When times are tough & consumer confidence is low, customer loyalty concepts may well be a saving grace.

When sales of your products or services are not what they should be and the usual marketing methods aren’t working as well as they have done in the past, your bottom line will surely be hurting.

And if customer loyalty is on the decline we need to brace ourselves for the future..
We’ve all heard of the Pareto Principle, it’s the one that states 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your profits.

JUST 20%!!  –  scary… or… what!

So… The trick is retaining the top 20%?

Here’s how…

They need to know that we love them and value their custom.

Try some of these ideas -

Make an effort & get to know your customers. You cannot consider any customer loyalty concepts until you do.

You absolutely must know what gives them a headache… what caused them to sit bolt upright in the middle of the night.
You can only do this by getting to know your top 20% customers so you know what products & services they require.

Only then can you to implement a customer loyalty program that compliments their wishes.

Conduct some marketing intelligence activities using tools like customer surveys, market research and customer feedback.

File the data from this exercise & use it later on to nurture your customer base.

Customer Loyalty: Be Very Careful NOT To Abuse It

There’s an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review that’s worth reading. It questions current theories regarding customer retention and the link between company profits & customer loyalty.

Exceed Their Expectations at Every Single Opportunity

Shooting for a WOW facture every time you make a sale will ensure you get maximum benefit your customer loyalty concepts.

We all expect top customer service nowadays so we cannot expect our customers to be loyal if we’re supplying less than top service.

Particularly our top 20% customers.

Give then what they don’t expect to keep your customers coming back.

Prove beyond any doubt how important your customers are by valuing their opinion & input.

On a regular basis, ask them what they think about your business and the products & services that you provide.

Offer ‘valuable’ incentives so your customers will actually use your loyalty cards. Consider the Best Buy reward card that Best Buy department stores have implemented. It’s a great program and the customers just coming back.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that most of us need some sort of incentive to offer assistance to someone that we’re not familiar with.

You could offer your customers points for every purchase which they could redeem for cash or a discount. Another benefit of loyalty cards is they allow us to track purchases so we’re aware of the products that the top 20% customers purchase.

This alone will increase sales and your customers are rewarded for their loyalty… win / win.