3 Ways To Grow Your Business – Part 2

In part 1 of this series, we looked at the most common way that businesses tend to approach growth – by trying to get more customers.   Today, let’s take a look at the second way that companies can boost their business profits – increasing the frequency that current customers buy from you.   Contrary to the first way, which involves a huge investment of both time and money to reach these new potential customers, upping purchase frequency is much less involved.   Why? Well, your customers already…

• Know about your business – less education is needed, and for the most part your business should be top of mind when they think about your industry.
• Trust your business – you’ve already successfully met their needs or delivered a product, so they feel confident that you’ll do so again.
• Are part of your business – whether you have them on your email list, have connected with them through social media or simply have them logging in to their account, they are already in your communications loop. Reaching them is much, much easier.

It costs anywhere from 5 – 10 times more money to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.   So, how can you increase the frequency of transactions for your current customer base? In many businesses, it revolves around keeping your business top of mind and offering special incentives to buy. Groceries stores, for example, rely on this strategy. They send out weekly flyers and other communications of in-store specials, they offer points programs, they have special events in store etc… This is all to encourage their customers to come to them, and not the dozens of other competitors, when it’s time for that grocery shop.   It’s a little trickier in the web hosting industry. Customers generally don’t require your products or services all that frequently. They might have monthly recurring charges, which means they never need to go to your website.   Here are some tips for increasing purchase frequency:

• Promoting increased usage of your product/services. Again, a little trickier in the web hosting industry, but think about how some of your customers operate. Do they run hundreds of websites, for example, but don’t exclusively use your hosting services? Perhaps bundles, quantity discounts or free additional services would encourage them to host all their sites with you.
• Encourage customer loyalty. Make doing business with you so enjoyable that they wouldn’t even think to go elsewhere. Then, when their needs grow, they will look to your company.
• Keep in touch. By staying in contact with your customers, letting them know about special offers and valuable promotions, informing them about company developments etc… you are keeping your company top of mind.

In part 3, we’ll look at a similar topic – how to get your customers to buy more from you.