Opening up a business is very exciting. Keeping a business open can be incredibly difficult. There is so much that you have to keep on top of and if you don’t get sales, then you won’t be a company for very long. Unfortunately, as the owner, in the beginning, everything is up to you. Doing a local search for potential hires is a good idea if you need the help for something like SEO services or administration, but sometimes you can’t afford that. So, when looking at things practically, here are some thing that a company has to do to stay in business.
Keep your product in stock
This is one of the main frustrations regarding businesses is when they don’t have what you want to buy. Now, if you are running a business that offers custom or handmade, specially ordered products, then of course, this is understandable because you need to get the customer’s specifications first. But, if you have something on your website that is a run of the mill, generic product, it should be available for purchase. It’s alright if you run out of a couple of things but make sure that the majority of your products are available for immediate sale. Of course, if you are running something like a search engine optimization consulting company for SEO services, then of course, you don’t have to worry about running out of stock.
Market your company
Getting your name out there is the single most important thing that you can do. There are several ways that you can do this. Online would include marketing such as SEO services, email campaigns, social media outlets and online ad space. Offline would be things like flyers, brochures, paper coupons, bill boards, business cards, etc. You should have a good balance of offline and online marketing. If you only stick to one or the other then you will probably be missing out a whole demographic of people that you could be reaching out to. Neither one is incredibly expensive to do, if you know how to do it.
Focus on customer service
A lot of mistakes can be forgiven is customer service is up to par. Studies show that no matter the downfalls of a company, be it poor SEO services, expensive prices, long turn around periods, etc, if the customer service is excellent, customers will still come back. A customer would rather pay a little bit more for something and feel appreciated and taken care of than pay the cheap price and have absolutely zero contact with the owner, even when they need to. It’s a simple matter of having the balance between not getting walked all over and sticking to the ‘customer is always right’ policy. While you should compromise your policies and values, you should put the customer first. Without them, you really don’t have a business.
Be easy to contact
This is another frustrating aspect of businesses, especially if they are mostly online, which many companies are nowadays. You need to have a contact phone number, email address and website that customers can quickly get a hold of you on. When a customer calls, they don’t want to get a voicemail or a message saying they’ll get a call back. The problem is, is that most companies don’t call back so that’ll just give them a bad taste in their mouth regarding call backs. If you want to be call back based, then state in your voicemail recording how long it will be before you call back the customer and then stick to that time frame.
Research your demographic
You have to know your target audience so that you know what to sell. Or rather, if you know what you want to sell, you have to know who wants it. Invest a good amount of time into researching your demographic so that you can make sure you don’t miss the audience that you should really be focusing your marketing on to.
If you follow these five tips then you may find that you are able to up your customer retention ratings quite a bit without even really meaning to. People just want to be heard, appreciated and catered to, that’s all. If you can do that, you’ll have customers for life.