Who is the person that would be most receptive to your marketing? That should be your current customer, right? But what if that relationship is not what it should be, what then? If your customer has had a bad experience with you, you need to do what you can to make it right. There are two reasons tied to marketing that are of utmost importance in this situation. Your brand’s image is at stake when a customer is unhappy and, even more importantly, all future sales to this same person will dry up if you don’t take action.

Managing your brand’s image

It is the job of marketing to protect the company’s brand image. In marketing, we tell the customer what our brand stands for. This is commonly referred to as a Marketing Position Statement. This is not only how I want the customer to remember the brand, I want them to believe it too. That all gets put on the line when there is a customer service problem. Especially in today’s very transparent electronic environment, dissatisfied customers can and will voice their complaints online for the world to see. What can you do? First, as soon as you know there is a problem, reach out to the person and try to come to a resolution. Second, don’t just fix the problem, try to make it up to the person for their inconvenience. Let them know they are important to you. If you can repair the relationship, you may avoid the backlash of a negative comment left on your Google business page or other social media business pages.

Retaining your customers

Managing your brand’s image is the job of marketing, and that starts with good customer relationships. It is so much easier to retain a satisfied customer than to find new customers. You don’t have to reintroduce a current customer to your business, products, and services. You have already made some sort of impact with your brand awareness if someone has previously made at least one purchase. In marketing, retention marketing is the low hanging fruit. They’ve already been sold once, we are marketing to get them to do that again and again. That is all rather easy if they have had a good experience with your company and your brand. But if things have soured during the first purchase, getting them to buy again becomes a difficult proposition.

It helps to understand the four most common reasons customers never come back after they have been sold once before. See if these resonate with you:

1. Bad quality

2. Too high of a price for what they received

3. It wasn’t delivered on time

4. There was a personal conflict with an employee and the customer felt they were taken advantage of or disrespected

These four reasons cause people to make declarative statements, such as, "I will never buy anything from them ever again!” Has this happened to you? In marketing, we have to be cognizant of these four roadblocks to retaining clients. It is easy for marketing to over-promise and over-hype. With a little forethought, a good marketing plan helps define where the limits to each of these four areas lie. For instance, saying that your prices are the lowest is only good until your competition undercuts you. Saying that your quality is the best only works until someone makes something better. If you can back up such bold marketing statements, then good for you! But for most brands, there needs to be some sort of definition of the limits of our claims. Good marketing helps set parameters to such statements. What will you do if the customer finds a lower price or better quality? Will you match the low price? Will you take back the product and give them double their money back? There have to be some limits to these kinds of promotions or you will go out of business! But it has to be done in a way that the customer does not feel like you have shammed them in the process. Good marketing understands these boundaries and finds the best way to promote the limits as good for the customer.

Retaining your customers should be a key marketing initiative in your business. That includes guarding the reputation of your brand and managing customer relationships. Make it a part of your marketing plans.