UBA Ghana, through its UBA Business Series initiative has explained to businesses particularly Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) on how to be exceptional with their products and services to customers as well as acquire, retain and delight new and existing customers.
Speaking at the UBA Business Series seminar on the theme; Acquiring, Retaining and Delighting Your Customers, lead enabler at Enable Growth Consult, Stephen Boadi, asserted that businesses must first establish the need for their product or service before they can acquire customers.
According to him, businesses cannot acquire customers unless their product or service serves the need of customers.
“You cannot have customers without a product that serves their need, so first establish the need for your product,” he stated.
Establishing the need for a product or service he opined involves identifying a gap or need in the market and researching to find out how that need can be solved.
After establishing the need for the product or service, Mr Boadi asserts that businesses need to create awareness of their product or service and present them as a solution to the identified need of customers, particularly in the form of a product launch.
Speaking further in the seminar, Mr Boadi opined that one of the most important ways to acquire customers is to run targeted digital and traditional ads as well as tell stories about the product or service a business offers.
“Businesses have to run ads through both digital and traditional means and they should be targeted, customised and location based. For instance, the ads you run in Accra should be different from those that you run in Tamale.”
“Then the next thing is your content on social media, you need to tell stories about your product or service, and not all always be like come and buy, come and buy.”
“Creating content means businesses need to talk about how their products are used and the needs the product or service fulfills. So your content should be engaging, rewarding, offer value and be disruptive as well,” he stated.
“And when I say disruptive, I mean a situation whereby customers scrolling through posts on social media are forced to pause and take a look at a particular post, that’s what we mean by disruptive, so good contents should do that,” he added.
Mr Boadi further advised business owners to “monitor, listen and engage” customers on their products and services.
“Now the other thing we don’t usually do is to monitor, listen and engage customers. If you don’t monitor, listen and engage customers particularly on social media, you won’t be able to address the questions prospective customers have about your product or service.”
“For small businesses they post contents about their products and services on social media and then go to sleep and abandon their DM (direct message), they ask people to send WhatsApp messages and ask questions but they are not there to engage the prospective customers and listen to the questions they ask.”
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“But if they listen, they will begin to appreciate how people want the product or service and even adapt the product or service to the needs of customers in real time.”
“Doing all these will help the business to convert customers, so these are the steps you go through to acquire new customers,” he intimated.
On retaining customers, Mr Boadi averred products and services of businesses must deliver on the promises and experiences promised customers.
Additionally, businesses must have access to data that helps them to know and understand their customers and their peculiarities.
“Most sales people can sell you one product for the first time, but for you to go back and purchase the same product becomes a problem and this is where a lot of businesses struggle.”
“So retaining customers requires a lot of things, the first being that the product or service delivers on the results or experience it promises. Because if it doesn’t customers are very unlikely to go back and purchase the same product or service.”
“Then there is data which is super important, data will allow businesses to understand and know their customers and their peculiarities. It will also help businesses segment their customers to make cost effective decisions or what we call the ‘data driven decisions’ about marketing and others.”
“Then there is what is called the Customer Lifetime Value where businesses need to understand which of their customers are high valued customers and which of them the business needs to spend most time on to deliver to them and give added services to retain them,” he stated.
“Also, businesses need to innovate their product or services to retain customers,” he added.
According to him, four (4) data driven customer retention practices for businesses include;
- Discount for purchases
- Innovative services
- Partnership with other businesses to bundle and offer relevant services to customers
- Loyalty cards
