Are you wondering what the next steps are to growing your business?
This year has been like no other, it has been an extremely difficult time for our businesses and economy. We look at 3 cost effective ways to grow your business.
Loyalty Programs
A loyalty program is essential for customer loyalty, which will increase a customer’s willingness to repeatedly return to a brands product or service due to a positive experience they have experienced with the business.
So, what is a loyalty program and why should you implement a program for your business? A loyalty program is a tool which brands will provide incentives and rewards to their most-frequent customers to encourage loyalty to the business, 50% of existing customers are more likely to try a new product or service from you than a new customer. These customer are also more likely tovspend 31% more that a new customer. It also more cost 5 times more cost efficient to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one.
It is important to acquire new customers to ensure the growth of your business however it is as equally important to retain your existing customer base. Customers will spend more of their time and money with brand they trust and have a positive experience with, these customers will also create free referrals through word-of-mouth recommendations to their families, friends and colleagues also creative positive reviews online. Therefore, building and strengthening the relationship you have with your existing customers is essential to not only enhance the brand credibility but also gain advantage over competitors.
Here are our recommendations to keep your customers loyal to your brand.
- Set up a VIP program subscription program to reward loyal customers
- Segment your customer based on their level of loyalty to entice customers to make repeat purchases
- Continuous communication via online emails providing exclusive benefits i.e. promotional offers, exclusive previews and complimentary gifts with purchase
- Build a brand community by engaging your customers with the brand experience i.e. in-store events and money can’t buy experiences
Referral Program
Once you build your loyalty program to maintain and strengthen your relationship with your existing customers, it is essential to develop a referral program to generate new leads. Referral programs are low investment and low risk but potential to have a high return. The model will involve your existing leads promoting your new business to their network and in return you reward the leads generated by your customers through incentives.
Tips to increase referrals:
- Incentivise your existing customers to refer their network to purchase your product or service i.e. promotions or free product or gift provided for every referral
- Use enticing rewards to reward your customers and provide exceptional service to ensure brand is representative in a positive manner
- Promote your referral program across various promotional channels social, website, direct mail outs, blogs and personalised emails and phone calls.
If done right a rewards program will strengthen your existing customers loyalty while growing your business through new lead generation.
Social Media Presence
The social media business is growing at rapid rate, over 40% of the global population are on social platforms hence these days it’s difficult to find someone who doesn’t use social media for personal or work reasons. This rapid grow of social media in recent years has seen it become a primary marketing tool for most businesses to effectively and efficiently reach their target market.
In 2019 the break down of social media users reflect that there were 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X and 48.2% of Baby Boomers (Emarketer) and according to GlobalWebIndex 54% of social browsers use social media to research products online.
With 3.8billion social media users in 2020, it is essential for business growth to have a presence on key platforms. Let’s look deeper at two key platforms we recommend for business growth.
Posting content on your brand’s Facebook is always good to showcase your business to existing and new customers. The best time to post is usually during the weekdays from 10am-3pm, Wednesday will usually generate the highest engagement. Producing high quality video content is just as important as producing still imagery.
To generate high level of awareness and conversion Facebook ads is also a great tool to grow your business, formats which you can implement for your campaign include:
- Video ads: Use your existing video or create a slide show of still imagery and use the Facebook Ad Manager templates to produce a story ad campaign or boost a video on featured on your business page to reach a larger audience.
- Image ads: A series of photo only ads are one of the strongest ad formats you can implement in your campaign. Boosting a post on your business page is another way to reach new audiences.
- Collection ads: Consumers are discovering new products and service primarily through video content via mobile devices. Collection ads lets consumers transition smoothly from discovery to purchase through clean and efficient experience. The format involves a feature video or still image with smaller accompanying images of products in a grid format, each product clicks through to a direct purchase link.
- Carousel ads: The format will allow you to feature a series of imagery and videos within a single ad. This will allow you to feature more product or showcase the benefits in more detail of a product or service or tell a story with each carousel card. Based on the performance of each card you can optimise the order of the carousel, however if you are telling a story ensure that you opt out of the automatic optimisation.
- Instant Experience ads: IX also known as Instant Experience allow for your brands to make statement through full-screen and post-click experience. Audiences can engage with your brand by seeing videos, photos, swipe through carousels, complete a form, efficiently view product and explore lifestyle imagery with tagged products. The format is compatible with most ad Facebook formats.
- Lead generation ads: Add on a pop form to generate leads onto your video and image campaigns, the form is pre-populated with their Facebook contact information, the person will send their enquiry and you will receive their information and generate the lead.
For more information on Facebook ad formats visit here
Instagram is another important tool to promote your business and generate growth. In 2019, Instagram had 1 billion users, with 500 million daily users, Instagram generally attracts a younger market with 64% active users being younger than 34 (Statista). On Instagram video has the strongest cut through with 21.2% interactions compared to static images and carousel.
Instagram ads will appear on Instagram Feeds and Stories along with images and videos shared by their friends and family as well as other Instagram accounts they follow. Another placement for Instagram ads is through Explore, browsers will be exposed to the ad when they are exploring accounts of interest. Like Facebook you can have image, videos, carousel as well as Instagram stories.
For more information on Instagram ad campaign visit Hubspot.
Rik and Ralph is a digital agency developing digital solutions for modern Australian brands. We are a 360 agency, providing eCommerce, website development, growth marketing and branding solutions for Australian brands. Get in touch with us to modernise how you go to market. For more information about Rik and Ralph click here.