Many resellers speak about their plans to become a brand customers love. However, when you get down to it, only a few implement the ideas as they let profit and other things distract them.
But quite interestingly, only businesses that consistently satisfy their customers ever attain the growth they desire. It’s an interesting paradox where you have to focus more on customer satisfaction.
Sometimes, you may need to sacrifice your profitability to ensure top-notch service to the buyers. But in the end, branding and customer retention bring the most profit and development.
Admittedly, you may have a few difficulties in your quest to become a reseller customers love. And that may be the reason you’ve been struggling with keeping your buyers.
This blog explores customer retention tactics for resellers and how you can build brand loyalty. Here, you’ll learn how to go about branding your business in an appealing way to customers.
Why Bother With Branding?
It doesn’t make sense for any business to exist in this age without a unique brand identity. That’s because a company is an entity separate from the creator, and it can very well live without the visioner. So you need to give your venture an identity which will enable customers to engage with it without you being in the picture.
All the big businesses have brands that are bigger than the people that created them. For example, many people are familiar with industry names like Nike, Adidas, Coca Cola and Pepsi but don’t know their creators.
Hence, putting a brand on your business is the second step to setting it up for recognition. The first step is taking the business idea from your mind and turning it into a living entity.
Aside from the obvious, branding has several advantages for resellers. Therefore, if you’re on the fence about branding, consider the benefits having a distinct brand can give to your business.
Branding Improves Credibility
Professionalism is an essential trait in business and career considerations. And that’s what branding does for you; it presents you as an expert, giving people the opinion you know what you’re doing. That’s why most HR experts advise career personnel to work on personal branding to make themselves more appealing job prospects.
Branding your business gives it a more professional vibe. It translates your reselling venture from a low-level setup to a fully functional business. Plus, people are generally more willing to buy from recognisable brands.
Existing customers will be more inclined to do business with you if they can vouch for you. When you build your reseller brand, you’re developing your credibility and encouraging customers to keep doing business with you.
Branding Helps You To Stay Consistent
Again, branding gives your business an identity that people can associate with. And once people see your business in a specific way (positively), you must fight tooth and nail to maintain that perception. That means branding obligates you to stay consistent.
Additionally, the branding process will help you gain clarification regarding what you must do. So, decision-making comes easier when you know what to do and have an image to maintain. For example, you won’t need to take much time to decide what values you should uphold in your message. Your brand values and goals will always come first.
Needless to say, customers will be willing to continue doing business with you if they can trust you to deliver. So, in this case, your consistency will be a huge advantage.
Branding Helps To Attract Your Ideal Clients
Branding helps you clarify things and identify the values you want to uphold as a business. But it doesn’t stop there; it also sets you up to attract customers sharing the same value.
People often connect with setups that represent their values. So, with the proper identification, you’ll receive relevant recognition as a brand and attract the right people to your business.
For example, if you resell exotic items and would like to attract high-class customers, your brand must portray an identity such customers resonate with. To that end, you may invest in higher quality packaging and include a customised thank you card in each purchase. Your ideal clients will appreciate the gesture.
Furthermore, the best thing about ideal clients is it’s often easier to satisfy them. That’s because you would have designed most of your existing systems with them in mind. Hence, you’re better prepared to give them all that’s necessary to ensure they’ll come back for more.
Customers Are More Loyal To Reputable Brands
Consider big brands like Apple, Tesla, and Nike; many customers remain loyal to these brands even as their products get more expensive. Admittedly, they merit recognition in terms of their product quality and consistency. However, several of their customers are only loyal to the brands because of their reputation.
This situation is quite common with brands whose products people have come to recognise as status symbols. For example, some people see using any other mobile device besides an iPhone as a downgrade.
So, creating and maintaining a reputable brand can make your buyers loyal to you for the status it gives them. Therefore, if you resell exotic vehicles and become a household name in the business, people will buy from you to have an affiliation with your brand.
Ways to Make Customers Love Your Reseller Brand
It’s one thing to talk customers into buying stuff from you; it’s another to become a reseller they love. Convincing people to patronise your business is easier than getting them emotionally attached to it. But it’s not impossible, and several brands have achieved it.
Here’s how you can make customers love your reseller brand too.
