Customer growth is an important metric that tells you how well your business is doing. This statistic can fluctuate across a variety of fields, and there may be periods of positive or slowing growth as you manage your business over time. An important step in your success strategy involves knowing what to do if you notice slowing or zero customer growth in your business. With these aspects in mind, here are steps you can take for your business in the event you notice slowing customer growth.
Listen to Your Customers
When customers are unhappy, they stop doing business with you. It’s really that simple. If you want to keep your customers, you need to address customer turnover as it has a significant impact on your business. Customer churn lowers revenues and profits. The cost of acquiring a new customer is significantly more than maintaining a current customer. On average a 5 percent increase in customer retention rates result in a minimum increase of 25 percent profits—that is a great return on investment.
Great customer service begins by understanding and recognizing the heart of the issue. This means your entire team must be on point with their listening skills. These are traits that can be institutionalized throughout your organization, as everyone can benefit from being good listeners. Your customer service team in particular can provide a better experience by further developing their listening abilities. By taking a more proactive approach to customer service and problem-solving, you can set your business up for better customer experiences in the long-term.
Related:Concentrate on Current Customers to Boost Your Profits
Pay Attention to Your Customer Service Staff
Your customer service team spends the most time interacting with customers. Because of their day-to-day contact with clients, they have insight that is likely useful for business strategy, marketing, sales and to prevent customer service issues from reoccurring. Asking them for their feedback can provide your company with a distinct advantage. In addition, listening to and recognizing your customer service staff can go a long way toward keeping them motivated to continue providing a good experience for your customers.
Reevaluate Your Market
Market research can sometimes change depending on many changing dynamics. This is why it is important to reevaluate your market analysis for any changes in the industry, customers, and competitors. Investing time to better understand your most significant competitors may help you see opportunities to fill a gap in the market.
Market research is not just a one-time step, but a repeated process that helps your business account for the changing variables in the environment. If you did market research before, then revisit it to make sure the information you obtained still applies or if there are other dynamics you have to look at to adjust to slowing customer growth.
Review Your Marketing and Sales Systems
If a business does not initially get customers, it may be because potential customers do not know that it exists in the first place. This can be mitigated by putting a few marketing systems in place. Some of the most common marketing systems consist of sponsored content, Google ads, newsletters, emails, as well as more traditional methods like TV and radio. If you have been active in using a combination of these systems, then these may be worth taking a second look if you experience slowing customer growth.
Re-evaluate the language you use in ads, the audience you are targeting in your social media, and whether the budget you have on Google makes sense as competitors are ramping up their spending.
Have the sales team make sales calls and send emails to build relationships and generate new business. You’ll also want to follow up with previous clients as well. They may be easier to persuade to come back to your company than you think as they are already familiar with your products or services.
By evaluating these options and retooling a few settings, you can try out new approaches to marketing your business and re-igniting customer growth.
Look at Prices
In some cases, it may be worth checking out whether your prices are too high relative to competitors or the industry average. It is important to know what prices your customers are willing to pay. In addition, keep an eye on the fluctuating prices of products or services that are similar to yours in the industry. If any economic factors lead to changes in prices or consumers’ spending patterns, then it may be worth making a change in your prices as well. A change in pricing strategy can also involve offering discounts, promotions, or additional rewards for loyal customers.
Related: 10 Financial Management Tips for a Growing Business
Review Your Location
The location of your business may be a factor in the growth of customers as well. There are features every location has that influence how customers get to your business, including parking, transportation, surrounding businesses, etc.
Your online presence also doubles as a location of its own. Do you have an easy to navigate website where customers can find and purchase your products online? Is your web presence on Google and search engines prominent enough to be visible in your local area? These are important factors to consider about the location so you can avoid missing out on opportunities to sustain your customer growth.
The Bottom Line
A business growth strategy is not just one plan you formulate in the beginning and keep the same throughout, but something you adjust due to changing factors such as your customer growth rate. It is therefore important to evaluate your business plans, as well as the above-mentioned features, to help address slowing customer growth. With these strategies evaluated in a timely manner, you can re-address your business and marketing strategy and get back on track to positive customer growth. Be sure to outline these action plans with your team as well to keep your business growing.
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Universal Funding is a nationwide invoice factoring solutions leader, supporting growth-focused businesses with scalable factoring solutions. With its invoice factoring, payroll funding, and purchase order financing services, Universal Funding provides clients with the working capital needed to grow and support their businesses without taking on new debt. Ranked as one of the nation’s top invoice factoring companies, Universal Funding provides cash flow financing for businesses all across the United States.
