5 Easy Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back

Sherry —The Biz Starter Author

Posted On Feb 05, 2023 |

Did you know that existing customers are over 65% more likely to buy from you and cost 7x less than acquiring new customers?

The secret to repeat sales is to create a strong customer onboarding strategy. Build strong relationships with your customers, and they will go from one-time purchasers to repeat sales. This is why the need for entrepreneurs, especially new entrepreneurs, to focus on customer onboarding is essential.

The number one goal for any business is to make sales to stay in business. The second goal should be to get repeat sales from those same customers. Here are the top 5 things you need to know about leveraging customer onboarding to get repeat sales.

1. Make it About The Customer

Onboarding your new customer is not about your product. It’s about your customer. The goal is to show your appreciation and walk them through how to get the total value from your product. You can build a strong bond with your customers by creating two-way communication opportunities to assess whether or not your product works for them. This shows you care and you are reliable, and it helps you get repeat sales.

2. Customer Onboarding Strategy = Repeat Sales

Customer onboarding has a direct connection to customer retention and repeat sales. The goal of onboarding is to teach the user how to get the most value out of the product. If they can get the full benefits, they’ll be satisfied and come back to you for more products and services. This also means that the product lived up to your marketing message, which shows you delivered the value you promised.

A poor customer onboarding process can hurt your business and its customer retention. Most new entrepreneurs are so focused on bringing in new business that their existing customers are neglected. The best way to overcome this is to get started today by creating a plan that will confront these challenges so your customers can get the most out of your products, build customer support, and you can get repeat sales.

3. Start With the Customer

The best place to start is to envision your customer’s position after they purchase your product or service. Customer onboarding starts here. Carefully think about all you can do to provide more value and help your buyers get the most out of your products and services. Don’t leave them hanging or feeling abandoned.

Try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about the type of support you would want. What questions you would have? How you would want to feel after purchasing the product? What can you do to ensure they get the most out of the product?

Now think about how many touchpoints you’ll have with your customer. For example, determine how many days, weeks, and months following their purchase and the ways you can help them at each point. Build a strategic plan outlining where you communicate with them regularly and offer them the help they need at each of these touch points.

4. Create a Seamless Customer Onboarding Plan

Here are three key elements to include in your customer onboarding strategy to optimize repeat sales:

➡️Caring Communication. The onboarding process begins with communication. First, thank them and show that you care about them and their experience purchasing from you. Two-way communication involves joining your customer’s journey, learning about them, and giving them the additional help they need. This means your onboarding strategy should be based on customer feedback and information from your customers, including multiple points of direct communication.

➡️Consistency. Your customer’s onboarding experience should be seamless and consistent for every customer. This builds trust and ensures the customer they made a good choice purchasing your product/service and will continue receiving the value they expect from you.

➡️Goodies for More Wins. The customer experience should be packed with milestones where they experience small wins. Include gradual experiences that build up as your customer gets even more benefits from the product. To learn more about this, my free blueprint to retain customers and get repeat sales.

5. Optimize Repeat Sales & Overcome Challenges

To help your customer receive the benefits you promised in your marketing, customer onboarding must include an excellent post-purchase experience. When your customer onboarding is correctly done, it leads to customer retention, repeat sales, and a lifetime value for your customers.

The truth is that not every entrepreneur does customer onboarding well. To help you avoid any pitfalls, here are four challenges to overcome.

🟥Avoid Post-Sale Abandonment

Preventing your customers from leaving you right after the sale is the biggest challenge to customer onboarding. The goal is to prevent the customer from disappearing because perhaps they bought an item that didn’t meet their expectations. A solid customer onboarding strategy can help you resolve this issue and get your customer back on board after you address their concerns.

Be proactive and contact your customer right after the purchase. You should connect with them and ensure they can set up and use your product correctly. Repeat the benefits of your product/service and offer more support they may need to enjoy the benefits of your offers. This is a sweet spot where many entrepreneurs drop the ball. Often, customers need additional help or inquire about other products and services you have, creating the conversation about repeat sales.

🟥Determine Where Customers Struggle

To have a successful customer onboarding, you must understand where the customer is struggling with using your product/service. You’ll need to understand this to be able to help them.

One way to avoid this is to create multiple customer touchpoints. This is when you communicate directly with them. You can better learn their needs this way.

For example, most of the entrepreneur programs I sell have several touchpoints with the customer and a program progress call where my customers can talk to me one-on-one.

🟥Know Your Product/Service

To deliver customer onboarding that results in repeat sales, you must know your offers and be able to communicate your knowledge of your products to your customers.

The goal is to give the information the customer needs at the right time they need it to get all the benefits of your products. Giving too much information will overwhelm your customer. This is why it’s important to map out multiple touchpoints with your customer after they purchase from you.

💡Pro Tip: Create a large archive of educational content in different formats and make it easily accessible to your customer.

You should also create an archive of educational content and resources in various formats that your customers can access. Organize it so that information is easy to find and that your customers know about it.

🟥Overcome Customer Support Issues

One major challenge is that you may have too many support issues and can’t keep up. If your customers constantly contact you for support, you’re not teaching them how to use your products well enough.

Look at the requests and try to find common root causes. You may find that one particular issue is causing all these inquiries. You can then focus more on that issue in your onboarding. Better education and more tutorials will reduce inquiries.

Customer onboarding is all about the customer’s experience, adding more value, and communication, so optimizing it in small ways makes a huge difference in turning one-time customers into repeat business. 

How do you do this? Cultivate a strong knowledge of your audience, their needs, and some planning. Download this free Customer Onboarding Report to get your blueprint to retain customers and get repeat sales.

Categories: Biz Growth, Entrepreneur Tips