Consistently Give Excellent Value
The search for value will bring most of your customers to you, and you must consistently give them what they want. Keep in mind that people don’t just fall in love with brands because of one quality service experience.
There’s hardly a love-at-first-sight kind of magic in the business world. However, consistent excellent service will deliver the keys to your customers’ hearts.
Fortunately, giving them excellent service once will encourage customers to return. So, you get a chance to serve them again and again. That helps customers develop trust in your brand, which can translate into emotional attachment.
Becoming a reseller customers love doesn’t get any easier than that. You can consistently provide excellent services by maintaining the following practices.
Prioritise Quality over Quantity
This point is an unspoken rule of thumb in business; it’s not about how much but how good. So, you must make quality service your guiding principle, even at the expense of higher profits
While this approach may mean you’ll sell less initially, you’ll build an excellent reputation. And the best part is, customers looking for quality will always seek you out for business. Additionally, they’ll not hesitate to recommend you to others looking for quality products.
Be Consistent With Your Products
Let your customers know you for something. You shouldn’t try to be everywhere, selling all the products. Of course, selling multiple products helps your profitability and keeps you on your toes in a volatile market. However, it can negatively affect your brand identity.
For example, imagine someone running a fashion item store. So, you walk into the store one day and find that they only have denim and leather jackets. Then, a few months later, you walk into the same shop and find that they only have suits and blazers. You’ll probably question the brand’s focus, and your trust level for them will also drop.
It’s the same when you aren’t consistent with specific products as a reseller. You can sell as many products as possible, but don’t jump around too often. Stick with what people know you for unless the same customers start asking for other things.
Provide Unforgettable Customer Service
33% of customers in the UK are willing to pay more if it guarantees they’ll get excellent service. That shows how much customers love exceptional services and the opportunity it gives you to become their favourite reseller.
That said, you can provide excellent customer service by practising the following
Manage Customer Expectations
Negative customer experiences are often a result of unmet expectations. Primarily, the customer anticipated something, but you failed to deliver. Admittedly, you may not be aware of such expectations, or external factors may have hindered your efforts. It happens to most resellers, but fortunately, it doesn’t have to.
You only have to identify the customer’s expectations as quickly as possible, even before doing business with them. It helps to ask a few open-ended questions to determine what they want from you. Their feedback will give you an idea of what they expect from you. You can then manage it by being honest and thorough with them.
Give the customers full disclosure of what you can and can’t offer them. Of course, you must remember your goals may differ from theirs. But that doesn’t mean what’s vital for you supersedes what’s important to them. So, you want to approach expectation management with due consideration for the customer’s perspective.
Overall, it’s an excellent strategy to under-promise and over-deliver. As a reseller, such tactics will help you avoid disappointing your customers and keep your retention rates high.
Consistently Improve on Customer Experience
Managing your customer’s expectations is crucial, but you shouldn’t make it an excuse to stay mediocre. Therefore, you must consistently work on becoming better and providing more satisfactory services.
Constant customer service improvement is a fast way to become a reseller customers love. That’s because it tells them you’re constantly thinking about and working on offering them better value each time.
Enable Self-Service
Self-service means letting customers be in charge of their service. Enabling self-service is advantageous because giving some level of autonomy to customers sets the foundation for improved customer experience and satisfaction.
A typical self-service example is an ecommerce store. Customers don’t need to interact with the seller before buying anything. So you can also set up an online shop where customers can go through your inventory and buy products without needing to communicate with you directly.
Use Omnichannel Customer Service
For several people, customer service primarily means talking to customers and addressing their complaints. Such people will judge good customer service on the how easy it is for them to reach you. That means the more diversified your communications channels are, the better.
Therefore, omnichannel communication provides a good way for you to make customers love your reseller brand. It lets you adopt and integrate as many communication channels as possible. So, you can make it easy for the customers to reach you by any means convenient for them, particularly on social media platforms.
Maintain a Good Record on all Fronts
Customers are often more inclined to be loyal to reputable brands. So, they’ll not have any qualms associating themselves with you if they know your reputation won’t hurt theirs. In fact, they’ll be willing to tell people they do business with you if it’ll improve their social perception.
That’s why some people don’t hesitate to tell others where they got certain items from. For example, you may meet people who would say, “Check out my watch; I got it from Amazon.”
