Ambassador Programs: Tips to Turn Customers Into Ambassadors
Many small business owners tend to favor attracting new clients, rather than focusing on repeat customers and those who have already had a good experience. By changing your mindset, and focusing on the customers you already have, how can you turn them into marketing ambassadors? This win-win situation can easily be executed with the three easy tips.
Embrace the Power of Customer Engagement
Engaging your customers with smart email and text messages are both effective uses of communication and a clever way for small businesses to grow through positive word of mouth. There are several points in the company-customer relationship to acquire their email or phone number for future communications: whether it’s to email a receipt, sign up for promotions, or to book an appointment in the first place.
Engaging with your customers via email and text messages give you a great avenue to share personalized promotions, in-store events, or the ability to highlight new products and services. But don’t forget, people are quick to delete emails – especially emails that come in too frequently or don’t have an exciting reason to read – so really consider the objective of each of your communications before you reach out to customers.
Focus on Online Review Success
Today, so many businesses attract repeat and new customers based on reviews that are found online. Whether you’re a restaurant with reviews on Yelp, or a Spa with testimonials on Facebook, customers take opinions into serious consideration. Reviews are important, and the easier it is for customers to leave a review – especially happy ones with a recent visit – the better your business will look. A Bright Local Local Consumer Survey 2015 showed that 92 percent of consumers read online reviews, making it a really powerful tool for your business. Meet the customer where it makes sense in the whole experience.
Bad review? Respond to it and ask what you could’ve done better. By taking the high road and offering to make things right, other customers will see that you truly care about your service, products and experience enough to come to resolution. Taking the time to respond and turn the experience around will come back two-fold.
Optimize Your Website with Testimonials
Your website is the one place online where you have complete control of how your business is presented to potential customers, and what better place to show off all the positive things your customers have said about you over the years? Once you’ve gathered testimonials from your best customers, put them front and center on your website. Having a clean, user-friendly website full of great reviews will help you generate sales and appointments while your hands are full, which in turn means happy customers.
By rethinking how you engage your customers, and employing them as part of your marketing strategy, you’re effectively turning them into company ambassadors. Your use of smart email and text marketing, online reviews, and optimizing your website with testimonials will lend itself to reaching a wider audience, and potential new customers, while generating more business from the ones you already have.
Corey is an experienced entrepreneur with a passion for helping entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed. Prior to Frederick, Corey was Director of Dell for Entrepreneurs, where he led Dell’s efforts to discover startups building the next generation of data-driven business applications. At Frederick, Corey leads the charge to bring Frederick to thousands of small businesses worldwide.
