Organizations spend thousands or even millions on marketing and advertising to grow their business. It seems to be a more obvious strategy but isn’t necessarily the smartest.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be spending on them. After all, flyers and billboard ads do help with business growth. The only thing you really shouldn’t do is spend your hard-earned money more than it’s required.
However, the problem with organizations is that they get too caught up in such activities that they forget there are other ways to achieve business growth. One of those ways is by leveraging the relationship of your existing customers or clients.
Best Strategies to Leverage Existing Customers and Grow Your Brand
Read on to learn the 4 best ways to leverage your existing customers/ clients for growing your business.
1. Social Media Channels
Create a loyalty program and encourage your existing clients or customers to post about your business on their respective social media channels. If they do post it, reward them. It’s a win-win for both as you’ll be getting your business advertised before potential customers while they’ll be receiving a reward.
But before that, you need to create a hashtag for your business. It will help you track posts and let people see what others talk about your brand. You can also connect with your customers by organizing contests, fun giveaways, or even commenting on their posts.
2. Word-of-Mouth Advertising
Another popular strategy to grow your business is by using your existing customers for word-of-mouth advertising. Encourage your loyal customers to talk about your business with their friends and family. You may also launch a unique product or run an exciting sales program to get people to talk about it.
The method can be a bit difficult to monitor. But if it works, it can boost brand awareness and bring new customers to your business.
3. Online Reviews and Feedback
Encourage your customers to add online reviews and feedback after using your products or services. Enable pop-ups that ask them to rate and share their experience with your business.
To ensure that negative reviews don’t affect your overall business rating, you can direct them to an internal page. But make sure you take the feedback positively and work on it. For positive reviews, you can direct them to a platform of your choice.
4. Friend Referral System
Using a friend referral system can also help in bringing new customers. Try encouraging customers you’ve already done business with to refer your brand to their friends.
Indeed, they won’t be doing it if there isn’t anything for them. So, what you can do is incentivize both parties with a reward. However, make sure that the referrers receive the reward only when their acquaintances take the desired action, which may be either paying a visit, downloading, or making a first purchase. Your existing customers can prove beneficial to your business. All you need to do is keep in touch with them so that they don’t disengage over time and keep coming back. With the 4 strategies discussed here, you can leverage them and grow your business in the process.