Customer Database Business Advice

Advice for your business – customer database

In an ideal world your customer would walk into your business, buy a product/service, and walk out. They would then tell all their friends about how fabulous your business is and come back for repeat purchases along with all their friends! This is how it works right? Wrong. Gone are the days of face to face contact keeping customers loyal. In an age of competing prices, quality and service who can blame them? The customer is king and as soon as you as a business person recognise this and treat them this way, your business is destined for greatness.

Encouraging Loyalty
Why do you think all the major retailers have introduced the “club card” and run special offers and promotions? It’s not solely because they want to reward their customer, that’s for sure. It is so that they can encourage the customer to establish a habit of shopping with them. It is an ingenious and successful ploy to foster customer loyalty.

Employ this principle in your Business
You too can promote loyalty by valuing your customer. Put yourself in the customers’ shoes. What is drawing them to shop with you in the first place? Why would they come back again? Also consider the negatives. Why would they shop with the competition? Is your customer service up to scratch? Use this feedback and apply it to your business. If you can see why customers come back to shop with you then make sure to keep doing as you are. If you can see why they would shop with your competitor make changes to your business and fast!

Creating a Database
There is no point in saying “I have somewhere in the region of 4500 regular customers”. You need to be sure. Every business should have a customer database. The main reason being that you can have regular and direct contact with your customer if you know who they are! If you decide to offer them a loyalty card or a special discount you can easily send them a letter or an email to tell them!

Data Collection Technology
Times are moving on and there is lots of software available to gather customer data. You can even build a data collection mechanism into your website to enable you to follow up on leads from people who were browsing and entered their information. Data is so valuable nowadays and collection systems are so widely available, it would be a sin not to have a customer database.

Step One – Customer Database
Remember one of the first steps to take in marketing your business is to establish your customer database. If you would like a marketing consultation with Ace Marketing contact us on www.acemarketing.ie or call 058 48826. Your first consultation is FREE if your business decides to work with Ace Marketing within one month of your consultation.