Business growth is always a top priority, but while many look to new customer acquisition, there are missed opportunities to increase sales with existing customers. There are a number of strategies that prove it’s often easier and faster to boost sales just by reaching out to current customers.
If you want to learn how to increase customer count, then read on for the top strategies that companies use to create more customer loyalty, increase reorders, and add new products and services to increase spending from existing customers.
How to Increase Sales With Existing Customers
One of the best ways to increase revenue from current customers is to build upon these relationships. Perhaps these customers are in need of additional services without even realizing it. Here are a few ways to market to existing customers and improve revenue.
1. Find Opportunities with Market Research
If you don’t know where to start, you can always look at your current sales and analytics to get some leads within your customer base. It’s important to use market research to hone in on clients who may need more solutions that you provide.
When looking at analytics and market research, keep these tips in mind:
- Conduct a market analysis first to identify opportunities.
- Use surveys, email outreach, focus groups, and interviews to pinpoint what your audience is looking for.
- Read reviews, comments, and other mentions of your brand to understand what customers are asking for across all platforms.
- Are you losing customers to competitors? Conduct a competitor analysis to see what services or marketing offers these companies are using to attract your customers to them.
- Use Google Analytics to find out where customers come from and what services they’re clicking on the most on your website.
- Look at your average order value and segment by demographic, as well as geographic attributes to find more opportunities.
- Test your customer journey and see if there are upsell opportunities, whether it’s a pop-up on your website, related items on product pages, or even an email automation series to educate customers on new services.
Once you’ve gone through market research and understood your customers a little better, you should set some goals for ROI. What’s your current lifetime customer value? What would you like it to be? Identifying these goals will guide how you market additional services and products to current customers.
2. Engage Your Current Customers More
In many cases, businesses are happy to get a sale from a customer, but it shouldn’t stop there. The best thing you can do after a sale is to stay in touch and offer additional products or services that relate to what your customers purchased.
One way to do that is with marketing automation. Email marketing is a powerful tool, and you can set up emails to run automatically and send offers after a sale that the customer might like. These are targeted messages that use data from previous interactions to pinpoint customers who may want to purchase again.
You can also use automation tools to segment your customer base and send them messages to educate them on new services. It’s also a great way to improve customer service.
One way to increase sales is to send follow-ups through the purchase and shipping process, as well as a thank you message with some other services or products that relate to what they purchased.
3. Identify Ongoing Customer Needs
Would your customers benefit from a subscription option? Maybe you can offer a personalized experience tailored to current customers with profiles that have a propensity to spend more. You may want to even poll or survey your audience to understand what they’re looking for.
However, you can look at past purchases and analytics to identify customer demographics, then address specific problems that customers seem to face. In some cases, it may be as simple as a phone call to follow up with a client after a sale to see if they need help and offer additional services if it would improve their experience.
Most customers who like your services will return to buy more, but they often need a reminder of other solutions you provide. For example, a customer purchasing moisturizer for dry skin may need more education on problems related to dry skin. You can offer content via email that’s personalized and suggest more products within your content.
4. Customer Loyalty Programs
Many companies have started loyalty programs where customers earn rewards for spending more with your business. Their membership may include discounts, special offers, or exclusive releases. It’s important to create a loyalty program that speaks to their interests and keeps them engaged, while also rewarding them for more purchases.
In addition, you can also offer incentives for customer referrals. Food subscription services make it so that every member has a personalized link that earns them rewards while also referring new costumes to your business.
5. Refresh Your Products and Services
When’s the last time you had a product and service refresh? If you see a dip in sales or that certain products have become stagnant, it could be that the product has become outdated or other businesses have created a similar product with more to offer your target audience. In these cases, you can also turn to your existing customers to understand what products and services to market more, what new products to offer, and what goods should be eliminated.
The items that customers seem to ignore may need an update, but it’s possible these could just be eliminated if they’re costing you money to produce and result in little to no sales. In fact, products with low sell rates are often more trouble than they’re worth. In addition, customers may completely skip over these products on your website, so what’s the point in promoting something that the majority of your audience doesn’t purchase?
It’s always a good idea to survey customers or check reviews before updating your products. You could find that just making one slight adjustment leads to more sales.
6. Cross-Sell and Upsell Whenever You Can
When a customer makes a purchase with you, are you following up with “what else can I do for you?” Now is the time to dazzle customers with other items that they might like. One great way to do this is with an incentive or discount offer for purchasing more.
Upselling is just one way to increase your orders. You also want to cross-sell depending on the type of business you own. For example, salon owners can sell hair color and haircuts, as well as salon styling products. If a customer typically comes in for a cut and color, suggest products to help them keep that color that you also sell.
Let's Market Your Business and Improve Your ROI
Marketing to existing customers will not only boost sales, but will also increase the customer lifetime value, and help you achieve a better ROI. There are many more ways to boost sales to existing customers through your website, social media, and even syncing local listings to improve local customer traffic. Want more sales and better results? Schedule a free 15-minute discovery call with the small business marketing pros at E-Marketing Associates today!