Strategy

How to Convert 1-Time Buyers into Loyal Customers

Once you’ve run your Holiday Season campaigns over Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the year, how can you make sure first-time buyers return to make additional purchases in the future? Read on to see what it takes to win your audience after the most famous shopping period of the year. 

Millie D'Arcangelo

Copy Writer at The Next Ad

Nov 25, 2019

How to begin

The path to converting 1-time customers into loyal customers isn’t easy. Luckily, you’ve already called their attention, and they most likely will recognise your brand if they see it again.

But how do you ensure these buyers will turn to you not only one more time but for the rest of their customer journey?

The first step is to turn 1-time buyers into ‘repeat buyers’. These customers will be more likely to spend more money on new and more expensive products since they already know your brand. You’re basically skipping the ‘winning and persuading your customer’ part. Once you’ve charmed them with your business, they’ll be liable to even promote your business to other people which, in other words, means ‘free publicity’.

But is this the same as ‘loyal customers’?

Loyal customers and companies have a mutually-beneficial relationship. The customer gets what they want from your business (probably your services or products meet their needs) whilst you benefit from their exclusivity. 

Repeat buyers aren’t necessarily loyal; they can still turn to other brands to purchase similar products, only that they frequent your business more often and are more prone to engage with your products.

But how do I earn it, you may ask. The next sections will give you insights on how to follow this path to customer loyalty.

How to Convert your 1-time Customer: It’s all about the data.

1. Collect data

The foundation for bringing in customers’ loyalty is to collect data. The main reason for this is that, if you’re going to persuade your customers to become exclusive, you need to have a source to take the information from, which you will later analyse.

Ways of collecting data include benefitting from traffic influx to your website. If you’ve been advertising during the Holiday Season, you’ll probably have installed the Facebook Pixel/Google Tag on your website. These two tools will assist you with finding information about your customers; not only the number of purchases or cart abandonment rate but also more details about their behaviour. Having your tracking system installed is, therefore, essential.

In summary, you can’t convert 1-time customers into loyal ones without having a base in the first place. After all, it’s like our daily life; first, when you try to get to know someone, you ‘collect data’ about them, then you ‘analyse’ and ponder on how they behave, and finally, you’re potentially going to develop a relationship.

If you haven’t used a tracking system during the Holiday Season, please do so next year! And not only for these campaigns but also for any type during the year. Without data, your business won’t know which direction to take.

2. Analyse the data

Now that you’ve collected the data, you need to analyse it. In this case, you can take a look at the final results of this year’s Holiday Season. Questions to ask yourself are: Who are your potential customers, and how would you describe their behaviour? When do people purchase (is it during the morning or the evening, and what time)? How many people abandon their carts after mulling over whether to buy or not?

So now, instead of data, we’ll be talking about insights. These insights will allow us to discover their needs so that we know exactly how, when, and where we will approach them.

3. Segment your new customers for re-targeting

Alright, so now you know how your customers behave. Considering that, you need to create sets of audiences that match these insights. For example, if you know that the main customers have been young adults, take advantage of this and prepare specific audiences to match their needs. If you feel adults could turn into loyal customers as well, segment them into another audience. Don’t mix them up.

Bearing this in mind, creating personalised content that fits your customers’ needs will also be of great importance. If we take the previous example into account, you’re probably going to adjust your content so that it fits with youngsters from 18 to 25 years old. This includes specific language, particular images that will catch their attention, or addressing topics you know they’ll be likely to engage with.

4. Launch campaigns to encourage customers to come back

Your audiences are set now, which means it’s time to launch campaigns to bring your customers back. These audiences you’ve built already know you, so not only do you need to encourage them to consider your company but also to purchase a product again. 

And that’s where the cycle begins.

Post-holiday engagement is crucial now, and the only way to get it is to reach your 1-time customers with the personalised content you’ve built, and by deciding on specific strategies that will inevitably lead them to the shopping trolley again. 

Examples of these strategies involve:

• Up-selling: encouraging customers to purchase a higher number of, or even more expensive, products.
• Cross-selling campaigns: encouraging customers to purchase different products. Typical catchy phrases are ‘also frequently bought with this product’ and ‘other similar products’.
• Personalised multi-channel campaigns: appeal to different placements when launching campaigns. This means that you shouldn’t merely go to Facebook, but also turn to Instagram and Google, and as many channels you wish, really. In this way, your customers will find it more difficult to ignore your ads.
• Offer discounts and deals: by giving the customers the chance to purchase in your company again with a specific benefit, they’ll be more likely to drop by. 10% off in their purchase, perhaps? Free delivery? 15% off in their next purchase? A free small gift?

5. Encourage loyal customers to continue engaging

Engagement comes to us in many forms, but one of the most crucial is feedback.  Nowadays, feedback is of the utmost importance in platforms like Google or specific sites related to your products. For example, when going on holidays, you’ll probably find yourself looking at other customers’ reviews of that specific hotel on TripAdvisor. Encourage your customers to leave these reviews and rate your business (you know they’ll give you a high score because they’re loyal), resulting in a high company image boost! Some companies even have rewards for those who rate their businesses, such as a free drink the next time if they’re a cafe, or a 5% discount voucher. It’s incredible how these little things make such a difference.

 And finally, don’t quit the engagement yourself. Don’t abandon your loyal customers; instead, keep targeting them and even rewarding them for being loyal. What’s the point in having customer loyalty if you’re going to lose it? Try and give them a loyalty card, or a permanent discount on a specific category of products. 

Conclusion: collect, analyse, segment, launch, and encourage

Customers can be stubborn, sometimes. Even if they fancied your company, turning them into loyal customers is a tough task. What I mean is that bringing customers back to your business isn’t such an ordeal, but earning their exclusivity means much more than that. It means the customer trusts your business a hundred per cent. They know your products are the best and cannot be compared to those of other companies.

So you’ll probably see yourself wondering whether you’ve become a loyal customer from any brand. Of course you have! If you’re already going to the same supermarket every week for groceries, then you’re already a loyal customer! Sometimes it’s easier than you think, and other times it’s merely a process in which you ask yourself ‘How can it be this hard?’

Yet, with the previous recommendations, you’ll find that turning 1-time buyers into loyal customers isn’t that difficult. Find a way to recognise what they want and give them what they want, and try to keep them with you until the end. Customers are not that different from companies, after all. 

We all just want processes like these to be easy-peasy.