Success Mantra: Retain customers than acquiring new ones!

Every small business must understand the importance of retaining the existing customers. Most small business owners get into aggressive customer acquisition and invest and all their marketing efforts, time and budgets to getting new customers and do not take any initiatives towards retaining the existing ones.
A repeat customer is good for any business but more so for a small business because of the following:

1. A repeat customer is as good as a new customer. Instead of going to the competitor, if the customer comes to you, it means you get a customer without any new investment.

2. Acquiring new customer is far more expensive than retaining an existing one.
Your competitor may take aggressive steps towards acquiring new customers and take away your customers too. Hence, once you have a customer, take extra steps in retaining him. On an average, it takes a small business at least 10 times more to acquire a new customer than retaining an existing one. Hence, the key to saving cost and growing a stable business is to retain the existing customers.

The following are the simple initiatives a small business can take towards retaining customers:

Be their support system: If you are a small business, you have a great opportunity to know your clients / customers personally. Give them individual attention and understand their specific needs, business requirements and feedback. If you make them feel important and valued, they will return the same gesture to you by sticking around.

Be responsive: the single most important key to retaining customers is to let them know that you hear what they have to say! Even a minor customer complaint or issue or feedback, if acknowledged immediately, helps the customer in developing the trust towards you and more importantly towards the brand.

Keep in touch: Make it a point to keep in touch with your customers / clients on a regular basis. If you don’t hear from them in a while, drop in an email asking if they are doing well. You can also send out periodical emails, newsletters, company/product updates on a regular basis to remind them of your presence.

Reward them: Reward your customers / clients for being committed to you. An annual discount, loyalty bonus, a public acknowledgement of your association with them, priority service, etc are all ways to give your customers more reasons to stay with you instead of wandering away.
Acquiring customers is important and a necessity for any business to grow but retaining the existing ones is critical for it to stabilize and have a higher return on investment.

Twitter for MSMEs

Is Twitter for you? Well the answer does not depend on whether you are a big company or small but it depends on what is your objective to be on Twitter? If the objective is to increase sales through Twitter, you might be disappointed in the short run. But if the objective is to build a brand name over a period of time, Twitter is the place for you! Here’s how you can use Twitter for your small business:

1. Use and follow Hash tags
The best part about Twitter is the hash tags – the words which are used with ‘#’. For example, you are looking for ‘internships’ in ‘Mumbai’ in ‘marketing’. In such a case you can search for #internship #Mumbai #marketing together and you will see relevant search results. Similarly, for businesses, if you are looking for new employees in Mumbai for Sales, you can post a tweet with the hash tags: #job #Mumbai #sales together.

2. Follow the influencers
Find out who are the influencers for your industry or your business type on Twitter. For example, if your company works in the auto mobile domain, search for people whose opinions are sought after and valued in the auto mobile sector. Even following journalists who cover stories on your sector will help you in the long run as you will be aware of what kind of stories they are filing, latest trends in the industry, etc. You can even follow research organizations who conduct research in your domain. That will help you in keeping a tab on the latest industry numbers.

3. Have conversations
Just following influencers and other will not help but having conversations with them around the subject will be beneficial. This will bring you in their notice and they might endorse your views and points that you are discussing with them.
Even when you tweet something and that gets a reaction from someone on Twitter, respond to them with appropriate answer. This will help you gain credibility over a period of time and also gain you some followers.

4. Focus on your area of interest and expertise
Don’t go haywire with your content on Twitter. Focus on your area of interest and tweet around the same topic so that people can follow you for updates on a particular subject. Overtime, they will trust you as a reliable source of information on all things related to that subject. Plus, you will gain a targeted set of followers audience that would be interested in what you have to say.
Start tweeting! You can begin by sharing this article on Twitter!

Sell Yourself Before Selling Your Product

We all judge. That’s an innate quality all humans have. From the time we see someone; we judge their physical attributes, their presentation, the way they talk or their body language, their qualification, etc. But seldom do we realize that the other person is judging us too. Before we can pass our final opinion on them, they may pass an even stronger opinion us.

Imagine if you are trying to sell a product but the customer has already formed a negative opinion on you, or rather has a very strong positive opinion of your competitor. In such a case, the customer will invariably prefer to go with your competitor. Here lies the criticality of personal branding. If you can sell yourself, selling of your product becomes a cakewalk.

Try these simple techniques that you can use to create a great personal branding:

1.     Find out who you are

Do you know what you can brand yourself as? Do some retrospection and see what attributes describe you the best. Your self-perception matters a lot. How you see yourself is essential to begin the self-branding process.

2.     Create the brand

Once you know what describes you the best, you should have evidence to support these attributes. Your interests, awards, certificates, qualification, experience, etc. All the things that communicate your brand attributes are necessary.

3.     LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great place to build your brand. It’s a medium through which you can boast about your professional achievements, get people to endorse you and show off your business network to the world. Substantiate it with a professional picture and correct details and you will have a great looking brand. It’s essential to keep networking on Linked In and get more and more relevant people to connect with you.

4.     Email

Do you know a good email id is very important when it comes to business dealings? You can’t communicate with your customers at ‘coolrahul@xyz.com’. If you have a company email id, suresh.salunkhe@bizporto.com that would be great. If you don’t, then have a professional sounding id like suresh.salunkhe@xyz.com.

5.     Public Relations

You can’t ignore this. Get introduced to journalists who can get in touch with you for your comments and quotes while doing relevant stories. Personal PR is essential too. Look at Vijay Mallaya. He is a business man, but a brand in his own right. It’s the artwork of PR.

6.     Attire

Dressing up appropriately for all occasions is must. It speaks of your personal style and goes a long way in making an impact on people you meet. Again, remember they are always judging you!

7.     Blog

Write a blog. It’s the best platform for you to speak your style out. You can write about things that will substantiate your personal branding. Also, if you can establish your blog well, you generate credibility for yourself. You have followers, journalists who will look up your blog when they are doing a related story and customers who will connect with you online.