Customer loyalty is a top priority for today’s B2B brands. With a core group of customers that return year after year, brands can spend less time chasing leads and more time growing top-line revenue. Loyal customers spend 67% more than new customers and provide up to 80% of a brand’s revenue despite representing a minority of customers.
What does it take to nurture loyalty in the B2B space? Use these tactics from Soon to attract your brand’s ideal buyers and turn them into long-term customers.
Empower your buyers with information
B2B buyers increasingly prefer a “do it yourself” approach to purchasing, only reaching out to vendors after vetting the options. If prospective buyers can’t find the information they’re looking for, they may move onto a competitor before giving your company a chance. Robust online self-service features give customers the confidence to move forward by answering key questions that simplify the buying process and use key points in the buying journey to connect customers to sales reps.
Engage with customers on social media
Social media presents an opportunity to address buyers’ pain points with shareable content and reach new audiences through targeted ads. You can also take advantage of social media to showcase the human side of your brand including behind-the-scenes, culture-related, and educational content. Develop buyer personas to hone in on the right social media platforms for your brand and create content that resonates.
Segment based on customer needs
Not every customer comes to your company for the same reason. Customers have different buying motivations and pain points that determine how they interact with your product. Segmenting B2B customers based on needs allows you to tailor campaigns to the specific problem a customer is looking to solve. You target multiple audiences under a single brand or file a fictitious business name or DBA to establish a separate business unit under a separate or sub-brand.
Deliver a consistent customer experience
Loyalty goes deeper than a strong first impression. Brands build trust and loyalty when they deliver consistent results across all touchpoints of the customer journey. Your brand should be recognizable, dependable, and reputable. That requires everyone on your team to be on the same page about messaging and customer service. Make sure your customer service team knows your customers as well as they know your product and set standards around response and resolution times.
Be available when customers need you
Most B2B customer service teams keep traditional office hours. That’s fine if your customers keep the same working hours, but what if your customers are located in a different time zone or work different shifts? Use website analytics and email timestamps to identify times your customers are looking for assistance and adjust customer service hours accordingly.
Collect feedback
No matter how dialed-in your customer service, there’s always room for improvement. Feedback gives buyers an opportunity to share opinions on your brand’s products, service, and overall customer experience. Identify critical junctures in the customer journey to ask for feedback rather than requesting feedback after the fact. You’ll get better response rates when customers can quickly share input without interrupting their workflow.
Loyalty is top of mind for B2B brands today and brands that overlook this important marketing and retention strategy risk getting left behind. Evaluate your customer journey to identify opportunities to cultivate loyalty. Are there places where you can engage buyers on a deeper level or go above and beyond to create a satisfying customer experience? Building strong customer relationships takes effort, but it’s an investment that pays off in long-term returns.
