Businesses Should Focus on Customers for Life says Alpha Gamma Solutions

Existing customers can become a valuable part of a business and can also become strong advocates of a brand, but many businesses seem to focus on attracting new customers instead of maintaining relationships with existing customers. Alpha Gamma Solutions highlights why they believe businesses should focus on Customers for Life.

Customer retention is important for many businesses as they rely on repeat buyers or renewals for their business to grow. Existing customers can be extremely valuable to a brand as they can effectively become a free marketing team by spreading the word about their positive experiences with the brand. Maintaining relationships with existing customers also costs a lot less than attracting new prospects who may never be interested in what the brand is offering. Alex Graf, Managing Director of Alpha Gamma Solutions in Leicester says ‘Long term customers are a by-product of a company’s ethos and values’.

It is also proven that 80% of a business’ future sales come from just 20% of existing customers so maintaining these relationships is incredibly important.

However, despite all this, Alpha Gamma Solutions says that many businesses decide to focus on customer acquisition instead. In fact, although 94% of business executives surveyed in a “Customers for Life” study conducted by Forbes Insights and Sitecore said that retaining customers is prioritised within their organisation, only 35% are primarily focused on repeat customers for revenue growth.

The survey also found that the top three priorities for marketing organisations today are:

58% Attracting new customers
40% Turning current customers into customers for life
25% Developing a single view of each customer

As well as the most focused areas in terms or revenue growth are:

49% Acquiring new customers
38% Loyal regular customers who purchase frequently
12% Current, recently acquired customers
2% Other

Alpha Gamma Solutions believes that businesses need to make retaining their customers a higher priority and has suggested their recommendations for increasing customer retention levels:

Prioritize customer for life goals
Increase the prominence of customer loyalty as part of revenue-growth strategies, and implement technologies that help support retention.

Reconnect intention with action and make use of CLTV metrics
Start calculating customer lifetimes value and use it to assist in measuring marketing effectiveness, setting priorities and direct spending.

Simplify the way customer information is measured
Businesses will find they are unable to provide seamless customer interactions without seamless data access. Find and use the technologies needed to enable that data access, and foster cross-team collaboration.

Perform systems that allow communications to be personalised
Communicate with consumers in timely and personal ways that are relevant to their needs. Relevant communication and the right content are essential to a complete customer experience.

Focus on a whole-organisation approach to strategy setting
Make sure the whole firm is up-to-date on strategy and marketing updates.

Alpha Gamma Solutions is an outsourced sales and marketing firm based in Leicester. The firm specialise in a personalised form of direct marketing that enables them to connect with consumers on behalf of their clients, using face-to-face marketing methods. This creates long-lasting relationships between brand and consumer as well as improves customer acquisition, brand awareness and brand loyalty. Alpha Gamma Solutions believes that their direct marketing approach offers a well-rounded and personal customer experience which keeps customers returning to their clients’ brands again and again.