11 Customer Retention Strategies to Help Your B2C Business Grow

Post Images

What is Customer Retention and How Does it Actually Work?

Retention is the process of retaining a customer beyond the point of sale. It is necessary for any business to retain and renew customers in order to increase net profit, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and achieve growth.


Retention is often attributed to the fact that people are slow at making decisions about changing brands or products. They usually make this decision after multiple tries with the same brand or service.

Retention can be broken down into three categories:

  1. Retention rates - percentages of customers who stay with a company for an extended period of time
  2. Customer lifetime value - cost per new customer vs lifetime value divided by each new customer 
  3. Customer growth - improvements in profitability, productivity, and retention rates 
  4. Customer lifetime value - the average amount that a customer spends over their lifetime retention rates - percentages of customers who stay with a company for an extended period of time 


Retention rates refer to customers who remain loyal after the first purchase. For example, if ABC Company has a 10% retention rate, then their retention rate is 10%. Therefore, if they have 100 new customers, then they will retain 10 customers. If they have 1000 new customers, then they will retain 100 on average.


The 3 Key Components of a Customer Retention Strategy

Customer retention is a key focus for many companies. It involves having your customer satisfied and loyal to your company in order to acquire more revenue.

This strategy includes three key components:

  1. Investing in customer acquisition (acquiring new customers)
  2. Increasing return on investment (ROI)
  3. Staying loyal to your current customers by providing them with value


Top 11 Ways to Improve Your B2C Business Retention Rates in 2022


11. Create a reason for customers not to leave

This introduction explains how the customer service team wants to keep customers through a creative and emotional experience.


The customers' most useful asset is their ability to leave. Even if they provide good service and value, they can easily walk away without any penalty. Customer retention is not easy because you have to battle with their need for instantaneous gratification which constantly demands more from your company.

The only way to overcome this challenge is by creating a captivating experience that will keep them contented and loyal - which includes the personalization of the service and listening to their needs.


You are not going anywhere - in fact, you're just getting closer.

The reason for this is that once customers leave, their friends and coworkers are going to want to know why they left.

There are many reasons why customers choose not to leave a business, but the most common explanations include:

  • Loyalty
  • Experiences
  • Loyalty and experience come together in customer retention strategies.


10. Make the experience beneficial for customers

Customer experience is important when trying to retain customers. The best way to accomplish this is by crafting a personal, relevant and useful experience that makes the customer want to come back.


Affective design is a way of creating that experiences feel good, pleasant or satisfying. By using effective design, companies are able to create an experience that feels like the customer has had a personal touch and positive feeling in their interactions with the company.


Customers should be made part of the planning process so they can have ownership over the product or service being created for them. This will allow them to provide input into what they like and dislike about it so it can be changed for future releases.


9. Don't Restrict Yourself to One Social Network

Social networks are a popular way of sharing content for marketers. They can influence how people perceive your brand, how to approach your target audience, and how to create content.


But sometimes marketers tie themselves down to one social network. This is not worth it because you're limiting your potential audience by limiting yourself. When you're limited to only one platform, you'll miss out on some opportunities that could have been made possible when you were out there in the wider world.


Some marketing trends are making it even more difficult for marketers to focus on their target audience or choose just one social network. These trends include engagement through video and private chats on Instagram Stories where brands can promote themselves and interact with their followers without the risk of losing control of the conversation (you should have seen the brand testimonials we got when we reached out on this platform!).


8. Offer Promotions, Coupons, and Deals

Offering promotions, coupons, and deals is a proven way to retain your customers and encourage them to come back. However, it is not easy to do this.


A third-party app can help you with this by automating the process of creating offers and sending them to your customers effortlessly!

Sending out offers as part of your marketing strategy is a great way to keep up with customer-friendly practices.


The three most important components for a successful offer are:

  • Offers are a central part of the marketing process. You need to offer something that is valuable to your target audience. For example, for a subscription box company, you might offer a discount on your regular price or some kind of bonus item with each purchase. 
  • Promotional Code: The promotional code will be given to you as part of the process when you make an offer that requires coupon code redemption.
  • Coupon Code: A coupon code provides access to special offers and discounts.


