When developing new customers, we should first conduct a large-scale market survey to understand the feelings of customers in all aspects, then summarize and analyze the survey results, formulate corresponding advertisements according to the analysis results, and conduct large-scale promotional activities from time to time to remind consumers to buy. Each of the above links needs a lot of financial, material and human support. In this way, the unit product cost will increase greatly, and the profit of the enterprise will decrease relatively. For the old customers, there is no need for them to buy again. But how to let old customers continue to trade, so that they can maintain enough confidence and goodwill for their own enterprises and products? Enterprises must introduce the strategy of maintaining old customers in relationship marketing, and truly realize that old customers are the most important property of enterprises, which is the only way for enterprises to develop for a long time.
The Necessity of Retaining and Maintaining Old Customers
In the past, in the marketing activities of enterprises, a considerable number of enterprises only paid attention to attracting new customers, but neglected to retain existing customers, which made enterprises focus on pre-sales and sales, resulting in many problems in after-sales service not being solved in time and effectively, resulting in the loss of a large number of existing customers. However, in order to maintain sales, enterprises must constantly increase "new customers", and so on. This is the famous "funnel principle". Enterprises can lose 100 customers in one week and gain 100 customers at the same time. On the surface, sales performance has not been affected, but in fact, the cost of publicity and promotion for these new customers is obviously much more expensive than retaining old customers, which is very uneconomical from the perspective of corporate investment return.
Therefore, taking the "funnel" principle as the guiding ideology for formulating enterprise marketing strategy can only adapt to the era dominated by traditional production concepts, product concepts and marketing concepts. Nowadays, in the buyer's market, the degree of product homogeneity is getting higher and higher. At the same time, due to the development of science and technology, the life cycle of the product itself is getting shorter and shorter, and the marketing strategies and means introduced by many enterprises are similar. Consumers have become quite rational, so it is necessary to maintain customers and provide after-sales service.
The role of customer maintenance
First of all, retaining old customers can make the competitive advantage of enterprises last for a long time. The service of enterprises has developed from standardized and meticulous service stage to personalized customer participation stage. 10 years ago, when IBM's annual sales increased rapidly from 10 billion dollars to 50 billion dollars, IBM's marketing manager Rogers commented on his success: "Most marketing managers want to win new customers, but our success lies in retaining old customers; We IBM are willing to go through fire and water to satisfy repeat customers. " Another example is joe girard, who is known as "the greatest salesman in the world". 15 years, he sold 1300 1 car by retail, among which 1300 car was sold on average in six years, and his car sales record has never been broken.
He always believes that the first car sold to customers is only the beginning of a long-term cooperative relationship. If the transaction of a single car can't bring a lot of business in the future, he thinks he is a loser. 65% of the transactions mostly come from the re-purchase of old customers. The key to his success is to provide enough quality services to existing customers so that they can come back to buy cars from him again and again. It can be seen that successful enterprises and successful marketers regard retaining old customers as one of the top priorities of their own development. Retaining old customers is more important than new customers, even more important than market share. According to many surveys conducted by consulting companies, the contribution of retaining old customers to enterprise benefits is far greater than paying attention to market share and developing economies of scale.
Secondly, retaining old customers will greatly reduce costs. The investment in developing new customers is five times that in consolidating old customers. Many times, even if you win a new customer, it will take a year to really make money. The main reason for the high cost of marketing a new customer is that the cost of a personal promotion visit is much higher than the relatively low cost of general customer service. Therefore, ensuring the repeated consumption of old customers is the best way to reduce sales costs and save time.
Third, retaining old customers is of great benefit to the development of new customers. In the case of a wide variety of goods, the role of old customers in promoting sales can not be underestimated. Because for an interested consumer, a lot of information needs to be collected before buying a product. Among them, after listening to the personal experience of relatives, friends, colleagues or others, the recommendation is often more trusted by buyers than the introduction made by enterprises. The word-of-mouth effect of customers lies in: 1 satisfied customers will lead to 8 potential businesses, of which at least 1 transaction; 1 dissatisfied customer will affect the purchase intention of 25 people.
Finally, get more customer share. Because the enterprise pays attention to developing long-term and mutually beneficial cooperative relations with customers, it has improved the loyalty of a considerable number of existing customers to the enterprise. Loyal customers are willing to buy more products and services of enterprises, and their expenditure is 2 to 4 times that of leisure consumption. And with the growth of loyal customers' age, economic income or their own business, their demand will further increase.
Effective ways and methods to maintain old customers
Identify customer needs, segment customers and actively meet customer needs.
1) More preferential measures, such as quantity discounts, gifts and longer-term credit sales; And often communicate with customers to maintain a good and harmonious relationship and harmonious atmosphere.
