How To Increase Customer Retention With Social Media: 6 Best Ways

Customer retention is extremely important for any business – mostly because it is way easier and cheaper to retain existing customers than acquire new ones. Here are the six best ways how to increase customer retention with social media.

1. Listen to Your Audience to Improve Customer Retention

First of all, you need to listen to your audience if you want to improve customer retention. Being a good listener is vital for any business owner who wants to develop a brand image that will be the most appealing to their customers. Consequently, this kind of brand image will help you improve your customer retention quite a lot.

Most of the time, people love talking. They love expressing their opinions about everything and anything even when they weren’t asked about it. However, there are not as many people who love listening to others talk. These people are rare which is why being a good listener is such an underrated quality often overlooked pretty much by everyone.

But clever business owners and marketers have figured out this skill and now actively use it to improve their customer retention, establish a better connection with their audience, and develop strong long-term relationships with their customers. If you are ready to change your mindset and start listening to your audience, then there are a few things you should know:

• There are different ways for you to listen to your audience. It’s not just about talking to them when they call customer support and ask you about how to use your latest products. It’s also about creating regular customer surveys, replying to their reviews online, engaging with them on social media, and so on.
• You need to use different channels to listen to your audience. You will also need to use different channels to listen to your audience. For example, email marketing can be used for surveys while social media can be used for polls and more casual interactions. Just remember that different segments of your audience will be using different channels for communication.
• You need to respond to what your audience is saying. You have listened to them and now you know what you want to reply or do in response. Are they unhappy with your delivery options? Change that aspect of your business to satisfy them. Do they want a wider range of products in your store? Consider adding more items.

2. Create Irresistible Offers for Better Customers Retention

The second thing you need to do is start creating irresistible offers to improve your customer retention. The only reason your existing customers will want to become long-term returning clients is that they see potential in your business and genuinely enjoy your brand and the products or services you have to offer them.

To create irresistible offers, you need to know what you are selling and what your customers are most interested in. Is it the body lotion you launched last week? Or is it the hand cream kit you have been selling for three years now? You will only be able to create irresistible offers once you know these kinds of details.

Keep in mind that you will be the one writing the text for these offers, so you need to make sure that you truly understand what you are talking about. For example, you decide to put together a makeup kit and attach a discount to it on the condition that the customer also purchases another product of yours.

The first thing you will need to ask yourself then is, “Is this makeup kit appealing to my audience?” Then, you need to consider whether the discount is good enough and whether that additional product is interesting for the customers buying the makeup kit. After that, you will need to learn every detail about all the products you will be describing before getting to work.

Alternatively, you can always hire a professional freelance writer from a writing service reviews site like Best Writers Online who will be able to create an engaging and interesting text for your offer. Much like with listening to your audience, you can then use different channels to promote these special offers but remember to focus on your social media.

Instagram, for example, allows you to add product prices right onto your posts. Take a picture of your newly made makeup kit and the additional product you want your customers to buy in order to get a discount for the kit. Then, publish the photo while tagging the products in the post. This way, you will create a truly irresistible offer for your potential clients.

3. Reward Those Who Promote Your Brand to Improve Customer Retention

There are several different types of customers. First, there are the customers that only buy once from you and never come back even if you try to attract their attention again. Second, there are the customers who stick with you and make multiple purchases again and again. Third, there are customers who can be either the first or the second type, but what sets them apart is that they start actively promoting your brand.

For example, someone buys that new makeup kit of yours. They try it – and oh wow, it’s truly amazing! So, naturally, they decide to share their experience online by publishing their review on their blog or social media. The next thing you know is their readers and followers get interested in your brand and decide to purchase the makeup kit as well.

This is an example of pretty much a regular customer accidentally giving you extra exposure by posting good feedback about your products online. Then, by word of mouth, you will be getting more exposure and increasing brand awareness. But what if this person doesn’t buy anything from you once they have made that single purchase in the beginning?

That’s when you should use rewards. You need to value such customers who are willing to share their positive experiences and promote your brand because they are the ones who will be doing free marketing for you. But if they like your products so much, why don’t they buy them again? Maybe it’s because they didn’t get a response from you to their feedback.

