Many business owners make the mistake of always chasing new business, but encouraging repeat purchases from your existing customers can be a lot more fruitful. According to Invesp, it costs five times as much to get a new customer than to retain an old one, so keeping your current customers is actually cheaper and more effective.
Provide value with your website content so people come back
If you want people to make repeat purchases, you must give them a reason to come to your website time and time again. Maybe the most effective way you can do this is by publishing high-quality and informative content your target audience will be interested in.
And, to do that, you’ll need to come up with content ideas. You can find content ideas by looking at what your competitors are doing or listening to common customer questions that your audience is asking in your comment section, or sending to your customer service team.
You can also try to cover topics that others haven’t discussed in your field, or you could conduct keyword research to see what kinds of information your customers are looking for. When you perform keyword research, you’ll want to use tools like Ubersuggest or Moz’s keyword tool to search for common words or phrases people use when searching for information about your field of work. These tools will then give you search terms or queries entered into search engines by your target audience so you know what kinds of questions they are asking.
Let’s look at some examples of businesses that do an excellent job of creating informative and valuable content for their ideal customers.
FreshBooks is a company that provides accounting solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Their website has a page where they talk about the importance of using invoice templates for services rendered.
They know that different business owners in their audience might not understand why they need to use service rendered invoices. So they’ve created a post to explain why and show their readers how to use their free templates to create a services rendered invoice. It’s a great example of content that provides value for their audience, and it can encourage more people to keep renewing their subscription with the company.
Overstock is an e-commerce store that sells household and outdoor furniture. And, on their site, they have a section where they publish helpful guides and tips for shoppers. Their posts provide valuable information on a number of topics, from living room paint ideas down to their top picks for home office furniture.
Not every visitor knows exactly what they want to buy when they get to a website, so these guides can be very useful to many people who visit their site. They will also encourage more people to keep coming back for new ideas and to get more furniture for designing their home, patio, or home office.
This tactic can work for any type of business — product-based or service-based. You just need to make sure that you’re focusing on providing valuable and relevant information that answers questions or solves pain points for your customers.
Give customers the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions
If you want customers to come back and shop with you again, you need to ensure they make purchases they’re very happy with. This means you’ll want to provide all of the information they’ll need to make informed buying decisions.
To help customers make informed purchases, you should make sure it’s easy for them to get in touch with you with any questions or concerns. You could also publish case studies of your past work or provide product demonstrations so they can see the features of your products upfront.
Lastly, try creating buying guides and comparison pieces, as these will enable people to make the best decision on what to buy.
To inspire you, here are some examples of businesses that have implemented the technique of giving customers information that would be useful in making informed purchases.
Ping Identity offers an identity and access management solution. On their website, they have a page where they talk about security assertion markup language (SAML), one of the open standards that enables their single sign-on solution. They go in-depth into how SAML assertion works and the benefits. They even include a short video tutorial on how SAML works.
It’s an excellent post for the company’s potential clients, as it gives an insight into the way they perform their processes, and it also helps people decide if they want to use the firm’s services.
This second example is from Loganix’s manual local citation building service page. To help prospective clients, the company has made sure to include all the necessary information that people would want to know about local citation building. The page talks about the business’s process and the way they build better citations and includes frequently asked questions that people may have.
Also, they’ve included testimonials and a case study so prospects can read and find out how the company has helped other businesses like theirs with high-quality citations. They make sure to give plenty of information so prospective clients will be sure that they’re making a well-informed choice when they decide to use this service.
On the other hand, GroomsShop is an e-commerce store that sells gifts for groomsmen. Their homepage does a great job of showing off their products’ star ratings and reviews from previous customers. These can be very useful to website visitors because they give them an idea of what to expect since they’re already seeing reviews from people who have bought from the site. In addition, they also display ratings and reviews for individual items, and this can help prospective buyers choose the right products to suit their needs.
These are really good examples of the different ways you can help your customers make well-informed decisions that will keep them coming back to your brand. And, to lend some credibility to your testimonials, you can also add the headshots of your previous customers to the reviews.
Incentivize repeat purchases
One of the most effective ways to encourage people to make another purchase with you is by offering a discount. You can tie discounts to events like a customers’ birthday or send surprise discount codes every once in a while, so people are motivated to make more purchases.
Or you could make your discounts time-sensitive to encourage customers to buy products before a set deadline. Adding a time limit to your discounts can be very effective because it creates a sense of urgency in customers and motivates them to take action within the time frame you have set.
Another way to incentivize repeat purchases is by creating a loyalty scheme that will see customers receive rewards for returning to your brand. The rewards could be points that they earn every time they come back to buy from you. These points could then be redeemed to get attractive prizes or customized discounts on your products.
Make sure your customer service is world-class
To earn your customers’ loyalty, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to get in touch if they have questions, concerns, or complaints.
People like to communicate in different ways, so you should offer different communication channels to cater to as many customers as possible. These could include email, phone numbers, social media, and a live chat option on your website.
To manage your multi-channel customer service system effectively, you might want to outsource communication to a customer service team that will be able to handle each of the channels.
Doing this will help you make sure that all customer queries are being answered, and it also removes the burden of having to handle all your communication platforms by yourself.
You could also try using an all-in-one multichannel software that allows you to track all your customer queries from different communication channels. If you want to get more information on offering multi-channel support and managing it effectively, check out Wix’s guide on multi-channel customer support and how businesses can provide it for customers.
Stay active on social media
If you can ensure you’re frequently on your customers’ minds, they’ll be far more likely to revisit your site and shop with you time and time again. Social media is one of the most powerful tools for ensuring your customers are reminded of your business on a regular basis.
So, you’ll need to make sure that you’re active on social media. Posting consistently can help with this, as coming up on your followers’ feeds will make sure that you’re at the top of their minds. And there are many tools that can help you with scheduling, planning, and monitoring the performance of your social media posts. For example, here’s a list of 10 awesome tools that can help you amplify your Twitter marketing and, the great thing is, they work for other platforms as well!
To encourage engagement from your followers on social media, you can try using some specific features like polls or surveys, or you could make sure you’re asking your audience questions and seeking their opinions on your products. Also, you could hold contests or giveaways where you ask followers to comment or share your posts if they want to win a prize. This makes sure people are talking about your brand, and it can also increase your reach to more people outside your audience.
Summary
When you first start your business, you might tend to focus on acquiring new customers. But, the more you grow, the more emphasis you’ll want to place on retaining those customers so they will keep making repeat purchases.
And you can do this by using your website to give people value, staying active on social media, and providing incentives that will encourage customers to keep coming back to your brand.
Author bio:
Alex Ratynski is the founder of Ratynski Digital, an online marketing consultancy that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses achieve their goals. He set up his company after working as a local SEO director for a dental marketing agency, where he helped to turn clients’ ventures into thriving multi-million dollar businesses. He spends most hours strategizing SEO for his clients.