Social Media Checklist For Successful Content Marketing

Social Media Checklist For Successful Content Marketing

by | Aug 9, 2022 | Content Marketing

Maintaining your social media presence is essential in today’s online world. It can be a time-consuming task, but it’s worth it to build trust with consumers and create a consistent brand image.

You may be a business owner starting out on social media. Or, have been at it for a while and aren’t seeing the results you want. This daily checklist will help.

By following this social media cheat sheet, you’ll monitor your accounts effectively and become an asset to your customers.

Let’s get started.

Why Is Social Media Management Important?

With over 4.26 billion people on social media, it’s more important than ever to have a presence on various media platforms.

As a business owner, understanding how your brand is perceived online and what is said about it is essential. Your social media accounts represent your company’s values, so be consistent with the message you’re putting out there.

Consistency helps maintain the brand and builds trust with consumers. It’s also essential to have a strategy in place and understand your company and your target audience well. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to create content that resonates with your target audience.

If you don’t have a social media presence, you’re missing out on an opportunity to market your business for free. And if you’re not consistently active, you’re not building trust with potential customers.

The Basics of Social Media Management

Before we get into the daily checklist, let’s go over the basics of social media management.

First, you need to understand what social media platforms your target audience is using. Then, you need to create profiles on those platforms and complete your profile information.

Once your social media profiles are set up, it’s time to start posting content. When starting out, it’s important to post regularly so your audience knows you’re active and engaged. Then, as you grow your social media following, you can experiment with the frequency of your posts.

Remember, quality is better than quantity when it comes to social media. Posting one high-quality piece of content is better than several low-quality pieces.

Your audience will also engage more with interesting, informative, or entertaining content. So, ensure you’re creating appropriate content for your target audience that will resonate with them.

Lastly, you need to supervise your social media accounts. This means keeping an eye on your activity and engagement levels, as well as any negative feedback.

Now that we’ve gone over the basics, let’s get into the daily checklist.

Daily Social Media Checklist

This checklist will help you focus on the most important tasks related to social media management. By following this guide, you’ll be sure to stay on top of your content and build trust with your audience.

Here’s what you should do every day:

1. Review Your Analytics

The first thing you should do is review your social media analytics. This will provide you with a good overview of how your accounts are performing and where you can improve.

You should look at your overall engagement levels and the engagement levels for each post. This will help you identify which types of content have an impact on your audience and which ones don’t.

Lastly, look at your followership to get an idea of how well your social media marketing efforts are working. If you’re not seeing much growth, it may be time to adjust your strategy.

2. Share Engaging Content

Once you’ve reviewed your analytics, it’s time to start sharing content. Remember to mix up the content you share so your audience doesn’t get bored. Try to share a mix of text, images, videos, and infographics. And be sure to post both original and curated content.

Curation is important because it shows that you’re not just self-promoting all the time. It also helps you fill up your social media calendars if you’re struggling to come up with original content.

Just remember to provide credit to the original source when you share someone else’s content.

When you’re sharing content, be sure to use hashtags, @mentions, and geotags. This will help you reach a broader target audience and get more engagement.

If you don’t have time to post daily, you can schedule your social media content using a tool like Hootsuite. This will help you prepare your posts in advance so that you don’t have to worry about them every day.

You can also share user-generated content or repurpose content from other platforms. Just make sure the content you’re sharing is still relevant and engaging.

3. Respond to Comments and Messages

Another important task to do every day is to respond to comments and messages. This includes both positive and negative feedback.

Responding to positive comments is important and lets your audience know you appreciate their feedback. You should also reply to negative comments in a timely and professional manner. This will show your audience you’re committed to providing excellent customer service.

Use your responses as an opportunity to build relationships with your audience. Be friendly and helpful, and you’ll be sure to win over some fans.

And don’t forget to thank your fans and followers for their support! A simple “thank you” can go a long way.