Even commenting on their post or sharing it on your own social media account can be a great way to show that you care. You could offer discounts, gifts, and exclusive offers to those who have given you a shoutout. This will get them thinking about making another purchase in your online store. Because, why not?

4. Focus on Personalization for Better Customers Retention

Personalization is probably one of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign. If you don’t personalize your content, most of your customers will probably perceive your brand as inferior to others like you, especially your competitors who do use personalization as the basis of their marketing strategy.

The thing is that personalization is not a cute gimmick – it’s a standard. People expect you to filter your content and provide them with only the best bits, customize your website design to improve customer experience, and so on. Consequently, if you don’t do this or even don’t try to do this, you will be missing out on a lot.

As mentioned earlier, customers tend to stick with the brands that they genuinely like. This is why you need to think about a way to make your brand more likable and interesting as well as your content more engaging. Here are just some tactics you might want to consider:

• Use professionals to do their jobs. You may be a great writer and maybe even know a bit about editing photographs, but the only people who can really make your content stand out are professionals who know their jobs better than you. Hire a writer from a writing service reviews site like Online Writers Rating, find a great freelance photographer, and so on.
• Improve your website design. Your social media marketing can be perfect, but your website is the place where the sales happen. This is why you need to make sure that your website design is the best that it can be. This includes both the way it looks and the way it works.
• Find a way to make your social media profiles unique. Your social media profiles are the face of your brand – and this face has to stand out of the crowd. Make sure you use a certain voice and style when writing your content. At the same time, you should also use a particular editing technique for your visuals to show your signature style.

5. Speak with Your Audience in Their Language for Better Customers Retention

Speaking of having a certain voice and style in your text, you need to find the language your audience speaks in. This does not only mean choosing English, Spanish, and French, for example, to publish your content in. This also means that you have the right accents in all the right places (e.g. using coke instead of soda, using jargon or terminology, etc.)

Yet, even if you decide to use casual words, you need to remember that you represent a brand and you need to remain as professional as possible. Don’t become aggressive when talking to your social media followers and choose your phrasing wisely. Here are some tips on how you can find the language your audience speaks in:

• Read what your followers are writing. Check out their social media profiles and especially the reviews they post to see if they know your industry-specific terms or they prefer using everyday words instead (e.g. they refer to separate components of your hand creams rather than simply talking about your hand cream).
• Check out your competitors. Perhaps the best way to figure out what your niche is like is by getting to know your competition. These are the brands you are competing with who have pretty much the same goals as you. If you notice a particularly effective method they use, you would probably want to try it out yourself too.
• Conduct a survey of your audience. Do they only want content in English, or do they want it in French and Spanish too? If you sell products worldwide, using multiple languages is probably your best bet.

6. Use Influencer Marketing for Customer Retention

Last but not least, you can use influencer marketing to improve your customer retention. At its core, influencer marketing is about finding important people in your community who have a significant online follower base and can promote your products. Here are the most important things to remember when getting started with influencer marketing:

• Having a set of guidelines is crucial. When you get in touch with an influencer who can promote your brand, you will need to provide them with a set of guidelines for what you expect them to create. For example, you will probably want them to use certain hashtags or a particular way of phrasing the promotion.
• Doing extensive research can tell you a lot. Before you decide to get in touch with influencers, you need to do extensive research and find out as much as you can about them. These people will be representing your brand by promoting you, so you need to make sure that they are good people who have a good reputation and can act responsibly.
• Setting achievable goals is a must. Lastly, you need to set certain goals for your influencer marketing campaign. What exactly are you trying to achieve with it? Do you want to improve brand awareness, or do you want to increase sales? Or maybe both? Customer retention will depend on how loyal the followers of those influencers are and how well they promote your brand. If these followers become your customers and like your products, there will be more chances that they will stick with your brand.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, improving customer retention is crucial for any business, and it can be easily done with the help of social media. Follow the tips in this article to get the best results and create your own social media marketing plan.