2) Special treatment for special customers. According to the 80/20 principle, 80% of the company's profits are created by 20% of its customers. Not all customers have the same value to the enterprise. Some customers bring higher profit margins, and some customers have longer-term strategic significance to the enterprise. According to a research report published in Harvard Business Journal, customers who patronize for many times can bring 20%-85% more profits to the enterprise than customers who come to the door for the first time. Therefore, a good management enterprise should subdivide its customers according to its own value and profit rate, and pay close attention to high-value customers to ensure that they can get the special service and treatment they deserve, so as to become loyal customers of the enterprise.
3) Providing systematic solutions, not only at the level of selling products to customers, but also actively tailoring a set of suitable systematic solutions for customers, caring for and supporting customers' development in a wider range, enhancing customers' purchasing power, expanding their purchase scale, or discussing new consumption patterns and modes with customers to create and promote new demands.
Establish a customer database and establish a good relationship with customers.
In the information age, customers can get more and more detailed information about products and services through various convenient channels such as the Internet, which makes customers smarter, stronger and more intolerant of passive sales promotion than before. In this way, emotional communication with customers is an important way for enterprises to maintain customer relations. Daily visits, sincere greetings on holidays, happy weddings, a sincere birthday wish and a bunch of flowers will deeply impress customers. The end of the transaction does not mean the end of the customer relationship. It is necessary to keep in touch with customers after the sale to ensure their satisfaction continues. Because customers are more willing to associate with people who are similar to themselves, they hope that the relationship with enterprises is more than a simple business relationship. Enterprises need to quickly establish a good interactive relationship with each customer, provide personalized services for customers, and enable customers to get a good psychological experience other than products during the purchase process.
Communicate with customers in depth to prevent misunderstanding.
Customers' needs can not be effectively met, which is often the most critical factor leading to the loss of corporate customers. On the one hand, enterprises should timely convey the information of business strategy and strategic changes to customers, so as to facilitate the smooth development of customer work. At the same time, collect customers' opinions and suggestions on enterprise products and services, and integrate them into the improvement of enterprise work. In this way, not only can the old customers understand the business intention of the enterprise, but also the marketing strategy of the enterprise can be effectively adjusted to adapt to the changes in customer demand. On the other hand, we should be good at listening to customers' opinions and suggestions, establish corresponding communication channels for complaints and after-sales service, encourage dissatisfied customers to put forward their opinions, and deal with customers' dissatisfaction in time. We should also consider the problem from the perspective of respecting and understanding customers and adopt a positive, enthusiastic and timely attitude. At the same time, we should follow up with customers and take active and effective remedial measures. A lot of practice shows that 2/3 customers leave their suppliers because they don't care enough about their customers.
Create obstacles for customers to leave
An effective way to retain and maintain customers is to create obstacles for customers to leave, so that customers are afraid to buy competitors' products easily. Therefore, from the perspective of enterprises themselves, we should constantly innovate, improve technical means and management methods, and raise the transfer cost and threshold of customers; In terms of psychological factors, enterprises should strive to maintain close relationship with customers, make customers emotionally loyal to the enterprise, and have dependence and habitual psychology on corporate image, values and products, so as to establish long-term relations with enterprises.
The level of brand is directly related to the degree of customer participation. If the corporate brand has a low level and status in customers' minds, customers' desire to participate in the enterprise is relatively weak, while if a brand has a high status in customers' minds and even thinks that the brand is related to their own vital interests, then customers are more willing to participate in various activities of the enterprise, and the relationship between the enterprise and customers is closer, especially when they regard the brand as a spiritual brand, this participation can reach the highest level. Therefore, this requires enterprises to change the information dissemination mode of one-way indoctrination in the past, try to communicate and interact with customers, and let customers participate in it, so as to establish long-term and stable customer feelings and friendship and be in an invincible position.
Cultivate loyal employees and constantly train service personnel.
Loyal employees can bring loyal customers. A sales expert profoundly pointed out that failed salespeople often consider problems from the perspective of finding new customers to replace old customers, while successful salespeople consider problems from the perspective of keeping existing customers and expanding new customers, so that sales are increasing and sales performance is getting better and better. Sales to new customers are just icing on the cake. Without a solid base of old customers, sales to new customers can only make up for the lost old customers, and the total sales volume will not increase.
From the analysis of service profit chain (pictured), we can see that to maintain customer loyalty, we must start with employees. Specifically, the following measures can be taken: (1) Pay attention to employee training and education, and provide employees with opportunities for development and promotion; (2) Create good working conditions for employees as much as possible, so that they can finish their work efficiently; (3) Understand the various needs of employees and meet them in a targeted manner; (4) Advocating the corporate culture of internal cooperation and teamwork spirit.