Do Your Customers Cheat?

Look hard into their eyes, do you recognise them? Do they recognise you? Have you been in a relationship for some time? Is it a marriage, or is it a new thing? Most importantly are they going to cheat on you or have you done enough to keep them? Customers – they’re born to cheat on you, so how do you keep them faithful?

If we all agree that 80% of our business comes from 20% of our customers, why are businesses so obsessed with customer acquisition rather than customer maximisation?
In an increasingly competitive environment, recognising that 20% of your customer base and keeping them loyal is crucial to business.

At this time of year for retailers it is essential for them to maximise the opportunities of the peak season. Consumers are more discerning so blanket marketing to them is less effective, although you’d not always know this from the letterbox full you get every week.

Shoppers are bargain-driven, time poor and constantly bombarded with offers on a daily basis, so you have to be different.
Many retailers offer loyalty programs and, whilst consumers are happy to get a free cup of coffee or sandwich, they have become savvy to those schemes that they won’t use or have little advantage after months of collecting points.

Under constant fire of free airline points, store points, voucher discount for clothing. discounts on books and cds and points for using your credit card for all purchases, consumers need to be engaged in a positive way. So you need to understand your customers and what they want and whether you can afford to give it to them.

The whole purpose of a loyalty scheme at the end of the day is to benefit the retailers through repeat business and increase in customers, thereby making them more profitable. At the same time the customer has to receive real benefit too.

As always if you are planning a loyalty scheme you need to address whether the investment is worth it. Tracking your success, as with all marketing, needs to be done otherwise you have no way of knowing accurately if it is worth you continuing with the campaign.

Another tip, it’s not worth all the marketing and loyalty programs in the world, if you can’t perform the basics of good product and good service. If your product tastes bad or breaks, or your staff are rude or overworked, you will have blown every marketing dollar you spent.

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