Marketing is the craft of collecting people’s attention and holding it as long as possible. Most of the marketing managers totally miss the last part of the definition and concentrate on grabbing the customer’s attention for a short time. Building brand loyalty, interacting with customers over a long time, collecting relevant data – successful completion of these tasks separates an amateur marketing professional and the real pros.

 Here are 4 ways to increase customer retention with a marketing campaign.

• Ask for feedback. It is not easy to have a successful business without getting tips on its development – especially tips from your own clients. In your interactions with the customers, ALWAYS make sure to include the feedback section. You can place it in the weekly emails that you sent out, in letter correspondence or just person to person. Believe me, most of the customers like to be asked for their opinion – it indicates the value that business places on its client’s satisfaction.

• Experiment with customer retention programs. Multiple strategies can be used to keep customer retention over a long time. In my own experience, most of the customers leave the business because they feel like it forgets about them. To avoid that you can create a customer reward program, offer freebies from time to time, create exclusive promotions for your loyal clients or organize a special event for them. There are multiple strategies that can be applied, so you need to tailor them for your area of operation.

• Build trusting relationships. Your brand must be in the customer’s mind. It can be a funny punchline that the customer saw in your weekly email, a piece of advice that you gave over social network interaction or a greatly done service. The focus is to keep the customer in the loop with media, internet communication or personal interaction on-site or during online shopping. It is impossible to cover 100% of this spectrum but it does raise the chances for at least a couple of these ways of interacting to be profitable for your business.

• Surprise! Nothing is more exciting than a carefully planned and expertly applied sale offer. Some customers love receiving those, others are excited by receiving a “Happy Birthday” card from a business. Think of what will make your customer REALLY REMEMBER your brand – a souvenir, a personal call, a nice “thank you” letter or else.

Need help working these into your marketing campaign? Click below.