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Posts tagged internet marketing
Customer Loyalty: 3 Tips for Building a Strong Customer Base
01 year ago
Building customer loyalty can be tricky lately with so many industries, businesses, and individuals making budget cuts. Marketing is usually one of the first things to go when it comes to readjusting the budget. So for marketers, now, more than ever, customer acquisition should be of the utmost importance. Since acquiring new customers can be costly and time consuming, building customer loyalty should be at the top of every marketer’s list.
Keeping up with your customers certainly is time consuming, but doing so will be a benefit to your business. Consider the following tips and build a plan to help keep your customers engaged and interested.
Get referrals honestly.
One of the fastest ways to build your customer base is by showing others how your current customers feel about your brand. Referrals are the fastest way to spread the word about who you are and what your brand is about. Referrals help you garner where you stand and can help you gain personal insight into your customers, allowing you to build upon and expand those relationships.
That’s why customer referrals are such a powerful marketing tool. But it isn’t always the easiest thing to do to get your customer to take the time to sit down and write a quality referral. Sometimes you have to offer them a little something.
Offering a reward is a great way to instill customer loyalty. If you’re a business owner, thank your customers who refer you with a small gift card or a discount on your product. But a customer’s loyalty shouldn’t come at a considerable cost to your business.
Don’t go overboard. There is a long standing debate about loyalty programs and bribery. The thing to remember is that the best loyalty programs support a well-defined customer growth strategy, and use differentiated offers to retain and grow a customer base.
Tip: If you want to go mobile, consider a loyalty-card app through a service like Cardstar— which gives your customers one less card to keep track of and provides you with real time analytics.
Remember your followers offline.
Everyone loves to be thanked publicly. You can easily thank your Facebook and Twitter followers by tagging them in posts and tweeting about them to show your appreciation. That’s a great way to get re-tweets if that’s what you’re looking for (and who isn’t?).
But many brands have offline customers as well, and oftentimes those customers get forgotten. It’s hard to publicly thank someone without a Twitter handle. That’s typically where traditional print marketing comes in handy. If you are looking to thank your customers, a mailout card or newsletter is a great way to build a rapport. If you’re a larger brand, having a specific page dedicated to thanking customers in a printed publication is a great idea.
If you’re looking for something more simple, have the rules to your loyalty program available in a written format. That’s a great way to access both offline and online customers. Simply provide instructions on how to access your online program somewhere within the rules.
4 Time Management Tips for Internet Marketers
01 year ago
The longer I work as an internet marketer, the more I realize how important time management skills actually are.
The world of online marketing is so fast paced that, without diligently managing your projects, you get behind the pack in the blink of an eye.
A wise person once told me that we can only successfully accomplish about five tasks a day. There are a lot of people that would laugh outright at this. It’s an absurd thought when you consider how many tasks we are expected to work on each day.
But really stop and think. How many projects do you accomplish on a daily basis?
Here are some tips to keep in mind when you plan your daily schedule, or, if you plan your co-workers schedules.
- Time of the day- everyone has a different work pace, and the time of the day fits into that. Some people are more successful with detailed projects when they do them the first thing in the morning. For others, waiting till after lunch is better. Either way, pay attention to the time of daythat you or your coworkers are most productive and plan accordingly.
- Allow time for research breaks- no one can focus on one task for hours on end. Part of working online means keeping up with trends. If you need a break take one. Or you see your co-workers tweeting or looking at Mashable articles…let them. We all do it regardless, and by encouraging yourself and your co-workers they feel more comfortable with you and will learn something valuable at the same time.
- Don’t interrupt with other tasks- having a short session in the morning where you delegate the day’s tasks is probably one of the most productive things you can do for yourself or your employees. When you interrupt yourself or your colleagues with other extraneous tasks, it takes time for them to switch to the new task. You end up losing a lot more time than you think.
- Set manageable limits- we really can only get about five tasks done a day. Be aware of your own capabilities and those of your colleagues. Also keep in mind how long they should be working. About three short tasks and two more in-depth tasks each day is feasible, and never anything that takes longer than 10 hours a day.
If you follow these tips you will be a much more productive marketer. If you’re just getting started with your career, or you just want to chat about marketing, send me an email via my about.me profile.