7. Create A Review System That Includes Ratings

Review systems with ratings are now a common practice to keep customers engaged and to improve the overall customer experience.

This system is not something new, but it’s the way companies design reviews that is significant. Companies need to think about how reviews will be structured and how users will provide their feedback on a particular product or service.


This system also depends on how qualitative or quantitative the ratings are, which makes a difference in terms of what types of questions should be asked as part of the process.


6. Provide Businesses with the Tools to Reach Your Customers Outside of Your Website and App

With the internet, we have been able to reach a lot more people and have a bigger audience than ever before. However, this has come at the price of our ability to be as personal with customers that we serve as traditional businesses do.


To differentiate your business in the digital age, provide your users with easy ways to get in contact outside of your website and app. One way is promoting your customers’ social media profiles and providing them with quick content suggestions that they can share.


The shift from brick-and-mortar stores is changing the way businesses operate today because it's becoming difficult for them to engage customers on their own property. If a store has a large online following, it's much easier for them to get their message out there than if they relied on signage banners in store windows or radio commercials. It's not that you would focus on online marketing over other places since people still go inside stores for additional services, but you would rely on digital marketing more often.


5. Examine Your Website Data to Find Out What's Working for You and What's Not

Every company has parts of their websites that are performing better than others. Typically, these are the parts of the website that yield higher rates of conversions, but it is important to take a look at your website data to find out what is working and what isn't.


Companies use HubSpot Insights to analyze their different websites and identify the perfect content for specific customers.

There are plenty of tools available in the market today to help companies get a comprehensive view of their website traffic and analytics. Some popular ones include Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Kissmetrics, and Mixpanel.


4. Offer a Service for Customers Who Want to Have More of a Social Experience with Other Customers, such as Video Calls or Direct Messaging

Social media has changed the way we communicate and interact with others. As companies are embracing social interactions, consumers are starting to prefer businesses that offer social experiences over those that don't.


In order to be competitive in this market, some businesses are offering a service for customers who want to have more of a social experience with other customers. This includes video calls, in-store greeters, and even special events - like pop-up shops or movie nights - as they are increasingly popular as well.


3. Utilize a Customer Service Team for Support and Communication with Customers

Customer service is one of the most important functions in any company. It is important to have a well-balanced support team for both internal and external communication with customers.


A customer service team can be organized in different ways but the most common way is having a Customer Service Team Leader, who oversees every aspect of the team and coordinates it with other departments like marketing, sales, IT, and corporate communications.


It is highly recommended that an effective customer service has a well-balanced communication style between the representatives of different departments. For example, a poor listener might affect the sales process while having too many high-level discussions might not be of much help when dealing with basic questions.


2. Follow Up After Each Deal or Promotion

To retain customers, the first step is to follow up after making a deal or promoting a new product. The follow-up can be done in many ways and has the potential to increase the retention rate by 20-30%.


What are some of the different ways to help you increase retention rates?

Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty with personalized content.

Encourage social media interaction.


Create sales content that will make them want to share their experience with others.


Create an after-action report on how well the campaign went, what they liked/didn't like about it, and what could have been improved.


1. Reduce The Cost of Your Products or Services

If a company were to reduce the cost of their product, they would be able to retain their customers and make more revenue.


The less expensive a product is, the more likely it will be bought. This makes it easy for companies to sell products that otherwise would not have been purchased by customers.


How to Find the Best Customer Retention Strategy for You & Why It's Important

Customer retention is a critical sales strategy that every business should be familiar with. It is the process of keeping customers by providing them with good customer service and marketing products that they need.

The key to customer retention is finding the right balance between quality and quantity. You can't expect to retain a customer forever, but you can keep them for a long time.


The first step is to decide what your company's core value is because this will help you determine how you should market yourself and how long you should nurture your customers into becoming recurring buyers. You need to know what strategic point of difference will set you apart from the competition so they can no longer compete with you on that level.


Conclusion

There are a lot of strategies to help your business grow, such as white labelling, lead generation, and customer retention strategies.

The most important part of making any business successful is the ability to retain customers.


This is not an easy thing to do because it requires you to have a complete understanding of your customers and be able to carefully craft all your marketing materials.