6 Ways To Grow Your Customer Base in Competitive Markets
Author: Jack Metallinos
Author Bio:
I’m Jack Metallinos, founder of All Occasions Tents. At 59 years old, I bring a lifetime of entrepreneurial experience and a deep passion for serving my community. My business journey started at just 19, selling fruit on the roadsides of Marin County, California. That early start taught me the value of hard work, customer service, and building lasting relationships. Over the years, I’ve grown from those humble beginnings into running a successful tent rental business that makes our jobs stand out from the competition. Whether it’s a warehouse tent, restaurant patio cover or just a community gathering, I take pride in providing reliable service, quality tent rentals, and a personal touch for every customer.
Some industries are harder to break into than others, but there are certain universal principles that will help any business improve their customer retention rates. Truly successful brands must operate in a way that keeps their customers coming back for more, and this kind of invaluable customer loyalty must be rewarded. Listed below are six key ways that any business can use to grow their customer base within competitive markets.
1. Stand Out In Your Market
The first and most important way to thrive in a competitive market is to find some way to stand out. Every business needs a unique angle that will meet a need not already being met by major competitors. Such niches can range from offering new products to making certain products with exceptional quality or even selling the same products offered by competitors but for much lower prices.
Once you have chosen a specific angle to focus on, you then need to build your branding around it. For example, a company that offers the same product as their competitors but using a significantly more sustainable process and materials could build a clear and cohesive brand around the fact that they are environmentally conscious. They could add green labels to their products and emphasize buzz words related to nature and sustainability.
With a unique angle and strong branding built around it, you can then let it be known in your target industry that you are providing something that your competitors cannot. Develop a full advertising campaign or let news spread via word-of-mouth as you increase your number of happy customers.
2. Deliver Quality and Speed
The second-best thing you can do is deliver quality products and/or services in a timely manner. The most unique and effective branding will only get you so far, but a high-quality product will keep your customer retention rates high. Consistency is also key here, for loyal customers want to be sure that they can get quality from you each and every time that they make a purchase from your brand.
If you offer any kind of service or bulk orders, you also need to meet any deadlines that you promise your clients. Being late on a deadline, especially on any kind of regular basis, will scare away customers with ease. To help make sure you meet these deadlines, you should promise only what you and your team can deliver. Keep your estimates competitive but accurate.
Once you have consistently made high-quality products and kept to your deadlines, you should put somewhere on your site evidence of your work. Provide clear case studies and/or reviews that show you have met or even exceeded your customer’s expectations enough that new potential customers will want to make their own purchases.
3. Prioritize Great Customer Service
If you want to grow and maintain your customer base, you need to offer exceptional and personalized customer service. Train your employees so that they treat every customer or client with respect and so that they have everything they need to efficiently meet the customer’s needs. Design your business so that customers are treated like human beings instead of just a means to make money.
When you’re planning your customer service model, emphasize making sure that customers are seen and heard. That means employees noticing anyone who needs help and actively listening when they are told about any issues with your brand’s products or services. Take quick action and solve issues in a comprehensive way instead of sticking on a band-aid solution.
Part of providing great customer service is handling complaints and problems well. If there was a legitimate mistake on your end, or maybe even if there wasn’t, it is polite to offer the customer a discount for their trouble. Refunds should also be standard practice for handling more major errors even though they will cost your business time and money.
4. Reward Customer Loyalty
After you’ve acquired your first regular customers, you should reward them for their loyalty. There are likely quite a few competitors they could easily switch to in your market, but your loyal customers choose to keep patronizing your business. Demonstrating gratitude for that will only further encourage their loyalty.
The most basic way to reward customer loyalty is to establish some kind of reward system. A very inexpensive and informal way to do this is to give them a particular discount or free item once they have visited your business a certain number of times or purchased a certain amount of product. Add a personalized touch by not increasing prices over the years for repetitive clients or giving unique gifts (e.g. wine cases) to show your appreciation.
Part of your customer loyalty should be taking special care of your largest and most regular customers/clients. These regular clients are the backbone of any business, so make sure that they feel seen, heard, and appreciated even while making time for everyone else. The same principle applies to any strategic partnerships that are key to your brand.
5. Ask for Feedback
A fifth way to grow your customer base is to ask for feedback. You can’t know what customers want unless you find some way to ask them. Actively talk to your customer base and perhaps even send out surveys to them so that you can understand what your company is doing right as well as areas of improvement.
Make sure that you take action on any kind of feedback that you receive. For example, a tent rental company could make it known that they have packages specifically for long term rentals with semi-permanent structures after a customer kindly lets them know that he did not realize that was something the business offered until the quote call.
6. Encourage Word-of-Mouth Advertising
Finally, you need to encourage word-of-mouth advertising. There are few better ways to ensure your customer base grows than by finding a means to get your current customers to bring in new ones. You can even offer some kind of promotion where customers can enter a raffle or receive a special discount for posting online about your business and tagging the official brand account. Anything that gets the name of your business out there in a positive way helps.
For example, a woman who is worried about throwing her wedding during a period of the year that might be chillier than normal could be told by a friend that she used a company she loved that mentioned a heated tent rental option when she was asking for a quote. Said friend could even text or DM over a link to the tent rental company she used, doing essentially all of the advertising for them.
Summary
Growing your customer base is central to any successful business regardless of industry, size, or age. The six key principles that will help you do just that are standing out in a market-specific way, delivering quality and speed, prioritizing great customer service, rewarding loyal customers, asking for feedback, and encouraging word-of-mouth advertising. Any business that can manage these factors at once will undoubtedly see organic and exponential growth in their customer base.
