When it comes to planning your marketing strategies and budget, a vast majority of efforts will go towards raising brand awareness to attract new clients.
In an industry as competitive as the IT industry, however, this could be counterproductive.
We aren’t saying that absolutely none of your budget should go on attracting new clients, but retaining clients should not be an afterthought.
With so many companies competing within your industry, you need to make sure that customers can see the value in choosing you over your competitors time and time again.
After all, what will make someone return and buy from you if you aren’t actively marketing yourself towards them, reminding them of why they chose you in the first place?
The good news is that customer retention isn’t as difficult as you might think once you know how to do it, and what to focus on. Here are our top marketing tips aimed at customer retention to help you.
Increase Your Online Activity And Presence
The easiest way to retain clients is to provide them with constant reminders of your brand, and a good way to do that is by increasing your online activity to do so.
According to Digital Authority Partners, one of the best way to make sure that you are increasing your online presence and raising brand awareness is to engage with people in your field.
This has a dual purpose, as it may also bring in new clients, as well as reminding old clients who are checking out your competitors of your existence.
That simple reminder can be extremely powerful, and it doesn’t cost you much time to do, so it’s completely worth it.
Personalize Your Customer Service – Offer The Human Touch
Customer service is an extremely important aspect to any field, but in an industry like IT, adding the personal touch can make all the difference.
It’s tempting for tech companies to come across as robotic, providing customers with information without any human feeling to their responses.
This can feel cold, and prevent someone from returning to your brand over and over again.
Instead, identify where your customers are frequenting, like Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter, and make sure that you have people on hand to answer any queries or compliments with a human response.
This may mean thanking people, or wishing them good luck if they’ve had success with something they’ve purchased from you, instead of ignoring them.
Invest In Email Marketing
Some people may think that email marketing is a thing of the past, but this isn’t necessarily the case.
In fact, according to one study, email marketing in the IT company generates $38 for every $1 spent. This works out as a 3800 percent ROI.
This is why you should definitely use email marketing to nurture prospects, generate more sales and further your relationships with existing clients.
You can do this by creating engaging emails that aren’t completely sales-focused and offer value to your customers, with attractive subject lines and follow up emails where necessary.
Create Deals For People Who Have Previously Used Your Services
One way to retain customers as an IT company in a highly competitive industry is to offer incentives that make it difficult for people to not make a purchase, even if there had been no perceived need before.
You could use a tactic like including a 10% off your next order coupon with the finalisation of their first order.
Alternatively, why not combine it with email marketing and send out a code to your email list every few months, or a couple of times a year, reminding them of your company’s existence.
Align Your Content Marketing With Sales Goals
One of the most effective B2B marketing strategies is aligning the genuinely helpful content you’re publishing as part of your content marketing strategy with your sales goal.
You can use this as a funnel, by directing people to your services and increasing their awareness of your brand with the more content they read.
Not only will this attract impulse purchases, and sway people away from competitors if they have already made a purchase with you, but it will also present solutions for problems your clients may not have necessarily have.
Say you had written a how to guide on installing a certain piece of technology onto your computer. If someone comes along and reads this, you could also link them to your services page, where you could be offering to download this software for them in exchange for a fee.
These discrete sales tactics are great as they don’t come across as sales-heavy, which can put a lot of potential B2B buyers off, while still retaining customers and making more sales. Don’t have time to create original and compelling content on your own? Then check out this list of consulting companies who have been creating content for clients for over a decade.
Create Social Media Advertisement Funnels
Facebook and Instagram in particular are incredibly important for marketing to current customers of your business.
Not only do both platforms have billions of monthly users, but they also have advertisement funnels that allow you to directly target your advertisement towards those who have previously interacted with your advertisements.
By targeting your ads towards these people, you have more chances of coming across those who have already purchased who may be looking to repurchase future services from you.
The good news is that social media advertisement funnels drive immediate results that can be easily measured, helping you to understand extremely quickly what is and isn’t working so you can make changes accordingly.
Upload Original Tutorial Videos On Your Website And Social Media
Another effective way of marketing your IT company is to upload genuinely helpful tutorial videos to your website and social media channels.
It’s recommended that you keep these between 2 or 3 minutes long and pack them full of useful information in a way that can be easily digested by your target audience.
This is a strategy that will help retain customers as it shows that you are continuing to value them, and offer them support in the areas that they need it.
It will also help you to retain new customers as they will see the value that you can offer them.
Summary
The truth is, factoring customer retention strategies into your IT marketing strategy is extremely important, but it doesn’t have to be difficult.
In fact, many of your existing strategies, like content marketing and video content, can be slightly tweaked in order to retain customers as well as attract new ones.
Remember, retaining customers is essential for growth of your business, which is something every IT company wants, so don’t leave your current customers as an afterthought in your next marketing strategy plan!
