Image courtesy of Garry Knight

What is Customer Loyalty?

Mindshare.com defines customer loyalty as being more than customer satisfaction: “Loyalty is a higher-order measure of customer attachment than satisfaction. Loyalty involves an emotional commitment to your brand.”

If you are an online store or an e-product, how do you develop that emotional attachment to your brand? If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, how do you use online tools to continue your customer outreach?

How do You Build Loyalty with an eNewsletter?

1. Communication

Don’t limit your communication only to when customers enter your brick and mortar store or when you’re asking them to buy your product. Sending out helpful tips or “thank-you” discounts are a positive way to communicate with your customers.

2. Meet Customer Needs

The best way to meet customer needs is to listen to their questions and provide meaningful answers. Are prospects and clients asking about a particular add-on that you don’t carry? Perhaps it’s time to do that. If you provide a service, is there a common task that people are always inquiring about? Perhaps it’s time to expand your business to include that service. If it’s something you cannot feasibly add to your business at this time, is there a way you can answer the customers need with a tutorial or article? If so, that’s a great thing to add to your eNewsletter. Remember, for every person who has asked you a question about your products and services, there is at least one other person who hasn’t asked yet.

3. Customer Incentives

I use the term “incentives” but what I really mean are thank you’s. With an eNewsletter you have a perfect opportunity to target people who have purchased your products or services before. By offering your customer base special deals that you don’t extend to anyone else you are showing them that there are added benefits to being a customer. Think of it as “reverse customer loyalty” – now you are showing that you are loyal to their needs.

4. Product Awareness

If you have a new product or service that fills a common customer need, don’t be shy about getting the word out. If you’re choosing products and services that match up with your customers needs you are doing them a favor by bringing it to their attention. The trick is to present the information in several different ways – a graphic ad, an article about the product’s benefits, or perhaps 10 Tips and Tricks to make the product more useful.

5. Treat People with Courtesy and Respect

In many ways this last tip relates to everything else. There can be a fine line between providing just the right amount of information and bombarding your customer/client with too much. You don’t want to be the used car salesman of the eNewsletter world. Provide an easy way for them to unsubscribe and constantly solicit for feedback on your business and your newsletter. Find a balance that meets most of your customers needs. Remember, a little thank you once in a while can go a long way.

1. Pay careful attention to design.

Just like a storefront or product display sets the ambiance for a shopping experience, so too does the design of your website. A bad design can send a prospect running for the door.

2. Be sure to greet your customers.

Make that home page all about your customers. Ask yourself, what would they want on the home page? Where would they go first? Make sure that the paths to important information are easy to find.

3. Create a dialogue with your customers.

A blog is a great way to show customers and prospects your personality. How many times have you gone into a cafe with average food, just to stay for the ambiance and the hostess who always knows your name? Sometimes the reason consumers stay with a business is based on emotion. Attempt to connect with them. Remember – a dialogue also involves you listening to them!

4. Provide them with the information needed to make a decision.

Reviews of your services or products provided by third parties is a great way to validate your website information. Provide expert insight from a recognized name to enhance your services. If you are a nursery – ask one of your local master gardeners if they would like to have a weekly spot on your website. Also, be sure to give them access to all of the information you have. Not sure how to write it out? Find out what the company says about the product and ask if you can utilize their creatives.

5. Say thank you, and make it easy to “Come Again Soon.”

Sometimes you only get once chance to hook a prospect. What happens when they’ve Googled 10 other people in your industry? Will they necessarily remember how to get back? Using a social media service such as Facebook, Twitter or even an eNewsletter allows them to easily store your information in a format they use. Providing these options shouldn’t be seen as a way to “gather fans” – but as a service offered to your customers.

Why your business doesn’t need a blog

Chance are, if you have made the jump to the internet you have a static webpage. That is, you have a website with several pages that sum up your products/services and provide a means to request a quote. If you have a small local clientel with enough work to keep you happy you do not need a blog. But if you are in need of expanding your client base or boosting your profits a blog may be a good first step into social marketing.

Blogging is simply a means of communication

Consider a blog post a way to “soft sell” your products or services to many people at once. It’s not a daily chant of “buy,buy,buy!” Instead, a blog allows you to chat up customers about what you love most: your products/services. If you own a comic book shop for example, you could blog about the latest releases and give your reviews. If you own a bookkeeping business blog some business tips that will make work easier for the client and tax time easier for both of you. Housekeeping service? Then you can blog some tips on how homeowners can keep their homes looking their best in between cleanings. Blogging is a chance to make an impression and turn a query or interest into a sale.

