More than three quarters of new small businesses will fail within the first 18 months and the most common reason is profitability. No one is expecting you to be able to create groundbreaking turnover in this first year and a half, however you must make enough money to keep you a float. The reason many companies struggle to make profit is simply not being able to get enough custom through the door. Regardless of whether you’re a new company or not, you need to be able to attract new custom, while similarly retaining loyalty of current customers.
What measures do you take as a business to do so? Here, with Dobies, garden equipment suppliers, we take you through a guide in how you can boost your customer base.
Staff:
The attitude of the staff will ultimately make or break a business and on their personality hinges a company’s success. A negative attitude can have a hugely damaging impact on your business. By 2020, it’s anticipated that customer experience will be more important than both the price and product they’re receiving. Simply put, if a customer likes you, they’ll continue to give you their business. If they don’t, they won’t!
73% of customers are drawn to a brand due to friendly customer service representatives, RightNow reports. Meanwhile, ThinkJar states that 55% of customers will spend more money with a company if they’re guaranteed a satisfying experience. Therefore, it’s crucial that you give the public what they want if you want to increase your footfall — a happy and positive experience!
Social media:
If utilised efficiently, social media can be a great way for companies to enhance their brand’s image. By creating a catchy hashtag, a company can become an internet sensation. The right hashtags can extend the reach of your content, meaning more members of the public will engage with it. Trending hashtags are a simple way to increase how noticeable your content is.
More is more:
Thanks to the ‘insta-generation’ we find ourselves in, a selfie is never too far away from our minds. Therefore, you should offer an experience that your customers want to share. A London business, Elan Café, hit the jackpot with its ‘flower wall’. This had customers flocking to the café to get the perfect snap for their social accounts of the flowering plants that were on the wall.
In Wisconsin restaurant Buffalo Phil’s, diners have their food delivered to them via a toy train. The track, which runs along the perimeter of the restaurant, stops at the designated table to allow customers to pick up their food. Such experiences create a great word-of-mouth campaign, which makes people want to come at take part themselves. If your business can find a unique experience, it will draw people in.
What do you think?:
The only way we can improve, is to find out where our faults lie. Often, it’s in conjunction with a prize being at stake to entice you to take part. This is crucial for increasing custom, as it gives the consumer the chance to have a voice. People like to voice their opinions and asking for feedback is the perfect opportunity to show them that their thoughts do actually matter. Conducting a survey can help you measure customer experience and satisfaction, while also helping you to conduct industry research.
Offer discounts:
Even the most free-spending among us all love taking advantage of a good baragain. Discounts and offers can help you attract new and repeat customers, as a reduction in price can act as a ploy to attract people to your business. This works especially well if your discount is only available for a number of days, as people are ‘afraid’ of missing out.
An easy way to develop your brand image and boost your reputation is to offer a discount. This is also the case for companies which offer reduced rates for personnel, including military members or NHS workers. Discounts can also present impulse buy opportunities, meaning that customers will buy something they weren’t intending to originally. This will help to boost sales across the board.
Although sales figures may seem like the best way of assessing how a company is performing, other measuring scales require your attention. By building an established brand name, custom will follow. Therefore, apply some of these concepts to your business and successfully develop your client base.