MARKETING COMMUNICATION DIGEST

Here's a simple truth, it's cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one, we've been told since birth. You should be focusing on building trust from the first moment you interact with a prospect, and from then on, never take your foot off the pedal. Keep nurturing your prospects as you would in any healthy relationship. If you are currently focusing all your marketing efforts on attracting, converting and closing your customers - you are failing on what might be the most important stage – retaining and delighting your most precious assets – your current customers. Just as you would not buy a plant and then move on to buy another only to stop watering the first plant, don't neglect your customers. Here are some customer retention tips to get you on track: Know your customer personas Make sure you know who your customers are. Learn their challenges and needs. Send out surveys, create loyalty events, and reach out to them just to ask if there is an...

Just stop interrupting! Now, would you ask someone to marry you on the first date? Nollywood romance stories sometime portray such successful ‘love at first sight’ scenarios. But we know it’s never that simple in real life. Reality normally requires building a relationship before popping the question; earning trust, learning to know one another, seeing that you are right for each other and taking the relationship to the next level when you're ready. If this makes sense to you so far, then why are you selling, or trying to sell to strangers on your first date with them? So what's the buyer's journey? Simply, “the buyer’s journey is the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to a purchase." There are three stages to the average buyer's journey : the Awareness stage; the Consideration Stage; and the Decision Stage. Awareness: The awareness stage represents the top of the marketing funnel (TOFU). For example, the ...

Have a new hire training programme in place as well as a continuing training programme. Be passionate; Set examples; Educate your team by doing, not by lecturing. Share stories of remarkable customer service with your team. Encourage your team to learn from one another and seek company-wide collaboration. Develop clear work ethics and principles, and make sure everyone is aware of them. Let team members be themselves; Enable them to shine. By  Noa Eshed , co-author of "The Smart Marketer's Guide to Google AdWords”, content lover, certified journalist & lawyer. She consults and helps businesses create significant presence online. Edited by   ‘Dele Dele-Olukoju , Marketing Communication consultant and publisher of the online   Marketing Communication Digest . He writes from Lagos, Nigeria.