Try these further six tactics for gaining more sales from your existing customers.
- Offer related or complementary products
Send an offer of a product or service that is related to what they bought, perhaps two weeks or a month after a sale. Offer a discount or special deal. If you don’t have any complementary products or services, then find a business that does and offer their products. (Then get that business to do
something similar with their customers, but this time with your products or services as the offer.)
- Anniversary offer
Come up with a special anniversary offer one-year exactly after the customer first bought from you. If the tactic proves successful, repeat the idea every year.
- Try a telemarketing exercise
Ring up selected customers with a brief message about a special or new product they may like to try. Offer some genuine saving or deal as an incentive and make it clear that this is for existing customers only.
- Sale previews
If you intend holding a sale, send invitations to selected customers to attend a special invitation-only sale preview day or evening before you open the sale to the public. This rewards loyal customers by giving them first choice of the goods on sale.
- Privileged website access
Provide your customers (or selected customers) with a special pin number or password that allows them to access portions of your website that the general public can’t view. These pages could feature specials, loyalty discounts, first information about sales, etc. Make sure the Home Page of your website mentions the existence of these pages, so that potential customers are aware of the benefits and privileges that flow from doing business with you.
- Free training and updating
If appropriate, you could offer free training for customers in a new technology or service. For example, a camera shop might offer special evenings to demonstrate digital camera technology and picture enhancement and how to organize the results into picture albums on a computer. Can you do something similar? Try liasing with your suppliers to see if they are prepared to share the costs of the
promotion and provide a technician to demonstrate equipment. If you run a service business, think of inviting an expert to talk on a topic, or give the talk yourself.
The whole idea is to keep in contact with your existing customers, to build goodwill and positive word of mouth, and to prevent the chance of your customers being lured away by the
competition. They couldn’t possibly after the way you look after them.