4. Develop Relationships with Influencers

Finally, you should spend some time every day developing relationships with influencers. You can do this by commenting and liking their posts, sharing their content, and tagging them in your posts.

Try reaching out to influencers directly and introducing yourself. If they’re interested in what you have to say, they may be willing to collaborate with you on a future project.

Influencer marketing is an excellent way to reach a wider audience and get more engagement. And it can also help you build trust with your customers while diversifying your content.

The Bottom Line

By following this daily checklist, you’ll be sure to stay on top of your social media presence and build trust with your audience. Just remember to be consistent, engage with your followers, and monitor your analytics to see what’s working.

If you need help or are uncertain about how to do something, check out our other articles. In addition, we’ve got a ton of great resources to help you with your social media marketing.

We want to help you make effective content to add to your content calendar! Sign up to meet with Jay Vics on the Meet the Experts podcast. Click here to learn how you can get your name out there!

How a Content Calendar Can Improve Your Business

How a Content Calendar Can Improve Your Business

by | Jun 13, 2022 | Content Marketing

Alongside running a business, creating a consistent virtual storefront can be exhausting. The time and resources needed to develop successful content marketing can take up a big portion of your day. Fortunately, there is a solution! Creating a content calendar to implement your content strategy will benefit your approach to online marketing.

Nowadays, people are more likely than ever before to find your business through social media channels. Often, they’re experiencing your brand on social media before seeing your website. Think of your content marketing as a virtual storefront for your business.

What is a Content Calendar?

Your content includes images, videos, stories, and blogs, as well as any emails and ads that you may use. A content calendar organizes these into a calendar that tells you what to share and when. Finally, it shows you where you will share it for your business.

A typical content calendar will assess a two- to six-month overview of your content and develop a strategic implementation of the content to make your life easier. When it’s done right, a content calendar will become a central tool in your marketing tool kit.

Attracting customers is essential to successfully operating any local business. Whether you run a restaurant, pet shop, or novelty comic bookstore, a content calendar can revolutionize your content marketing. This will save you time, effort, money, and willpower.

It may feel like a content calendar is a lot of time and effort that you can’t invest at this moment. However, it actually makes content creation more straightforward while increasing the effectiveness of your outreach.

Okay, but what are the real benefits?

There are many benefits to local businesses creating and using content plans!

Square Up Your Marketing

Keeping track of your marketing strategy can be exhausting on top of your day-to-day. Emails, blogs, and social media posts must be cohesive to achieve positive results for your business. Squaring your marketing can help you:

A. Create content that is more consistent in quality and easier to produce.

B. More easily develop content that overlaps, saving you time on effective strategies.

Struggling to brainstorm ideas? Use SEMrush to spy on your competitors. The tool offers a wealth of other content-generating ideas. But, sometimes it's easiest to garner inspiration from other businesses in your niche.

Of course, don’t go and steal the content word for word. When you’re struggling with how you can engage the same audience, there’s nothing wrong with using the strategies that work for you!

Get Organized and Save Time

Set aside a couple days to plan your marketing content in bulk for the next 2-6 months. After you plan it out, make sure you’re following the same strategy. Make tweaks here & there when needed!

A content calendar gives you a better perspective on the overall strategy you have for your business. It also helps you implement it with an organized approach.

What can make this easier?

Automate Everything

So, content creation is now out of the way! Now, use any automation tool to schedule when your social media should be posted and where it should be posted. Automation is a saving grace, but it can’t happen when you're trying to film a reel every day to post at the last minute.

A good content calendar that has every detail planned beforehand makes it so much easier to consistently post good content. This way, the thinking is already done for you! Having one less job to do on a daily basis is a massive plus in making a local business thrive.

There are a number of automation tools. Hootsuite is one of these useful marketing tools that can automate across several platforms. It comes with a built-in monitoring feature that enables you to monitor stats across platforms. Social Pilot, ContentStudio and BuzzSumo are other great tools to consider using to automate your content planner.

