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Corey Kogan
Why Your Brand Needs To Have Repeat Customers
One of the most common burdens business owners carry is the burden of acquiring new customers. It doesn’t matter whether they regularly get new customers or they hardly get new customers. The ultimate goal of running a business in the first place is to make profits, and so, one of the ways to do that is by acquiring new customers. However, a lot of business owners get carried away with acquiring new customers that they forget to utilize their already existing old customers.
First, Who Is A Repeat Customer?
A repeat customer is anyone who has purchased from your business at least two different times.
If you do right by your old customers, you will be able to count on them come rain or shine. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that customer acquisition is not important — you can’t have old customers without first acquiring new customers. However, the issue with focusing too much on acquisition while neglecting customer retention is that it costs more and generates low returns. The average e-commerce entrepreneur spends 80% of their marketing budget on customer acquisition. Yet, according to Adobe Digital Index, 41% of revenue comes from old customers who are only 8% of the buying population. So that means that repeat customers bring more profits to businesses than new customers.
Why Are Repeat Customers Profitable?
If you are still overlooking the importance of investing in efforts that will turn your customers into repeat customers, these five points should convince you otherwise.
A Repeat Customer is More Likely to Visit Your Site Again
Using the simple definition we gave above, a repeat customer is someone who has made at least two different purchases from your store. So, yes, they have already bought from you before. The interesting thing about repeat customers is that the more purchases they make the higher the chance of them coming back to make another purchase. To be clear, when a customer makes their first purchase in your store, there’s a 27% chance that they will come back. And when a customer makes their second or third purchase, the chance of them coming back again increases to 54%.
A Repeat Customer is Easier to Sell to
As a business owner, you often conduct marketing campaigns, send newsletters and carry out other conversion tactics in order to get people to visit your store. Your purpose of doing all these is so that the people will carry out the action you’d like them to do, for example, you might want them to buy from your new shoe collection.
You put in your efforts, use up part of your marketing budget, create a captivating landing page, all for the goal of increasing conversion. Yet, new visitors will remain skeptical about your brand because they need to be convinced that they can trust your brand. On the other hand, according to Adobe Digital Index, repeat customers are 9 times more likely to convert than first-time shoppers. This is because there’s already an established trust between you and them.
Repeat Customers Spend More On Each Purchase Compared to First-time Shoppers
So yes, your customer acquisition tactics work and some new shoppers are moved to buy from you. Nevertheless, they have to first test the waters to see the quality of service you provide. As a result, new shoppers usually end up spending less than repeat customers. The idea is that at least if they’re not satisfied with your customer service, they won’t lose too much money. On the other hand, repeat customers have already gone through the trust-building phase, they’ve already established that your brand is good for them. At this point, they are more inclined to make their purchases without holding back. The more purchase repeat customers make the more their spending when they come back to make more purchases.
Repeat Customers Spend More on Purchase During Key Events
During key events such as Christmas season, Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc, shoppers are more eager to make purchases — shoppers are likely to increase their spending by 17%. However, amidst the frenzy, new shoppers still try to be cautious when doing their shopping. So, they still hold back, and when they decide to shop, they’re more likely to be moderate with their purchase. For repeat customers, there’s no such thing, they’ve bought from you multiple times and they understand how you operate. They are eager to buy and they know that they can trust you to come through for them. During key events, repeat customers are more likely to increase their spending by 25%. To make your repeat customers more eager to shop, offer deals during key events. Send them reminders about the deals you will offer during key events so that they can prepare for the D-day.
Repeat Customers Will Create More Awareness For Your Brand
One of the advantages of having repeat customers is that you won’t have to spend so much on marketing campaigns. Here’s why. Once a customer becomes a repeat customer, and they continue to come back to make more purchases, it gets to a point where they fully trust your brand. At that point, they can vouch for you, so they start to recommend your brand to friends, family and strangers even — especially on social media. This is what we call word of mouth marketing, which is often regarded as the best marketing. Repeat customers will identify with your brand and create more awareness for your brand; we see that with Samsung phone users.
Now, there are ways to encourage word of mouth marketing from your customers. You can create a reward system that will reward customers who refer people to your store with gifts such as coupons.
Over To You
By now, you should know that you need repeat customers in order to increase your revenues. Your marketing strategies shouldn’t stop at customer acquisition. You need to also implement strategies that will convert your first-time shoppers into repeat customers. Which is why you need to take customer retention as seriously as you do customer acquisition.
