It can be challenging to maintain a customer for a time period of over 6 to 8 months if you don’t have a plan established. Follow these tips to retain clients.
1. Have an accurate view of customer lifetime value
If you genuinely want to get the utmost out of acquiring new customers, you should invest in tracking the customer lifetime value and comparing it to the money spent on getting new customers.
2. Have the proper KPIs and reports in place
You’ll still require a compilation of your acquisition and retention promotions, but it’s also essential to have individualized reports and KPIs. It is paramount to secure new customers at a calculated price for each one who is gained.
You’ll need to track figures such as the number of new customers, the expense for each new customer, and the rate at which new customers are converted. The goal of retention is to maximize the number of repeat customers, so it’s important to measure metrics like impression share, total number of sales, cost of each sale, rate at which customers make purchases, and the average order value.
3. Use the features that Google Analytics offers
Google Analytics has some great features and reports that you can easily leverage:
- User ID: Assign a unique user ID to website visitors that create an account. This will make sure that a maximum of sessions and customer journeys are unified so that you have the most correct data possible in Google Analytics. The user ID feature will also allow you to do some good analysis of the cross-device behavior of your existing customers.
- Cohort Analysis: This report is awesome. It allows you to track the cohorts of newly acquired customers so that you can check whether they’re doing repeat purchases as expected.
4. Expect repeat purchases to happen on other channels
Do not err by focusing solely on the credit to the channel itself.
Subsequent purchases may arise naturally or deliberately, but they remain part of the return on investment (ROI) of the initial avenue that acquired the new client. You must take a comprehensive approach, analyzing your overall success across all channels.
5. Don’t think the juice isn’t worth the squeeze
It is not guaranteed that your audiences will be accurate due to the unreliability of cookies. The correlation of customer match demographics is far from ideal. It is still worth the effort to keep acquisition efforts separate from retention efforts.
If your digital campaigns and marketing funnels are tailored to fit customers’ actual choices, your performance will become better. Having accurate information and key performance indicators in place will give you the ability to experiment with new tactics and marketing mediums.
For example, a promotional program that lacked in attracting new customers may still be successful when it comes to increasing the frequency of customers returning.
6. Attribute appropriate value to branded campaigns in paid search
Most businesses do not experience a significant increase in conversions from branded search campaigns. The exceptions are:
When other businesses are attempting to buy your company name in advertising and when your company isn’t achieving a high ranking in organic search results for your brand name.
For other companies, customized search campaigns simply capture conversions that would have been accomplished through organic or direct means. So, attribute value to branded campaigns accordingly. In the majority of cases, it is okay to disregard the conversions they bring in completely.
7. Don’t use the same conversion for both acquisition and retention campaigns
Think about how customers act and adjust your conversion settings properly. It is usually necessary to make a copy of your hard drive, but with altered conversion parameters.
An illustration of this would be in the process of buying something, one should not be counted multiple times as a customer since it is only possible to be a customer once.
In order to get a more precise view of your performance, you should take into account multiple conversions for retention, as customers can make multiple repeat purchases.
Examine the Time Lag report in Google Analytics and the Path Metrics report in Google Ads to identify the appropriate window of time for conversion.
It is typical to use a attribution model that primarily relies on the first click for acquisition purposes and the last click for retention actions.
If you observe that customers take a while to get to their first major purchase, you should think about optimizing your acquisition activities focusing on a more relevant minor conversion instead of the hard conversion.
8. Leverage everything that you have to identify and target your client audience in the retention campaigns
Cookie-based audiences: Users that performed a hard conversion. Users that visited the “customer zone” pages, etc.
Due to the fact that tracking cookies are no longer in use (more information can be found in our article discussing the outdating of cookies and how this correlates with the use of CRM data), customer match audiences have now become substantially more relevant.
Obtain the email address and/or phone number that customers used when they initially bought something. At first, a manual CSV upload should suffice. At a later stage, the process of uploading can be done hands-free through the utilization of the Google Ads API or external applications such as Zapier.
9. Exclude client audiences from your acquisition campaigns
If you do not deliberately stop clients from seeing the acquisition campaigns, the campaigns may still show up for searches done by customers when the ad rank is higher in those acquisition campaigns.
When using smart bidding, the algorithm will try to improve towards more successful signals and target groups. The outcome should be that the client audience will perform better, making them favoured by the algorithm.
10. Use different portfolio bidding strategies for acquisition and for retention
The objective of acquisition strategies is typically to maximize the amount of new customers while also keeping costs at a maximum number per customer gained (CAC). Therefore, setting a target cost-per-action for a portfolio is an intelligent choice. You shouldn’t be obsessing over the return on investment when it comes to acquisition.
It’s acceptable not to achieve a net profit on the initial shopper, so long as that customer makes ancillary purchases and therefore generates a profitable return on investment.