Stay Consistent

You could create the most engaging and wow-worthy social media posts and content. But, posting irregularly lacks the impact your online marketing needs to be effective. Content marketing is most impactful when there is reliable engagement from a local business’s audience. Irregular posts create an out-of-sight, out-of-mind feeling for your audience. This can make your content less effective, even if it is good. A schedule changes this.

Track the Data

While it may not always be the first priority, using a content calendar allows you to easily track your data. Content should continuously improve on itself. When you can see what interests your audience, you can easily make tweaks to your strategy. Information and numbers remove the guesswork from content marketing and social media while you see results in your business.

What should my content calendar include?

Here’s a general guideline for figuring out what works the best for your business.

Give your content a once over and audit everything. You can see your audience, what campaigns and posts are your best performers, and where there are gaps in your content strategy.

Your next step is to define goals from the information you gathered. Do you want to produce new leads? Direct readers to your website? Grow your follower count? Setting out with a goal to work towards will help you brainstorm better content more efficiently and quickly.

Next, you are going to create a template for your content calendar. Google Sheets is a free and straightforward tool to use. You’ll decide on blog posts, social media platforms, and other forms of engagement that work well for your local business.

Don’t like the idea of using Google Sheets? HubSpot offers a free downloadable template for excel that will make planning your content planner smooth and breezy. Trello is a content planning platform that offers a free option to help you content plan.

It will be easier to develop a content calendar for one to two months to work out any bugs and keep on improving. With the important dates penciled in, fill in the gaps with a mixture of content that creates consistency for your small business.

Try to schedule evergreen and prior content that is still relevant to your business. Unleash your creativity and invest some time into building your virtual storefront!

Facebook’s (now Meta) resources section has free and accessible resources that lay out all the aspects of planning and setting up a great content calendar in spectacular details. Go check it out!

So, now what?

Utilizing the content calendar strategies and resources in this article you will save time, money, and effort. This will be a game-changer for local business owners who are doing content marketing in-house.

What are you waiting for? Instead of just shooting from the hip each week on social media – It's time to implement a content calendar to ensure you’re reaching and engaging with as much of your audience as you can.

Now that you are developing your content calendar, we want to help you make some great content to schedule! Feature your business in a unique way by meeting with Jay Vics of JVI Mobile on the Meet the Experts podcast. Get your name out there!

Flush our your content calendar with an interview on Meet the Experts with Jay Vics

10 Post Ideas to Boost Engagement on Facebook and Instagram

10 Post Ideas to Boost Engagement on Facebook and Instagram

by | Jun 3, 2022 | Content Marketing, Facebook

As a small business owner, you know running a business takes time, energy, and a lot of brain power. Coming up with engaging ideas to post on social media may not be as much of a priority as your sales or other essential business matters, but don’t worry! If you're looking for well-tested, tried-and-true ideas to boost engagement from your audience, you have come to the right place.

These 10 ideas will save you time and help you boost engagement with your social media audience.

Famous Quotes

Quotes are an easy way to boost social media engagement, especially Facebook and Instagram. You can use quotes from influential people or other people for your business (in-house or customers). You can create your own visually appealing posts with a photo editor, or use websites such as Canva, where you can access quote templates to easily download and share on social media.

User-Generated Content

Posting user-generated content (UGC) is a great way to show your audience how to use your product or service. UGC can be photos, videos, reviews, or anything created by users. This will feel more personal, which makes for great content! Social media users tend to trust the opinions shared by their peers more than those published by brands. Best of all, user-generated content is free!

Live video

Sharing a live video is an incredible way to boost engagement. The average organic reach of a Facebook live video is six times higher than that of a regular post. This makes sense, as it is similar to watching live TV.

Live streaming allows you to connect with your customers more personally. When potential customers tune in to your live sessions, it feels as if you're inviting them into your business to get to know them. Unlike a real conference hall, where just a few people can sit in the front row, live streaming allows anyone to sit in the front row.

