The customer life cycle is complex. Every business owner is familiar with the first step of the customer journey, which is when they try to introduce customers to their new business. Launching a new company is a challenging time as you need to make your brand visible and build your position in the market.
It’s not uncommon for businesses to use different strategies to raise brand awareness.
Social media campaigns can provide an effective way to drive up interest and generate sales while building a community.
A product launch event, through video or a presentation with freebies, can also attract the public’s attention. People are more likely to interact if they get to see what the product or service can do. Trade shows are also a fantastic platform for business launch, as you can appeal to your audience group while assessing the competition.
Finally, it’s fair to say that a digital presence with strong SEO will also be helpful to capture people’s interests. But what if you are not trying to target new customers but instead existing customers who have bought only once from your brand? Here are some ideas to get you started.
Contact your customers directly with an unmissable offer
Existing customers are in your CRM system. Depending on your personal data policy, you may choose to erase their contact data after a predefined period. Yet, regardless of whether contact details are to be removed from your database or not, it’s never a bad idea to get in touch within a few months of their most recent purchases. At that point, you would still have their data in the CRM.
There could be many reasons why customers don’t purchase again. But one of the most commonly overseen reasons is “life”. Life can get in the way, and they naturally forget about your brand. So, why not use a personalized email or direct mail campaign to remind them about your business. You could seize the opportunity to thank them for their business and provide a time-limited special discount for them to use for the next purchase.
Use retargeting campaigns
Retargeting campaigns are one of the best marketing strategies to target audiences who already know your brand. It can directly engage qualified leads who are most likely to make a purchase. How can businesses best utilize retargeting campaigns to reach out to existing customers who have not been active in a long time?
It’s important to understand the difference between retargeting and remarketing.
Remarketing reaches out to existing customers through email or other communication channels.
Retargeting focuses on individuals who have engaged with the brand’s online platforms. Retargeting ads on Google Adwords can help you display your ads to a selected audience group: Users who have visited the conversion page in the past x months but not in recent weeks.
Ask for customer feedback
Asking for feedback can be tricky. Not every customer is willing to take the time to leave feedback. It can be inconvenient and time-demanding. Therefore, if you’ve got an email campaign to capture customer feedback, it can be useful to add an incentive, such as a discount or a prize.
What can you learn from customer feedback? Ideally, when you reach out to customers who have bought only once, you can learn more about their purchase habits and your products:
- The purchase was a present for someone, so they don’t need to buy it again.
- They were unhappy with the delivery times, so they will be looking at quicker delivery options.
- They encountered issues during the transaction or purchase process, so they need reassurance that issues will not occur again.
- They did not like the product for reason x.
Sort out the basics
Maintaining high visibility online is the best way to ensure that nobody can forget about your brand. Consequently, you want to focus on digital activities that will attract the attention of your audience group:
- SEO contributes to your visibility for users who search relevant keywords; therefore, you can still use SEO to target existing customers once they start searching for your products again.
- Content generation ensures you can discuss the latest trends in your sector. This means that you can remain relevant to existing customers if they are interested in those specific trends.
- Social media engagement helps create a community where the brand can address queries and share buzz-worthy posts. Through reshare and retweet activities, the brand is more likely to appear in the feeds of existing customers.
- App notifications for customers who downloaded your app for a purchase once and haven’t used it since.
A customer who makes a purchase once is not guaranteed to purchase again from your brand. Therefore, businesses need to have a solid strategy designed to re-capture existing customers who are not active anymore.
