{"id":8359,"date":"2017-03-06T09:10:36","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T08:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.invoiceberry.com\/?p=8359"},"modified":"2020-01-24T12:54:17","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T11:54:17","slug":"customer-retention-small-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/customer-retention-small-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Proven Customer Retention Strategies for Small Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

It should come as no surprise that the key to growing your business is not in fact by focusing on customer acquisition<\/a>\u2014instead, growth comes from customer retention.<\/p>\n

This is reflected in the Harvard Business Review\u2019s estimation that it can be 5 \u2013 25 times cheaper<\/a> to keep a customer than to get a new customer.<\/p>\n

Research by Frederick Reichheld<\/a> even showed that if you increase your customer retention by 5%, your profits could increase anywhere from 25% to 95%!<\/p>\n

You can see a similar trend in the image below from\u00a0Forentrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

\"Most
Most of the value of the customer comes not from the first sale but from repeated sales. Image source<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No matter what business you are in, those are some impressive numbers.<\/p>\n

Customer retention is a big deal, but it is unfortunately undervalued by a lot of small businesses.<\/p>\n

Although you should place a lot of emphasis on your customer acquisition operations, you should spend much more time on customer retention.<\/p>\n

Before we look at the best and most practical ways for small businesses to retain customers, we\u2019ll need to go over some important vocabulary related to customer retention.<\/p>\n

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\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCustomer Acquisition for New Small Businesses<\/span><\/a>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCustomer acquisition is perhaps the most important and difficult parts of any business. Find out how to make sure you get customers for your new business.<\/span>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tREAD MORE<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Important Customer Retention Terms<\/h2>\n

Here we\u2019ll quickly go over the most important terms when it comes to customer retention in general. We\u2019ll look at these in more detail further down.<\/p>\n

Customer Retention<\/h3>\n

Although you can find many complex definitions for what customer retention actually <\/em>is, it is pretty simple. It is the ability (or inability) of a company to keep its customers for a particular period of time.<\/p>\n

If your company or brand has high customer retention, this means that your customers come back often, buy your product for a long time, and do not abandon it in other ways.<\/p>\n

One company with great customer retention (related to its customers\u2019 loyalty) is Disney, a legendary company that has a whopping 70% return rate<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"It<\/p>\n

The ladder of customer loyalty<\/h3>\n

This phrase is related to moving your customer through the 6 stages of customer loyalty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The stages can be broken down as the following:<\/p>\n