Memes and GIFs

We all love a good meme or GIF, and these are great ways to bring humor into your social media marketing. If a meme has recently gone viral and feels relevant to your brand, you can use it in a post. These posts will lead you to join the conversation and enjoy what everyone's talking about — which can go viral too!

Here’s a great example of a comical post from HowTo.agency on Instagram:

Milestone Posts

Every business has milestones. Heck, every person has milestones. These personal or business achievements are worth celebrating. Milestone posts examples include the achievements of you or your company, such as anniversaries, new employees, new offices, etc. Pat yourself on the back and always let your fans know about it. This will also help humanize both your brand and yourself if you're the face of your company.

Educational guides

Educational guides are a great way to boost engagement on Facebook and Instagram. They build trust between your company and your followers and provide helpful information in a format that's easy to consume.

You can create educational guide posts for any topic that aligns with your brand. For example, if you run a bookkeeping service, you can share how to calculate the total value of inventory assets or how to manage the accounts payable process. If you sell fitness equipment, you can write about performing joint exercises using your products or share tips for achieving specific fitness goals.

Contests and giveaways

Contests and giveaways are very effective ways to boost engagement on social media. There are no rules that say you have to give away something expensive. Your goal is to engage them with your brand, so be creative with your contests!

Encourage the people who enter your contest to share it with their friends and family. This will help promote your business and reach more people interested in joining the contest who may have never heard of your business.

Questions to your customers and followers

Curious about what your followers want? Ask them! Encourage people to ask questions about your products or brand. You can even ask how their day is going! This is an easy way to get insight into what people think about your business and what content they want to see. A “Questions” post is also great for generating engagement because it's so simple to participate in. Creating a quiz is also a great way to boost engagement. People love the opportunity to post their opinions on just about anything!

Before and after posts

There are dozens of before and after posts that receive massive engagement on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms. Consider showing the benefits of your product or service through a before-and-after post. You don't have to be a cosmetic company to make this work. Businesses like carpet cleaners, landscapers, auto repair shops, and more can use this technique to show customers what their companies can do for them.

How-to videos (for example, how to use a cooking tool or garden tool)

You can post video tutorials of how to do just about anything! Even if the skill is something your followers already know how to do, they may be interested in learning a new approach or technique. Not sure which skills would be interesting? Ask your audience what they'd like to learn how to do. It's a wonderful way to start a conversation and find out more about their needs.

Check out our blog 10 Awesome Instagram Reels Ideas for Your Local Business for more on “how-to” a how-to video!

Final Thoughts

The key to creating great content is to be consistent. The goal is to develop a community around your brand while creating a personal connection with your audience. By creating engaging, genuine content on Facebook and Instagram, you can build a community of customers genuinely interested in what your business offers.

After you have incorporated these priceless ideas into your marketing, wouldn’t you like to share your knowledge in different ways? Feature your business in a new, unique way by meeting with Jay Vics of JVI Mobile on the Meet the Experts podcast. Get your name out there!

Looking for more help with your online marketing? We want to help! Contact us to learn more!

Contact Us | HowTo.Agency
www.howto.agency

7 Ways to Get More Customers with Content Marketing

7 Ways to Get More Customers with Content Marketing

by | May 31, 2022 | Content Marketing

In 2022, content will continue to be king! What does this mean for your small business? If you haven’t added content marketing into your mix yet, you need to start implementing smart content marketing strategies to get more customers and stay competitive.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach new customers and grow your business. This article will discuss seven ways to use content marketing to get more customers, clients, or patients in the coming year, and give you actionable tips so that you can get started right away!

1. Start Testing Your Website Content

To ensure that your website is converting as well as possible, you need to start A/B testing your website content. This strategy will help you to determine what content is working and what needs to be improved.

A/B testing compares two parts of content to see which one performs better. To do this, you will need to create two separate versions of your content and then track the results. You can test several factors including the headline, the call-to-action, and the images. Testing different elements can determine what works best for your business and customers.