But a good reputation doesn’t just bring loyalty; it also commands trust and respect, all the attributes of love. Hence, it becomes imperative to build your record to make customers love your reseller brand, and you can achieve that with the following practices.
Ask For and Act on Feedback
Customer feedback is essential for getting insights into their perceptions of your service. Unfortunately, not all customers think it’s necessary or will be willing to give reviews if you don’t ask them for it. So, you need to request feedback and ratings from buyers after every purchase.
But then again, getting the feedback isn’t enough; you shouldn’t forget the purpose of obtaining the feedback.
You’re not collecting the reviews to filter out the bad ones and upload the good ones for others to see. Instead, the customer opinions are to show you the areas of your products that need improvement and how you can leverage it to build brand loyalty.
Once you have the necessary information, you can then set out to eliminate the flaws and make your products better. And through that, you’ll also build your reseller brand’s reputation to be customer-centric.
Be Transparent With Your Customers
Again, you must prioritise trust if you want to become a reseller customers love. And transparency is one of the keys to gaining people’s trust.
Practising transparency involves being ethical and open in all your dealings. You must be forthcoming with all the transaction details during customer interactions.
So primarily, you must ensure you don’t hide anything from the customers. Instead, constantly guarantee the customers clearly understand the details of all their dealings with you.
But of course, it doesn’t end with your customers. Make all the necessary information about your business open to the public. Additionally, don’t indulge in shady deals or anything that can dent your reputation.
Practice Two-Way Communication
You don’t know what the customer wants. While you may have a good guess, the chances of getting it right are slim. The only way to know your customers’ minds is to talk to them.
Interestingly, the customers may not have decided what they want yet. But that’s the good thing about two-way communication; it helps to clarify things and reach conclusions faster.
So, by asking customers what they want, you’re prompting them to decide. And when they give an indecisive response, you can give them recommendations or ask more questions for clarification. Either way, you’ll give the customer the idea you care enough to talk to them about their needs. And you can trust them to reciprocate the love.
Build and Prioritise Good Customer Relationships
The easiest way to become a reseller customers love is to foster a friendly relationship with them first. It’s easier for friends to love each other than strangers. The same applies in business cycles. Customers you have amicable relationships with will have no trouble keeping you among their favourites.
Of course, you can’t possibly please everybody, and you shouldn’t try to. But you shouldn’t use that as an excuse to neglect building relationships with your customers.
Communicate Frequently (Email and Social Media Marketing)
Customers love it when you reach out to them. A good number of customers appreciate brands that constantly keep in touch with them, according to Statista.
The way to your customers’ hearts is to remind them that you have goodies for them consistently. That makes them believe you’re constantly thinking about them and helps them remember you whenever they need what you offer.
Offer Incentives
Incentives and loyalty programs help to drive customer retention and engagement. That’s because people love freebies; hence, offering discounts and gifts will undoubtedly draw their attention. It works even better when you provide such freebies on repeat purchases.
Offering loyalty programs also make your customers feel valued. And it encourages them to do more business with you. Additionally, you can maximise it by creating gift tiers depending on the customer’s patronage level. So, someone who has purchased items from you on five different occasions will be eligible for a better gift than someone who has purchased only twice.
Make Customers Feel Unique
Want to become a reseller your customers love? Treat customers like royalty and make them feel important. Buyers want you to make them feel special. They may not tell you that, but they do; some expect it, and others even go as far as demanding it.
Your business growth depends on how consistently you put your relationship with your customers first in your dealings. This assertion is backed up by a study from Harvard business school, which showed that increasing customer retention by 5% can result in a 25 to 95% profit boost.
Get Your Customers to Fall in Love
All resellers want to become a household name and brand that customers love. But only some have what it takes to achieve that. Many times, you’ll make sacrifices and tough choices to improve customer experience and satisfaction.
Additionally, you may have to put customer relationships above personal desires or projections. That’s a lot to ask from a business that’s still growing. But rest assured, it’ll be very well worth it.
Plus, we can help. Crept Chief Notify’s reseller platform can provide industry-standard tips and hands-on help to increase your customer retention and branding. We can also help by telling you what to sell, what prices to sell, and when to sell. Contact us to learn more today!