How to Attain Repeat Business

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By Karl Ribas

Online Marketers have a clear understanding of the amount of time, money, and effort that is needed to attract website traffic, as well as what is needed to convert that traffic into actual sales. However, what is not so clear is what to do with a customer once they’ve made a purchase. In most cases, nothing is done resulting in a mass of missed sales that otherwise would have been easy to generate.

When deciding how to spend a marketing budget, very rarely will a company choose to allocate funding to efforts capable of attaining them repeat business. In my opinion, this can be contributed to either ignorance or to the many misconceptions that exist with utilizing current and past customers to increase sales. Therefore, for most companies, online marketing spending is divided up between search marketing strategies, such as pay per click and website optimization efforts, and more traditional Internet advertising, such as banner ads and standard branding strategies.

There are many obvious benefits to soliciting past customers, but two should clearly stand out: repeat business is typically easier to attain and is less costly than attracting new customers, and a company can directly contact and reach out to those people that are interested in buying their products. In doing so, online merchants can advertise directly to a large group of very targeted people, and not have to spend an extra marketing dollar to do so.

With this being said, the main question now becomes how exactly does a website owner attain and profit from repeat business? The following tips are very beneficial to online merchants and marketers looking to attract more business from their current and past customers.

• Implement an Email Marketing Campaign – More and more companies require their customers to include an email address before completing a purchase. In most cases, an email address is needed to confirm an order, as well as to send customers packing and shipping updates. Companies should develop an email marketing campaign as a way to reach out to their customers, and as a way to capitalize by generating repeat business.

The idea is not to email customers for the sake of emailing them, but rather to provide customers with valid information pertaining to your company, products or services, and your current promotions. By advertising updates, new inventory, and sales/discounts directly to those who have previously made purchases, a company will generate more repeat business than if they had not.

• Include a Business Card with Every Order – When it comes to browsing or buying online, not all online shoppers use or remember to use “online bookmarks”. In fact, outside of the major brand-name stores, very few online businesses are even remembered. One way for smaller companies to counter this phenomenon is to include a business card or a business card magnet with each and every order.

The idea is to give customers something to hang onto for when it comes time to shop or reorder again. Generally speaking, people tend to hang on to business cards and will often stick magnets on their fridge. Should a time come when those customers need to place another order, they’ll have all of the necessary information needed to get in touch with the company, and do so.

In addition, people often enjoy bragging to their friends and family about the great deal they got on their purchase or whatever positive perks that may exist. Providing customers with the means to pass on their company’s information, via a business card, is also a great way to attract sales that the company may have not otherwise received.

• Integrate a Login / Password Shopping Cart – Integrating a shopping cart with login and password functionality can easily increase the amount of repeat business an online store receives. To an online shopper, remembering and entering a login and password results in them not having to enter several lines of billing, shipping, or credit card information with each visit. This convenience ensures customers receive a head-ache free and speedy check-out process upon future visits, resulting in a great reason for any customer to come back.

• Offer Free Samples with Every Order – The word “free” is very rarely said or meant in a world where everything now costs a pretty penny, and so offering free samples of your product is a great way to not only get people to buy from you, but to get them to continually come back and purchase again. In my opinion, it does not matter how large or small a sample is, just as long as it is somewhat relevant to the buyer.

In addition, offering a free sample often means introducing the customer to something new. If shoppers tend to only buy one variation of a product, than it is possible that they are unaware that another exists or are wary about trying something different. This is a perfect opportunity for online merchants to reach out to their customers and recommend a product by providing a free sample of it. This kind of customer/merchant interaction will most likely encourage customers to buy again, and should the products compliment each other well enough, it may even lead to the customer purchasing both options upon their next order.

• Offer Gift Certificates with all Order Discrepancies – A time will inevitably come when a company will make a mistake on an order. It’s going to happen. The most common errors are shipping the wrong size or color of a product, or the wrong product altogether. How the company proceeds and corrects this error will ultimately determine whether or not a customer returns.

In addition to correcting the problem, say refunding the buyer or shipping out the correct order, include a gift certificate that can be used with the customer’s next purchase. This action proves that your company takes order discrepancies very seriously and is committed to ensuring that things are corrected. Also, by providing such an offer, you’re giving your customers a reason to purchase again (hence repeat business), and yourself another chance to make a great impression by accurately completing their next order.

• Offer a Check-Out Promotion – This is a simple tip that will increase repeat business by immediately offering buyers a reason to repurchase from you. The goal is to highlight a special discount or sale that customers can take part in immediately following the check-out process. If the offer is enticing enough and relevant to what the customer has just purchased, for example offering $50.00 off on a Sony television when a customer purchases a new entertainment system or 15% off of a 2GB memory chip when a customer purchases a new CPU motherboard, than the campaign stands to be successful.

With this suggestion, store owners will be doing a couple of things right. They will be offering a promotion for a relevant product, capturing the shopper while they’re in the ‘buying mood’, and offering a rather quick check-out process because the customer would have already provided the necessary billing, shipping, and credit card information.

• Integrate an Automatic Re-Order Option – This tip only pertains to those companies that sell consumables, such as health and beauty products, tobacco products, medication-like products, and so forth, but is great for attaining repeat business.

The idea is to set up an “automatic re-order option”, either manually or programmed in the back-end, to be included within the check-out process. Customers can then enroll into the program which will be set-up to automatically charge their credit card and resend them their “refill” at the time they’ve specified. Therefore, if a customer purchases a box of cigars every three months, rather than having to go to the website, locate the product, and place an order each time they want to refill their stock, the customer can simply have a box automatically charged and sent to them every three months.

Under this system, and in addition to bringing convenience to their customers, merchants are now promised repeat business that they were not otherwise before. Also, the chances of a company losing out on this business on the account that customers forgot to reorder, misplaced the company’s web address, or found an alternative supplier with cheaper prices are greatly reduced.

In closing, it is tremendously important that online merchants and marketers understand the many benefits that exist when integrating “repeat business” strategies, such as those seven listed above, into their current and future marketing efforts. By following these simple, yet important, suggestions, an online company can easily increase the number of sales they receive and their overall profits, all without having to increase their marketing spend by a single dollar.

Karl Ribas is the Project Manager at All Web Promotion, and on the side runs his own search engine marketing Blog and consultant website. He has been designing websites since 2001, and began his involvement with search engine marketing in September of 2003. As both, Project Manager at All Web Promotion and owner of his own website, Karl provides up-to-date, valuable, and effect Search Engine Marketing and design services to a wide range of small to medium sized online businesses.