If you’re not sure how to start A/B testing, there are a number of resources available online. Check out this guide from HubSpot for more information.

2. Show Your Face

Customers want to know that there are real people behind the business. One of the best ways to show customers you’re a real person is with video. If you’re not using video yet, you may be falling behind the curve. 86% of businesses are already using video for marketing.

Videos are a great way to involve your customers and make a human connection. You can use them to introduce your business and your team, give tours of your facilities, or even answer customer questions.

If you’re uncomfortable on camera, you can also use video to showcase your products or services. This is a great way to give clients a behind-the-scenes look at your business.

There are many ways that you can use video to market your business. For example, you can post videos on social media, your website, or even YouTube. Our blog on Instagram Reels can help inspire some quick, cool videos to boost your marketing!

3. Put Customer Testimonials to Work

Customer testimonials are a highly effective marketing practice. When potential customers see that other people have had success with your product or service, they’re more likely to try it themselves. This is called social proof, and you can never had too much of it.

If you don’t already have customer testimonials, start collecting them! You can include testimonials in email marketing campaigns, or on your website or social media.

When asking for testimonials, be sure to ask specific questions that give you the information you need. For example, you can ask customers how your product or service has helped them, their favorite features, or what they would tell their friends about your business.

Collecting and sharing customer testimonials can increase your sales and grow your business.

4. Get Personal

In 2022, customers are looking for more personalized content. They don’t want to think they’re just another number – they want to feel like you understand them and their needs, personally.

One way to personalize your content is to segment your audience and create distinctive pieces of content for different groups of people. You could create one piece of content for first-time visitors to your website and another for returning customers.

You can also use personalization to customize the user experience on your website. This might include displaying different content based on the user’s location or providing recommendations based on their past interactions with your site.

Personalizing your content can help you connect with your customers and build loyalty.

5. Use Interactive Content

Interactive content engages your audience and gets them involved in your content. Interactive content could be quizzes, surveys, polls, and calculators.

Interactive content will get people talking about your brand and is a great way to collect data about your customers.

If you’re not sure where to begin with interactive content, consider your target audience. What type of content would catch your buyers’ eye? What would help them decide on your product or service?

You can increase engagement and get people talking about your brand by creating interactive content.

6. Use Visuals

Visuals will be more critical now than ever. People are bombarded with content every day, and they’re always looking for ways to consume it more quickly. Using visuals on social media is a great way to stand out. People are more likely to stop scrolling and take notice of an image or video than a block of text.

Infographics are a great way to present data in an easy-to-understand format. They’re also shareable, which can help increase your reach. Infographics can make your content more enticing.

Canva and Vista Create(formerly Crello) is an excellent resource for creating visuals. They have a library of free templates that you can use to create infographics, social media posts, and more. Here’s an example of a visual for social media on HowTo.agency:

Graphic from HowTo.agency on Instagram

7. Focus on Local SEO

SEO is more vital than ever for small businesses. In 2022, small businesses will need to focus on SEO to be visible online.

Here are some things you can do to improve your SEO:

  • Find relevant, local keywords and create content around them
  • Optimize your website for mobile, as well as voice search
  • Take part in and write about local events and activities
  • Build backlinks to your website from authority websites like your local chamber of commerce, and local directories

If you’re a total beginner when it comes to SEO, check out this video below by SEM Rush for more information.

Now that you’re more “content” with content marketing…

Jump right in to creating your own! Content marketing is a powerful tool that you can use to expand your small business’s visibility online. Follow the content marketing tips above and start implementing content marketing strategies that will help you to reach new customers and grow your business.

We want to help you share what you want to show your customers! Click here to learn more about how you can get your name out there on Meet the Experts with Jay Vics of JVI Mobile.

Contact Us | HowTo.Agency
www.howto.agency

Looking for more help in finding the right content marketing for your business? We can help! Contact us today.

