiting the Small Business Dream add on app called myCarpetStore to allow their customers and prospects to connect directly to them, and receive updates, specials, and follow up directly to their mobile device by push notification in addition to email!

DATA = POWER

DATA in a usable format, and the creativity on how to use it = Sales and PROFIT GROWTH.

What do you have to lose?

Furniture Stores, Industrial Supply, Electronics stores, Shoe Stores, Hair Salons, Spa’s, Financial Planners, Real Estate agents, and the list goes on and on who could benefit with similar simple strategies and the app called Small Business Dream.

With Small Business Dreams you can dramatically increase your sales.  Build your sales funnels, email marketing campaigns, automated, and semi-automated social media follow-up campaigns and much more with the most flexible tool on the planet. Sign up today!