How to create repeat shoppers
A common misconception for consumer brands is that the marketing process ends at the point of purchase.
Instead, smart brands recognize that a customer’s lifetime value — or the net profit that you’ll take in over the course of your entire relationship with a customer — is far more important than any singular purchase in terms of revenue and influence over others.
But that customer lifetime value will continue to stay low if they only shop in your store once and never return.
Intense Competition for Consumers’ Disposable Income
With so many different retailers and brands out there, retailers may only have one chance to capture the loyalty of customers before they move on to the next retailer. Capturing a sizeable portion of market share is more difficult these days, regardless of your product or service. With so many options available for consumers, stores and brands have to work hard to rise above the noise.
Proliferation of Social Networks
Historically, a customer that had an issue with a brand’s product or service had very little external recourse. They could tell their families, friends, and colleagues, but their reach was limited. Today, they can share their frustration with millions of other potential customers, and negatively rate brands on social media sites as well as sites like Hello Peter, which can have an exceedingly detrimental impact on sales.
The increasing popularity of social networks has amplified the effects of word-of-mouth marketing. While this method of marketing is one of the most old fashioned, it’s also one of the most powerful. It impacts 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions, according to the research firm McKinsey. And 92% of consumers will act upon recommendations from friends and family over any other form of advertising, based on research from Nielsen.
As such, brands have a powerful opportunity to engage consumers post purchase, improving not only the likelihood of return business, but also the chance that they will share their positive experience with other potential customers.
Shifting Consumer Behaviours
Today’s consumers expect more from brands. It is no longer enough to convey the function of a product or service in marketing efforts; instead, consumers want to feel as if they are part of something bigger. For example, Woolworths has made the consumer feel part of something bigger with their My School Programme.
However, if a modern brand wants to engage and convert a potential customer, it needs to look at the relationship beyond the point of purchase and consider the deeper desires of the consumer. Doing so will help convert one-time shoppers into repeat customers.
Here are three strategies to get you started:
1. Create a Community Around Your Brand
Modern consumers want to shop with brands that align with their values and lifestyle choices. They believe there is power in the insights of their peers, and are more comfortable gaining product inspirations from one another than from brand messaging. With the advent of ad-blocking, especially, there is a need for better marketing and ecommerce experiences. Instead of resisting this trend, brands can lean into it by helping enable these experiences through curated consumer communities.
Such communities can help forge an ongoing emotional connection with your customers. This is crucial, because feelings drive buying decisions.
2. Provide Utility to Customers Beyond the Purchase
Retailers that are only focused on a singular selling opportunity are missing the bigger picture and leaving a large revenue potential on the table. By engaging customers post-purchase with education, value-add services, and complementary product offerings, brands can re-engage customers and drive additional purchasing behaviour.
Keep the conversation going with customers after they leave your store. Post-purchase communication is a vital step that keeps merchants and consumers connected; especially when you consider that attracting a new customer costs five times as much as keeping an existing one.
Don’t allow for a disconnect between your customers and your brand, this leaves plenty of opportunity for those able to adjust and create more personalized shopping experiences. Brands that can provide more utility to customers beyond the purchase will increase engagement, conversion, and long-term loyalty.
3. Involve Shoppers in Your Marketing Efforts
In the retail sector, specifically, many brands are turning to consumers’ own content as a way to better understand their target markets and provide them with incentives to repeat purchase behaviour. With consumers sharing over 95 million photos per day on Instagram alone, many of which featuring brands and products, there is an enormous amount of insight that can be gained by viewing how consumers are considering brands and utilizing products in their day-to-day lives.
Brands that re-share this content and encourage users to create using hashtags, through contests or other messaging, are seeing a wealth of high-quality visual content, which helps to enhance the communal feel. Additionally, this content can be used to connect otherwise disparate marketing channels, in display advertising, social media, ecommerce, and even offline in print, direct mail, and outdoor activations!
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for the latest retail news and humour.