Content Marketing: Top 10 Tools of 2022

Content Marketing: Top 10 Tools of 2022

by | Jan 11, 2022 | Content Marketing

As a small business, it can be hard to designate time and energy to create content for your audience. But the fact is, one of the best ways to raise awareness about your business and grow your customer base is through content marketing.

The good news is you don’t need to be an expert in content marketing to produce engaging content. Today, there are plenty of content marketing tools available to help you achieve your goals. Ongoing content marketing will improve traffic on your website and social pages, converting more of your audience into active customers.

With tons of content marketing tools out there, we’ve done the heavy lifting to help identify the tools worth investing in. Here are the top 10 content marketing tools of 2021 to escalate your content to the next level and help you become the content connoisseur for your business:

1. VistaCreate

Free Plan & Paid Plan for $10/month

Let’s face it, not all of us are creatives. It can be tough to put together a balanced, good-looking graphic that communicates everything you need. VistaCreate is an excellent tool to help you build anything and everything visual: posters, flyers, banners, Instagram posts, and so much more can all be built on VistaCreate. Using the tool, you can choose from tons of templates geared towards your needs that can be easily personalized to your business using their intuitive customization tools.

VistaCreate is best for:

  • Social graphics, posters & advertisements
  • Individuals with little to no graphic design background
  • Creating animated graphics to be used on social, in emails, or on websites.

2. AnswerThePublic

Free Plan & Paid Plan for $79/month

Have you ever wondered what your customers are searching for? With AnswerThePublic, you no longer have to wonder – it will show you. Depending on your product or service, you can type in keywords and AnswerThePublic will provide a list of common questions consumers have asked around those keywords. Instead of shooting in the dark for content marketing ideas, AnswerThePublic shows you what consumers really want to hear about.

AnswerThePublic is best for:

  • Businesses that write blog posts and written content
  • Content ideas that will perform well in searches

3. Quora

Free Platform

Quora is another great tool to help you get into the minds of consumers and understand where their needs lie. Using the platform, people can post questions and answers to nearly any topic. With Quora, you can search specific products and services related to your business to find out the key questions consumers are asking. This will inform your future content and give you an opportunity to market your own business by answering questions through the platform.

Quora is best for:

  • Informing content topics for blogs and website content
  • Learning about consumer interests

4. Google Trends

Free Platform

Nailing down the right keywords that pinpoint what your customers are most interested in can feel like guesswork. Google Trends shows you how various keywords are performing in terms of consumer interest. Using the platform, you can plug in your keywords and see how many searches involving these keywords occur over time. This helps you to identify the keywords your customers are searching for the most and informs your future searches and content focuses.

Google Trends is best for:

  • Identifying keywords relevant to your business
  • Informing keyword searches for content ideas

5. Hemingway Editor

Free Platform

Hemingway Editor is your own personal in-house content editor. Using the platform, you can copy and paste your written content, where it will test for the usage of passive voice, poor phrasing, and overall readability. Hemingway Editor helps you tighten your content marketing and ensure it is relevant and engaging throughout. The platform ensures you are writing content that can be understood by your audience, and keep them coming back for more.

Hemingway Editor is best for:

  • Assisting in active voice writing
  • Ensuring content is readable

6. Linguix

Paid Plan only for the best value of $8/month paid annually (total $96).

We’re all bound to make a grammar mistake or two….or ten. No matter what, Linguix has got your back. The platform will scan your writing for any grammatical errors, helping to fix spelling and other mistakes throughout the piece to make it perfect. What’s more, if Linguix identifies sentences that can be rewritten, it will suggest edits using your voice so it feels authentic to your business.

Linguix is best for:

  • Content editing for well-written blog posts
  • Maintaining strong voice

7. Squirrly SEO (WordPress plug-in)

Free download to WordPress

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of those topics that feels like both everyone & no one is an expert in. However, using Squirrly, you can become an SEO expert and edit your content to yield the best search results. The tool will help you focus your content marketing on topics that interest your audience, and use data metrics to determine the best way to release your content for optimal viewership.

