5 Ways to Expand Your Client Base
Dec 24th, 2010 by thanate
Crucial to the success and longevity of the life of any business, is the ability for that business to build and expand its client base. It is not enough to just want and hope for a solid client base that will grow and guarantee the achievement of a healthy bottom line. To the contrary, businesses must actively strategise to build their client base. Fortunately, there are five fundamental tips that can be followed to ensure that your business enjoys success through an extensive base of clients.
#1: Know and Understand Your Customers
Do not just assume that you know what your customers are like and what they want or need. Every time a product is designed or developed, the information that your customers will need and be interested in should be prioritised. This means that the ways that your clients will perceive your message should be considered carefully.
Everything that you do should be wholly and solely focused on your clients. This means that every leaflet, communication and product needs to be customer centred.
Why prioritise your clients and customers? The answer is simple. Behaving in this way communicates to customers that you care about them, as well as their opinions, wants and needs. In an environment where there is such incredible competition for the business and loyalty of clients, any marketing, advertising and communication that you have with clients must facilitate your business speaking directly to them.
#2: Seek Opinion and Feedback
No business can accurately deduce their clients’ opinion of them unless they have undertaken relevant research to ascertain client perceptions. Businesses need to capitalise on the useful intelligence that can be garnered from asking customers to comment on their experiences and this can often be done in some simple and ways that require minimal investment of time, labour and cost.
Talk to your clients when they are directly dealing with your business. If helpful, you could even guide your staff with some leading questions that they can ask clients. Alternatively (or additionally), direct mail or online feedback forms can support clients to provide feedback and this can be done anonymously if desired.
Ultimately, the use of survey tools and other strategies to learn the opinions of clients in relation to your business, needs to explore what it is that your clients like about your business and think you are doing well, as well as any areas they are less satisfied with and believe could be improved.
#3: Understand Who You Are Targeting
Increased intelligence of your clients, their needs and their perceptions of your business, can be beneficial in determining who you will target in the future and what your approach will be. Understanding the demographic features of your target market and what motivates them is important in developing and promoting products of different types.
Here though, it is important to remember that “Rome was not built in a day”. Research to inform the types of products and services that the client base is most interested in is almost always beneficial and it is also important to consider that it can take time to reach a particular target market. Therefore, reasonable timeframes to be built into plans and strategies.
#4: Build Relationships with New and Existing Customers
As previously mentioned, it is essential to understand and appreciate your customers. Valuing your customers is much more than greeting them with a smile, placing purchased products in paper bags or other shopping bags, wishing them a good day and ushering them out of your store. Be genuine in asking both new and existing clients about their experiences and do not treat their feedback in a tokenistic or selective manner; there is much to be learnt from the comments offered by all.
If they provide you with feedback, customers will understandably want to see that their contributions have been considered and, very often, acted upon. The real goal should be that your customers think of your business as being like a family to them – something that they trust and return to.
Be prompt in responding to customer concerns, requests and needs. Poor customer service and failing to value clients is one of the gravest mistakes that any business can make.
#5: Collaboration
Increasingly, many businesses are finding that there is benefit in partnering with other companies to appeal to new clients. Of course, the suggestion is not to collaborate with a business that is a competitor, but to develop a reciprocal relationship with a business that can help to increase your client base and with whom you can share your own client base.
The strategies provided in this article serve as a platform for businesses of all types to build and expand their client base. Many of these strategies can be classified as fundamental quality customer service and all businesses should strive to learn from, respond to and respect the loyalty and feedback of their clients.
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