Consumers are constantly receiving fast-paced, attention-grabbing marketing pulling them in different directions. While your business may have a fantastic lead generation and customer acquisition strategy, customer retention may be a struggle. It is more important than ever for businesses to keep their customers engaged and delighted with their products and services. In other words, they need to create sticky customers.
Customer stickiness keeps businesses healthy and stable, as they can always count on satisfied customers and repeat business. In this article, our Smart Circle experts will discuss customer stickiness, why it is important, and how to increase customer stickiness.
What Is Customer Stickiness?
Customer stickiness is the number of buyers who find incredible value in the brand (brand stickiness) or the products and services (product stickiness, service stickiness). To many, customer stickiness sounds exactly like customer retention; Although they are distinct terms, customer stickiness actually feeds into customer retention.
Customer retention is the percentage of customers staying with a brand over a specific period, indicated by stable revenues from year to year. If buyers become sticky customers, they are more likely to remain customers.
Why Is Customer Stickiness Important?
As a business owner, you may already understand customer retention is advantageous yet, you may need to learn the steps to achieve it. When you know how to increase customer stickiness, you provide customers with a brand and product value they cannot find anywhere else. It gives customers the reasons necessary to stick around and make more purchases.
Ultimately, your business can obtain numerous benefits in the process of increasing customer stickiness and as a result of the efforts:
● Developing better products and services
● Improving customer relationships and loyalty
● Increasing customer lifetime value (LTV)
● Boosting customer reviews and referrals
● Generating more sales and profit margins
● Making up-selling products and services easier
● Retaining a stable sales base yearly
● Receiving excellent return on investment (ROI) from marketing and sales campaigns
How to Increase Customer Stickiness
At Smart Circle, we want to empower business owners with data-backed information. We’ve rounded up the 5 best ways to increase customer stickiness:
1. Create a Unique Value Proposition
When developing an effective marketing campaign, professionals strive to highlight a product or service’s value proposition. A value proposition is a short dialogue or statement expressing why your product is useful or beneficial to the buyer. Specifically, it tells them how your product solves a problem or helps them achieve a goal. If your product or service has a unique value proposition (UVP), or a value that no other product on the market has currently, you have the power to increase customer stickiness. After all, no other competitor can offer them this solution.
Your business should ensure that the UVP is at the forefront of any marketing or sales efforts. It should be clear and direct so consumers can immediately understand the value. One of the best ways to convey a UVP is through face-to-face marketing. Sales professionals can ask consumers questions about their current situations, interpret how they understand information best, and tailor marketing efforts to communicate the UVP effectively. Whether your product or service provides something wholly new and innovative or simply offers the best price out there, make sure consumers know about it right from the beginning.
2. Give an Excellent First Impression
First impressions linger in consumers’ minds, sticking with them when they purchase a product for the first or seventh time. Additionally, it provides the foundation for a brand relationship, whether that is short-lived or, ideally, long-term. If you want to create more sticky customers, your first interaction with a consumer must be outstanding.
What makes a remarkable first impression? An experience that builds trust, instills confidence, engages the consumer, and delivers value. In the case of traditional advertising through media, it may be difficult to accomplish all four. However, if you pursue in-person marketing and face-to-face sales, you can deliver an unforgettable customer experience. For instance, you can provide personalized discussions, informative and interactive product demonstrations, events or value-driven experiences, and excellent discounts or offers. Consumers can immediately understand what your brand stands for, how you treat customers, and what sticking with the company would mean comparatively to competitor brands.
3. Develop a Deeper Connection
Transactional relationships make it easy for consumers to move on and find a better customer experience. Since this is the case, your brand must develop genuine customer relationships. Sticky customer relationships are built on an emotional connection, which can start right from day one if you are a savvy marketer.
In-person marketing is the best way to start a great relationship with your customer. Campaigns and scripts are tailored to fit the specific buyer group and location so that sales professionals understand general needs, preferences, behavior, and goals. They know what the target consumers typically respond to regarding buying incentives. Furthermore, at the moment, they can curate one-on-one interaction to meet the customer where they are at and appeal to their emotions; for instance, if the customer is genuinely struggling with a problem, the salesperson lends an empathetic ear and offers a sympathetic tone. In this way, customers feel valued and taken care of, a rare feeling in a fast-paced business world; they are more likely to feel a bond or a stickiness to the business.
4. Stay Consistent with the Customer Experience
A customer’s experience is more than a first-time interaction or one-time purchase. If you want to increase customer stickiness, you need to stay consistent. Your product or service should continue to deliver excellence, your customer service team must provide solutions promptly, and you should continue to treat customers to a customized experience; these are compelling reasons for a customer to stick to a brand.
Gathering continuous feedback is a great way to remain successful with customer experience. Often, brands can continuously improve customer stickiness, customer loyalty, and customer retention in this way. Seek to understand your strengths and weaknesses by surveying current and past customers. This way, you will find out exactly where you excel and where you need to improve. Ultimately, this will allow you to offer a consistently fantastic customer experience.
5. Incentivize Customers to Become Repeat Buyers
Businesses can increase customer stickiness by offering incentives to purchase more products. They may allow your brand to stand out from the competition and on the market, especially if the incentives are uncommon. Furthermore, they convince consumers to continue buying from your business or more regularly.
Excellent ways to encourage sticky customers include:
● Creating a loyalty program.
● Implementing a referral program.
● Hosting regular giveaways or contests.
● Providing coupons and discounts.
● Rewarding word-of-mouth marketing efforts.
As a result, customers feel a more meaningful connection with the business, enjoy the brand experience and delight in receiving little extras.
Jump Start Customer Stickiness with Smart Circle
At Smart Circle, we develop and execute acquisition methods that consider customer stickiness right from the first marketing and sales experience. We know first-hand how important brand relationships, brand experience, and customer stickiness are to business vitality and longevity. Start on the right foot; contact Smart Circle today!
