Earn repeat customers to grow your online store

When you think of growing your online store, you will always focus on attracting new customers.

Should you advertise on social networking sites, blogs, or through TV commercials?

No doubt, many marketing techniques will bring new customers to your doors, but at the same time you may be overlooking a great source of potential growth: your existing customers.

Your existing customers can either be the ones who purchase from your store on regular basis and the other ones who have purchased from your store a long while ago. This group may be the ones who are not known to your existing offers, and if they were informed, they would surely be interested in purchasing.

Below, I am going to explain effective ways to earn repeat customers to grow your online store:

Indulge with customer retention program

Many business owners understand that offering topmost products and services with a great customer support will automatically retain customers. That’s a good idea for the start. Let me tell you, customers do not owe their loyalty- it has to be earned continually. Having a customer retention program in place, you can easily track, identify and promote to those existing customers who are likely to be a loyal, long-term source of revenue. For product driven business, which highly depends on repeat customer sales, will find customer retention program very useful to grow their online store.

Do not predict what customers think

Misjudging how your customers think will create a negative impact in your customer retention strategy. Instead of predicting customer behavior through certain demographics, you should focus more on actual customer behavior using web-analytics that will provide your customers past and present behaviors in turn will help better predict future behavior and strategize accordingly to earn repeat customers.

Engage customers through social networking sites

Customer engagement is the key success to earn repeat customers. Once you have increased your Facebook “fans,” Twitter “followers,” stay engaged with them and keep “alerts” to know when they comment and immediately reply to whatever (good or bad) they say about your company. As and when you identify (fans/followers) that are loyal, send a courtesy “Thank You” email. Also, include discount coupons (as per their shopping behavior,) which makes them feel more important and appreciated.

Frequently offer relevant programs

Last but not the least, and the most effective way to earn repeat customers is to offer relevant programs, keeping them engaged with your brand. Loyalty programs is the key to encourage and reward repeat business. After identifying your loyal customers, frequently offering special discounts, sending promotional gifts, birthday wishes, Christmas cards, are additional ways to express appreciation in turn retain customers.

Conclusion

Diving new customer to your store is very good, but will cost more time and money, instead , focusing on existing customers will be less costly and the most effective program to grow your online store.