But I don’t have the time or experience to blog

The extent to which you use a blog to promote your business depends on what you want to accomplish and what means you have available to do it. At WeeWebWorkk we offer services for all levels of expertise. I can host your site for you and get it started with a free layout. I can consult with you via phone and then ghostwrite blog posts based on our conversations. Or I can post material that is beneficial to your clients based on the specific industry you are in. Or, if you prefer, follow the free WeeTutorials and develop your own business blog.

Remember, a blog is a form of communication between you and your clients, so be sure to use it wisely.

Hosting

LunarPages —

Graphics

Adobe Suite —

Content Management System

WordPress —

100% of things never written never get published.

You Have to Start Somewhere.

Why Associated Content Is A Great Tool for New Writers.

Procrastination Monster – Begone!

CUSTOMIZE ELANCE

There are a few settings that you can, and should, customize on your Elance pages. Afterall, your clients will be going there to find out more about you. Here are my suggestions:

• Create a catchy title for your Elance profile.
• Create a tag for that title.
• Summarize what types of writing you specialize in, and which niche(s) you prefer.
• Choose keywords that reflect the type of writing you do and your niche(s).
• Rate your skills – nothing higher than a 9! (We all have room to grow.)
• List your employment history. Your last job wasn’t as a writer? That’s ok – list the relative writing experience you gained at that job.
• Write about your experiences as a writer – especially if you have any awards, college writing experience, etc. This doesn’t have to be job related, but should show how you have gained experience to become the writer you are today.
• Payment terms can be listed, however, I always add the caveat that each job is bid individually and terms are subject to the scope of the job. (Sooooo many different variables!)
• List any writing credentials you have. None? Perhaps you have credentials in business or another field? List them. These may come in handy when you’re trying to show experience with an employers subject matter.

photo credit: Vince Kusters

I have been a fan of WordPress for several years now. I had been hard coding sites for a while and found it time consuming. Instead of providing content, I was constantly redesigning the look and feel. Then a friend introduced me to the WordPress platform – and I was in heaven. While I can still tweak the look and feel of the site to my hearts content (and without learning a completely new programming language!) it allows me to focus on what I really want to do: post quality content.

Content is King

You’ve read it over and over, that without quality content you’re website is over before it has started. So for a writer you want to make sure that the platform you choose for your website allows you to put in your content easily. I chose WordPress because of how user friendly the back end is for people who are providing content. I can access it from anywhere and put in content – and so can other authors. I want my guest authors, or myself to be able to easily put in photos, video and text and I don’t want to have to code the layout every time I get a Word document. Which leads us to the second reason WordPress is perfect for writers….

Design is Queen

Presenting the content in a clean fashion is almost as important as the content you provide. If your page is covered in several different blocks of text without formatting or color to differentiate where one thought begins and another ends, your readers will be confused. I can’t tell you how upset I have been when I clicked on an advertisement link that I thought was part of the content I was reading and then having to click back to find the original. Sometimes, the simplest design addition of a different background tint for a different section can make all the difference to your reader.

WordPress makes this easy for the writer by providing easy instructions on how to upgrade themes. You can often find these for free in theme directories. The template I am using for this website was made by David Hoyt and was found in the WordPress.com Theme collection. It’s a simple theme very well executed. I just tweaked a couple of settings and ta-daa – easy to read, classic, website. Thanks to David’s hard work, I can move beyond worrying about the design and concentrate on my content.

The other thing to keep in mind when looking at design is bandwidth. Without going into all of the details of image size reduction, you can tell if you’re website is suffering from bandwidth problems if it takes a very long time for your page to load. It doesn’t even have to be images. If you have a link to an off-site ad network that takes forever to load, it’s possible that your text will not be displayed until the ad is. This keeps your reader waiting. And if they want to look at multiple posts on your site they’re going to become easily frustrated waiting for ads to load every time they click on an internal link. Constantly check to see how long it takes your page to load and if any of your plugins are the culprits- don’t drive your visitors away!

Make sure you keep in mind that no matter how pretty yur website looks, if you don’t have the content your readers need the design means nothing. Again, content and design work in partnership to create a successful blog/website/product.

But the Pawns do All the Work!

Ease of use and navigation will also help your readers find what they’re looking for. WordPress makes this possible by offering two different types of posting: static pages and blog posts. The static pages serve as the meat and potatoes of your site. This is the content that shouldn’t change. Your prices, your portfolio, client statements, etc. This is all of the stuff you want your readers to have super easy access to.

The blog posts are part of the new wave of content marketing. Constantly changing content that helps build a relationship with your readers over time. WordPress allows you to create both types of content with the simple press of a button. Both of which are easy to edit, thus allowing you to change your prices, put new items into your portfolio or add a new quote from one of your clients.

WordPress allows you to easily update the areas of content and design so you can work on creating. With all of the other things you’re trying to accomplish as a Freelance Writer you’ll need to find tools like WordPress to simplify delivery to your audience.