Squirrly is best for:

  • SEO for business website and content
  • Gathering analytics related to performance for future content

8. Google Analytics

Free

You should make an account on Google Analytics yesterday. Google Analytics provides you with all the key metrics necessary to understand how your website is performing overall. You can take a look at how many visits you have per day, which web pages are performing the best, and how long consumers stay on your site. What’s more, Google Analytics shows you key demographic information of your consumers to help you tailor your marketing efforts to be as effective as possible. It’s one of the best ways to gauge your business’s online performance and tailor your future marketing approaches.

Google Analytics is best for:

  • Understanding your business’s performance online
  • Learning more about your target audiences
business team working on content marketing

9. BuzzSumo

Free Plan & Paid Plans starting at $99/month

BuzzSumo is the ultimate end-to-end content marketing tool for your business needs. BuzzSumo helps you with keyword and content topic research, content optimization, and tracking to understand the full-circle performance of your content marketing efforts. Using the platform, you’re able to scour the internet in seconds to find what interests your key audiences the most.

BuzzSumo is best for:

  • Identifying content focuses & high-performing keywords
  • Analyzing how your targeted content performs

10. Jarvis.ai

Plans starting at $29/month

There’s nothing worse than staring at an empty document, struggling to write the perfect sentence. To help you put the words on the paper, use Jarvis.ai and their artificially intelligent writing wiz, Jarvis. Using this, you can both write and rewrite content to match any tone you’re looking for and ensure it’s optimized for your audiences.

Jarvis.ai is best for:

  • Content ideas
  • Using information provided by you to write blog posts, social media captions, headlines, etc.

When it comes to content marketing, leveraging these tools can help you produce optimized and engaging content that will reach your audience. Staying consistent and strategic with your content marketing will help your business stand out and grow exponentially.

Need help marketing or even creating your content? Book a time to chat with Jay of JVI Mobile Marketing here.

How to Encourage Repeat Customers… Again and Again!

How to Encourage Repeat Customers… Again and Again!

by | Nov 22, 2021 | Content Marketing, Reputation Management, SMS Marketing

The greatest superpower that small business owners have is great service. With incredible service comes repeat customers and referred customers who also become repeat customers!

By providing a delightful customer experience, people remember positive interactions with your small business and eventually return to your business again and again.

Here, we reveal important ways to generate repeat customers, so you can even possibly see familiar faces return next week!

Use personal forms of communication (as well as traditional)

These suggestions assume you are actively collecting emails & phone numbers to re-engage your customers with future updates, promotions & news about your business.

Email is still the preferred medium for customer communication. Functionally, it works great. You can let customers know about your most recent deals, promotions, and new products – but at the risk of being cold. You might be coming off disconnected and formal.

SMS marketing, (also known as text marketing) can prove to be a powerhouse for customer engagement, assuming they have opted-in for it. With an open rate of nearly 99% SMS messaging puts your business message right where your customer is looking all the time – their phone.

repeat customers easily get bought back through SMS marketing

Don’t forget to add personalization to your campaigns. You want your customers to know they are thought about. It’s as simple as selecting the ‘First Name’ field into your outgoing messages and using their first name instead of just “Hey” or “Hello” “Hi”

… And can make an immediate good impression.

Remember the (repeat) customers

You can personalize the experience for your customer simply by remembering small details about them. For example, if they mentioned they have children or grandchildren – ask about how they are doing during their next visit. Are they dog lovers? Maybe ask them how their dog is doing. This is such a simple thing to do, but it makes a huge difference. Moments like these make customers want to return to your business.

Reach out to customers you haven’t heard from in a while

There are also plenty of customers who purchase from you once or twice (almost a repeat customer) then you never hear from them again. Life gets in the way! To re-capture these customers, find out who has gone quiet and reach out to them with a re-engagement offer. Send them a friendly email or text to remind them that you care and want to serve them more of what they came for in the first place.

Remember: You should never prioritize acquiring new customers over satisfying existing ones.

Why?

