Earning Customer Loyalty: It’s A Lot Like Marriage

Winning a customer should just be the beginning of an extremely profitable relationship. It is much more cost effective to keep that customer and retain their repeat business over a lifetime than constantly relying on getting new ones.

You could say earning and maintaining customer loyalty is a lot like maintaining a great marriage. If you break it down to dollars and cents it is going to cost you a lot more to go out and attract someone new every week than it is to keep your other half happy at home, not to mention all the stress of wondering when a new love interest is going to call, having to constantly wow them with exciting dates (offers) and fight off your competition.

Once you gain a new client or customer you can enjoy their repeat business again and again as well as constantly offering them new products and services, with very high closing ratios and higher profit margins. However, you can’t just expect them to be loyal automatically. It takes constant effort. Those who get married, let themselves go and make no effort to go out of their way to make their spouses happy shouldn’t be stunned when they find them spending a little too much time on Facebook and adding new friends.

A great marriage requires you to remember birthdays and anniversaries, give gifts and show appreciation and come up with surprise dates. From a business perspective this is still a lot cheaper than having to find someone new everyday. So how can you implement this in your business to increase customer loyalty? Gathering additional data like customers birthdays and special occasions, sending them rewards or special deals to thank them for their business, inviting them to webinars or other events for free or at a discount and much more. You can’t just say you will do these things later or that you will get around to them eventually or they never happen. There will always be something else to spend money on or to take up your time. You must create an action plan and firmly attach it to your calendar.

Yes, this may require a couple extra hours of brainstorming each year though any additional money invested should easily be recouped through sales. Perhaps the real question is what will happen if you don’t actively work on your customer loyalty? Just like a neglected spouse, sooner or later their eyes will start wondering for a better deal and someone who is paying them attention, it’ll start with harmless flirting or getting a quote and the next thing you know, they are off. You lose money and quite possibly your business. The lesson, don’t take customer loyalty lightly. Great intentions unfortunately don’t count for much. Action does.

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