Increase Sales from Existing Customers - 4 Simple Ways

4 Simple Ways to Increase Sales from Existing Customers:

1. Understand Your Existing Customers

Generally, it is more effective to sell products when you understand the customers' trends and demands. With your existing customers, you have a track record of their purchasing history. Research and analyze your customers' purchasing histories will help you understand their habits and preferences for your future offers. Generate more returning customers as your second objective.

By understanding your customers, you will be able to build better offers, or even develop new products based on your gathered information on them, and eventually, increase sales. Now the question is, how do you get to know your customers and understand them better? Let's take a look at the case below:

Mary owns an online fashion store selling casual to formal attires for all genders. After some time, she realized that some of her products are not selling well. Therefore, Mary decided that she wants to niche her target market by trying to better understand her customers.

First, she studied the gender and age range of her customers.

Second, she looked for patterns on which dates and products her customers typically make orders.

Finally, she added a short customer satisfaction survey at the end of every purchase. With that survey, she gathered more information on her customer's occupation, the preferred price range for clothing, occasions they use the products for, and some spaces for comments and feedback.

Mary is now ready to focus on fewer products that are in higher demand and will generate more sales.

2. Maintain Relationship with Existing Customers

Your relationship with customers does not end after one transaction. Your customers are exposed to other appealing offers from your competitors. To increase sales from your existing customers, you want to make sure they will return for second, third and more purchases in the future.

For that reason, it is good to have more USP (Unique Selling Point) for your business that differentiates you from your competitors. One strategy is by providing an excellent post-purchase service despite their satisfaction with your products. This could be done with low or no cost at all.

Stay in contact and follow up with your existing customers, but not with meaningless direct sales offer that they will overlook. Be personal! If you have a small business, this will be your advantage as you have a smaller number of clients to manage.

With the same case, here are 2 tips you can implement from Mary's effort to maintain a relationship with her customers:

1. Just like you and me, we like special treatments on our special day. Mary sends out attractive e-mails to congratulate customers on particular occasions like New Year and Christmas and give them a special discounts on their birthdays!
2. On top of that, keep customers updated about new products or sale items through push-notification and emails, normally once a month. You don't want to spam and annoy your customers with your great deals!

"How you sell matters. What your process is matters. But how your customers feel when they engage with you matters more." - Tiffani Bova

3. Increase Sales through the Loyalty Program

If you have done steps 1 and 2, this means that you have gotten to know your existing customers well enough to design various programs as part of a strategy to increase sales. It may vary from bulk buys, purchase incentives, to various rewards or loyalty programs that they will be interested in.

For most retail businesses, loyalty programs usually involve a physical card where customers collect points each time they made a purchase. The points are then to be exchanged with a reward in the form of free items or a special discount.

Your small business will gain an advantage as you can create more personalized sales and loyalty programs for your customers to make them feel special. In the future, they will be more likely to return for more purchases and hence, increase more sales!

Mary's Fashion Store will give you an idea of how to develop a creative loyalty program as part of her strategy to increase sales:

After progressively increase sales from her existing customer and some of her new ones, Mary's Fashion Store starts to offer a unique loyalty program. She charges $29.90 for customers who are willing to be a member of the program. This fee is to be paid once and customers are applicable to receive all the benefits below for all year round:

1. Unlimited next-day delivery (with no minimum spend)
2. Free returns
3. 50% off on birthdays
4. 10% off on all normal price items

4. Increase Sales through Automated Marketing Strategies

Last, but definitely not the least, making use of technology can help you do a lot of work. In this digital era, you can use various applications or social media to help create automated marketing strategies that lead to an increase in sales.

Find the best CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software such as Salesforce, Zoho, and Goldmine, suitable for your preferred marketing strategies. These apps and software will help you organize your customer information and customize your sales efforts.

There are many products that will assist you in automating your sales process. A software that can automatically notify your customers via text messages and some CRM programs have the ability to help you manage your email campaigns. If your business has a limited budget for any of these incentives, the simplest way to market your business with less or no cost at all is through social media:

Finally, Mary takes advantage of social media as her tool for free advertising and marketing campaigns. She updates the latest products, special celebration day discounts, and any news regarding her business on mainly Instagram and Facebook.

One of her campaigns is by encouraging customers to post photos of them wearing Mary's products and tagging 3 friends to win discounts on the next purchase. As a result, not only the business experienced growth in sales, Mary is also creating brand awareness for more potential customers with the help of her followers through social media marketing.

All Things Considered...

It is a wise decision to focus on increasing sales from your existing customers as it is a more sustainable effort that will keep growing within your business. Furthermore, providing customer service on a more personalized form could be advantageous to retain your existing customers. If your customers are satisfied, they will be the ones who acquire customers in the future for you anyway!

“Revolve your world around the customer and more customers will revolve around you.” – Heather Williams

Psst, there are some relevant guides that you might need:

1. The Small Business Owner’s Basic Guide to Digital Marketing
2. How to Boost Online Sales with FinTech
3. Low on Budget? Here are the 20 Low-Cost Marketing Channels
   

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