It can cost up to 5x more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. Don’t assume that your existing customer base is already loyal to your brand and doesn’t need to be treated with the same fantastic service they’ve come to know and love. No matter if they’re a brand new or long-term customer you need to give them a reason to come back

Customer churn is a silent killer of small businesses. (That is, how many customers use your business once and never return.) When you incentivize old customers to come back with great service, good offers, and strong rewards for being repeat customers, you’ll unlock an immense force for business growth.

Respond fast!

Being there for a customer when they need you is imperative to whether or not they become a repeat buyer. 90% of customers rate an immediate response (30 minutes or less) as important or very important to their questions and inquiries. (per Hubspot).

Gone are the days of “Call us for more details…” Your customers will bombard you with questions and comments from a variety of channels nowadays. Phone, email, website forms & chat, social media platforms & more!

In order to achieve the illusion of an all-seeing, spotless customer experience, your staff needs to be present on these platforms at all times. But don’t worry, that’s what Social Media Dashboards like Buffer and Agora Pulse are for. You can handle all communication & engagement for all of your social media platforms through them.

Customer Loyalty Programs = Gold Mines

Undoubtedly the most effective way to generate repeat customers for your small business is an attractive customer loyalty program. The right loyalty program can skyrocket your sales so make sure you do your research ahead of time and choose a program that works best for your business. Examples of a high-performing loyalty program include:

Offer First-Time Purchase Discounts to Customers

Present Offers in Exchange for ‘Reward Points’

Celebrate Customer Birthdays with Discounts/Coupons

Give Out Rewards for Referrals

Using a CRM to Make This All Possible

Wait…What’s a CRM?

CRM is short for ‘customer relationship management’ software and it’s a tool businesses use to manage potential and existing customers. Some initial benefits include:

  • Simplifying your lead management process (never lose out on a potential sale by remembering every encounter!)
  • Getting data-driven insights about your customer base (what they like, dislike, and what their purchasing habits are.)
  • Making your sales process more efficient (keep on top of customers who just need a little push to buy.)
  • Providing a better customer experience (by providing news, updates, and even support in real-time from your CRM.)
  • Increasing your productivity as a small business owner (saving you money & time.)

Most reputable & effective CRM software will only set you back between $50-200 per month. Although there are free alternatives as well as higher-priced options as well. Ultimately, a CRM is the backbone of the modern digital business, and it’s the secret recipe for establishing a network of repeat customers.

Here are 5 ways in which a CRM could help your small business generate repeat customers:

  1. Circling back: a CRM will keep your customers in the loop! If you’re savvy enough to have the next few months planned out with sales and promotions, you can set up automatic campaigns (email & SMS) that inform your customers on exact dates about your deals.
  2. Valuing the new customers: with customer data being tracked in a CRM, at the click of a button you can see what products are hot in the past week, month or year and keep track of individual customers’ specific buying habits.
  3. Email marketing campaigns: you can use a CRM to send out bulk emails to customers who have opted in to your communication, and most reputable CRM programs will allow you to personalize these campaigns (addressing them by their first name, sending out a discount on their birthday, etc.)
woman using laptop while having a snack and planning day

Exceptional customer service is the key to repeat customers.

I can’t be more serious when I say that customer service is imperative to the survival and upkeep of your business, and it’s likely the single most important element to achieving repeat customers.

Your ability to connect with customers (beyond their point of purchase – meaning when they no longer matter financially, you need to treat them like they’re family) demonstrates your dedication to their needs and goals as customers.

This is how you earn a customer’s business, repeatedly time & time again. And referrals too!

In Conclusion

No small business has ever failed because they have too many repeat customers. Invest in a CRM to boost your small business this year and pair that with a loyalty program. Once you have everything set up, you will have the data you need to re-engage old customers and treat your repeat customers like royalty – this is the only formula for success you will ever need.

At JVI mobile, we have the perfect CRM tools to help your business grow! Fill the form out below to learn more.

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