How to increase your customer base?

RAVI SHARMA

IT consulting | Virtual CxO Service | Programmatic Advertising | Lead Generation with AI | Remote Staffing Specialist | Cyber Security | AI | Cloud | Drive sustainable growth | IIM-C alumni ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Published Nov 9, 2016

There is nothing constant in the world of business. You have to keep evolving so as to grow.

Every business house puts in maximum endeavor to expand its customer base. If you do not offer what a customer wants you will be thrown out of the race to churn profits. Customer acquisition is a vital element of business growth. You not only have to retain old customers but also work on increasing your customer base. Developing a dependable customer base is a big challenge.

There are primarily two means how you can seek to expand your customer base.

Propel current customers to spend more money.
Or devise techniques to attract more customers to buy products and services of your company.

So, real growth is somewhere laid underneath!!!

1. Getting current customers to spend more money on your company’s product

Firstly you have to make sure that current customers are very happy with your product as well as performance. Your product should not be over- priced as this will affect its popularity in a big way. After all these parameters are taken care of you should try to sell more products to your client. You should upgrade the services which are offered or extend the duration of the contracts. For instance, if you are running a gym you can offer additional benefit such as steam and sauna. Even the duration of membership can be increased. Such activities are vital to ensure long-term association with the client. Some of the time- proven techniques to grow customer base include:

Cross-selling programs- Persuade buyers of the product to go in for adjacent products also. For instance if you have a customer who buys toner cartridges from you, you can try selling pencils, staplers and other office products to him or her.
Up-selling programs- Encourage buying of high-end products. For instance, promote customers to purchase cases of toner along with single cartridges, or fax machines, copiers and other office machines together with toner.
Next-selling programs- They are to focus on your upcoming order. Customers should be encouraged to sign long-term contract? Initiate them to become supplier of your office-products. These customer growth strategies hold good for both consumer goods and business-to-business.
Unbundling- In case a product is multi-featured or complex, i.e. it is split into various products, try to sell each product separately. This will lead to growth in revenue. This holds good in arena of software, tech and industrial product.

2. Make old customers help you create new customers

There is nothing like word of mouth publicity. You cannot even imagine how many customers you can gain via customer referrals. There are several viral marketing techniques as well as tools which will enable reaching to customers which will refer your product to other customers.

Viral marketing leads to referrals of customers from customers who are contended. Mentioned below are six highly potent viral marketing techniques which you can follow to gain more customers for your product:

Promoting customers to "like" your product or services on Facebook.
Offer free trials or discounts if you share with family and friends.
Enable clients to send emails to friends by making use of address books in order to build up mailing lists.
Build up contests as well as incentives to support "liking”, Tweeting and other similar activities.
Draw attention to social-networking action buttons with the view to make the viral endeavors hassle free.
Ask bloggers to pen down their views about product, and consequently reward them for the same.

3. Attract customers with a mind blowing offer

One of the main reasons, why you desire to have as many clients as possible because the customers will without a doubt lead to purchase rather than the prospects. It is less difficult to generate sales from the existing customers rather than building new customers from scratch. In such a prudent to offer irresistible offers to your existing customers.

There are multiple ways how you can offer your clients something which they cannot say no to. When you give a free trial to customers they get used to your product and they find it difficult to let go of it later on. Such offers work well in case of digital products as well as services as it facilitates the potential customers to have a look at what you desire to offer to your clients and that also at fraction of a cost.

Another good way to attract customers is by having a very good return/refund policy. When a customer knows that his money will be refunded he or she is more confident about trying the product and this ultimately helps you win more customers. This also confirms your confidence about quality of product or service. This is a definite way to expand customer base.

MOST IMPORTANT

Along with aforesaid, businesses must seriously analyze need of technology upgrade.

4. Upgrade to Latest Technology

As we are living in ever changing world where new technologies are coming and we can use those technologies wisely to grow our customer base. You should definitely consider to contact a reliable IT service provider if did not do followings:

If you already did not upgrade your website as per latest market trend.
If you did not develop a mobile responsive website.
Does your business need a mobile app to find new customers, engaging existing customers for upsell?
Do you know that Apple Watch /Android Watch device apps will help in growing your customer base?
Did you ever thought of using IoT (Internet of Things) to increase your customer base and how it can multiply your customer base in a very short span of time?

If your answer is YES for any of aforesaid questions, do not hesitate to think twice that where you want to invest to increase your customer base. Think, Plan and execute wisely.

Suggestion: Do not loose your hard earned money in wrong strategy.