The relevance of being assertive in your retention plans is evident here. You’re targeting and bidding on your existing customers, so you should be aggressive for several reasons:
The normal size of people in the audience is small (exclusive of large companies) so the money necessary is also limited. The amount of individuals that convert to followers from the audience is very high (you should expect to notice a rate of up to 40%), thus allowing you to spend more money on these clicks.
You don’t want to chance having your current customers go to a rival because you weren’t visible when they used a common search term. You have already invested in acquiring this customer, so it would be more expensive if they went to one of your competitors.
This is why our retention strategy begins with an offer that is not overly careful. One way to get started on a target search impression share in search is to use a high bid or an aggressive manual bid.
Try out a value-based bidding approach to check if you should be less competitive in the bids you enter, or if you should be more selective about the auctions you decide to take part in.
11. Do more than what is expected
Always deliver more than what your clients expect. If you are getting paid to construct an ongoing search campaign, it would be beneficial to either take part in other operations or, at the least, provide advice about what those activities entail.
If you’re finding yourself bogged down with the same improvement efforts month after month, why not try something entirely different and launch fresh initiatives? Establish a re-targeting plan, look into reliable sites to add to a display positioning campaign, or broaden your client’s shopping ads.
Be sure that you secure your customer’s permission if you begin servicing parts that are not named in the agreement.
12. Go deeper than the basics
Certain advisors become limited to monthly changes with no guidance for future progress. When a search campaign is functioning optimally, it’s time to analyze more detailed strategies to perfect it.
Different techniques such as Ad Scheduling, Bid Adjustments, Mobile Ads, and even more expanded Sitelink Descriptions can all be advantageous right now.
13. Try new keywords or locations in limited test environments
You should consistently try out new keywords. At some point, it may be a challenge to identify more keywords to experiment with; however, make sure to try locating them each month. It is possible that seasonal search terms will appear or other occasions you can make use of.
14. Provide a landing page assessment with tips to improve conversions
The objective is to increase the amount of conversions for your client. For example, provide clients with landing page assessments.
Even though you have no specialised knowledge regarding conversion rate, your experience in online marketing gives you a good idea of which strategies are effective and which ones are not. Client websites can see better returns even with minimum changes made – a situation everybody can benefit from!
When you notice your conversions rates rising, you will be presented with a fresh challenge when it comes to your PPC activities. Useful terms that may not have resulted in monetary gains previously can now be evaluated in new tests, or the current words may attain higher prices.
This goes for other areas as well. Remember that even though you’re not an expert, you most likely know the basics about:
- SEO
- Social Media
- Landing Page Optimization
- Retargeting
- Web Analytics
Giving out “unintentional” tips on these matters is beneficial for your memories.
If you happen to stumble upon your client’s Google+ page and see that their cover photo needs adjusting to the most recent format, don’t forget to send them an email with a link to the optimal size and how to use it correctly.
Taking the time to make little gestures can go a long way in demonstrating that you are devoted to helping their business expand.
15. Bid higher, get more budget, and provide a bigger return
Make sure that your client is ranked in the highest 1-3 spots for all lucrative search terms before you consider the job done.
It has to be said that it is often not feasible to achieve what you want with only the amount of money you have been given as a start-up. Therefore, your primary responsibility is to demonstrate a high return-on-investment and expand the budget.
The ultimate objective is to acquire a budget so high that you are essentially unconstrained, allowing you to get the most out of your Return on Investment.
Benefiting from an increased budget can make your cost seem less significant. If you are rewarded $1,000 for overseeing a $3,000 scheme, you are essentially being given a third of the total payment. If you are unexpectedly given $1,000 for controlling a $10,000 operation, your remuneration is only a tenth of the total.
The drawbacks of terminating your employment are much greater than the minimal amount you are paid. Do not overlook the fact that with a greater financial allocation you are also creating a better Return On Investment, which renders your client even more reliant upon you.
16. Always let your client know what is coming next
Failing to explain what you are going to do, or not conveying your opinions to your customer, will have an adverse effect on how your client perceives the worth of what you are offering.
When other businesses are trying to persuade your customer by talking about the latest benefits they can get, or inquiring why you haven’t taken advantage of “x” opportunity, it is useful to have this prior preparation.
It is preferable if your customer is acquainted with the fact that remarketing has not begun yet, seeing that the tag has only recently been set up and there aren’t enough visitors; however, it will be initiated within 45 days.
To sum it up – Be Proactive
17. Present your work favorably
No matter how incredible your work is, if you can’t show it off to your customer in the right way, all your hard work will be wasted. You don’t need to produce an elaborate report with complex visuals to make a good showing, although a few graphics can be beneficial.
It is a must that your customer comprehends the jobs you are working on and how it is aiding them in expanding their business. Learning the skills of writing and sales will be highly beneficial when attempting to communicate your message in a persuasive manner.
Conclusion
For every move you make, every document you generate and every improvement you make, be sure to inform your customers, creating a positive attitude towards myself and my business. Each month you need the hourglass to be at a certain level in order to allow yourself to achieve your goal:
For you and your client to both be satisfied with the payment of your invoice at the conclusion of the month.
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