Originally published by ClickTime.

Depending on who you ask, retaining customers is either valuable — or really, really valuable.

​By some estimates, a repeat customer is the equivalent of striking gold. One study found that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increased a business’s profits by 25% to 95%. On the other hand, the cost of acquiring a new customer can be steep: anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than the cost of retaining an existing one.

Cut down on expenses and increase your profit, all in one marketing strategy. Customer retention doesn’t have to be complicated, especially when your business is well established. Focus less on reaching new customers, and more on increasing the frequency and spend amount of the customers you already have. Here are five ways to increase customer retention and start growing your revenue to new heights.

1. Figure out where you’re losing customers.
There are two benefits to digging into your retention rates to see where you’re losing customers. The first, obviously, is you begin to identify areas where your customer experience can begin to improve. Are people frustrated trying to navigate your online ordering process? Is your customer service failing to resolve their issue? Do they feel disconnected from your brand after being loyal customers for so many years? When a customer closes their account or decides to stop frequenting your business, send them an email to find out why. If sending a personal email feels uncomfortable, send them a survey. You can also start to pay attention to your online reviews — and follow up directly to learn more about your customer feedback. When customer experience is the root of the problem, a better time tracker can make employees more aware of their tasks and ultimately provide better service.

The second benefit? By asking these questions, you begin to build a personal relationship with your customers. Not many companies take the time to connect directly with their clients. Even if you may not convince someone to return to your business, you will start to build a reputation as someone who cares.

2. Increase customer retention by building personal relationships.
Customers — especially millennials — want the brands they shop from to be more “authentic.” What does that mean? They want transparency, great customer service, and a personal touch. Again, customers want to see that there’s a human person behind the businesses they frequent. Look to Everlane’s “Radical Transparency” or Harry’s Shave Club for inspiration on how to make transparency work for you.

To be more authentic, you need to be committed to being honest, open, and personal. If a customer doesn’t trust you, they will find a company they can trust. Look for ways to recognize your customer as an individual with personal touches: hand-written notes, small gifts and remembering birthdays are all details that can go a long way. Even when you mess up — and every company messes up at some point — be sincere about what went wrong and open about your process to fix the problem.

3. Make your customers feel they’re part of something bigger.
It’s easier for customers to switch companies if they do not perceive any differentiated value between your company and your competitors. One way to create value in your brand? Include customers in a larger social mission. Research shows that customers are likely to ignore brands that don’t “stand for anything.” Of customers who cited they had a strong relationship with a brand, 64% reported their “shared values” as the primary driver behind that relationship.

Start by identifying who your best customers are. If you’re a local business, think about what issues in the community you can support: the local animal shelter, for example, or donating to a food drive. If your company is bigger, dive into your data to get a clear picture of your customers’ goals, pain points, and desires. Then, craft a mission statement that mirrors their language and goals.

4. Use customer accounts to make it easy for repeat purchases.
Getting your customers to set up an online account can be a tricky proposition. Some customers may not want that level of commitment: they may be wary of sharing their personal data with a business. But, customer accounts make repurchasing much easier (and pre-filled shipping information can be enough incentive for a customer to sign up!).

One tactic you may take to lead customers to create accounts? Provide the option to “create account” after the first order has been placed. This does not disrupt the checkout flow or distract someone from finishing their final purchase. At the same time, once someone has an account, it becomes much easier to retain their business. Some platforms will even allow your business to send email invitations to activate their account after the purchase is complete. If your business runs on a membership model, make sure you have a membership management software to manage members, payments, events, and more.

5. Start a customer loyalty program with perks!
Everyone loves free stuff! It turns out loyalty can be bought: and surprising your loyal customers with great perks can lead to much higher lifetime value. Discounts and free rewards are the obvious extras you can offer your best customers.
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Don’t be afraid to get a little more creative. If you’re running a B2B company, reward your customers by returning the favor (customer loyalty programs, anyone?) — and using their products or services when you can. Use your social media channels to do a little cross-promotion, or let a customer take over your account for the day. Some companies will tie their rewards back to their mission — REI’s Co-Op Dividend and American Express’ Small Business Saturday are a great examples of this. Show your customers you appreciate them, and they will return the favor!

Market research is pretty much mandatory in today’s business world. The landscape has seen a shift; businesses have unprecedented access to a vast amount of information. Those who learn how to utilize this information are discovering new levels of success. Even small businesses have access to this vast network of information. The problem is that while large corporations might have six-figure budgets to invest in research, small businesses have limitations. Don’t let those limitations stop you! Here are ten tips for finding ways to perform market research inexpensively.

Always Have a Questionnaire Ready
Make sure that you take the time to develop a questionnaire so that it’s crisp and objective. Then have it ready to hand out to people. Creating in-house surveys is an affordable way to gather data from real customers, so it’s important that you tap into this source of information. Almost every successful company has a system for getting their customers to fill out questionnaires. Look at your receipt next time you go shopping, and you’ll see for yourself. In order to create your questionnaire, you’ll need to define the objective, develop questions, and then find a way to convince people to fill it out. Companies normally offer discount codes to those who fill out their quick surveys.

Create an Online Marketing Survey
This is probably the most affordable option available for polling consumers who have never used your business. Polls are one form of online surveys. They are generally taken on social media or across blogs. Aside from polls though, there are websites like Survey Monkey and Easy Polls that will host your surveys for a small fee. They allow you to target specific demographics so the information will match your needs. Surveys help you discover ways to make your products better and to provide services that your competitors do not.
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Develop a CRM System
Most businesses focus on gathering data from numerous outside sources but forget about the data they already have. If you don’t already have one, you need to develop a CRM system so that you are gathering real data from your current customers. This system is very cheap to install and implement, but that’s not even the best part. It gives you high-quality information about your current consumers.

Analyze the Competition
By knowing your competition’s strengths and weaknesses, you’ll be able to make slight changes that differentiate your business. Everything you have done up to this point should provide you with a wealth of information about your competition. This step is more about analyzing that data. Try to forecast what your competition will do in the future. Determine ways to offer products/services that offset the weaknesses of your competition. For example, Apple products are wonderful, but their weakness is cost. They are expensive. Therefore, other businesses offer more affordable products to pull in customers who are unable to afford the high costs of Apple products.

News and Trade Journals
This is a secondary source of research that is used by a lot of businesses. Subscribe to magazines within your niche. Read online journals. Anytime one of your competitors makes a change, you will see it in news and trade journals. Trust me when I say that there’s always a reason behind a successful company making changes. It could be a shift in the market. Maybe they have forecast a future trend that they want to set up for? Keeping up with business news allows you to use their movement as a sign, so all you’ll have to do at that point is determine what that sign means.

Consider Hiring Interns for Research
There are several tasks that an intern can help with when it comes to research. The most obvious is that they can browse the internet, researching your niche and creating a detailed report for you. Interns can also visit places to personally deliver questionnaires to the market. Every questionnaire you get back is more data entered into the system.

Transform Events into Research Venues
Do you attend conferences and trade shows? If so, then this serves as a wonderful opportunity to get to know your target market. A little face-on-face time can go a long way. If you do not attend conferences and trade shows, then consider adding them to your schedule.

Use Social Media to CrowdSource Research
Facebook is an amazing platform to engage with your target market. You can ask simple questions and let your followers answer them. This will lead to conversations that you can read. The sheer amount of information you can get here is incredible. For example, make it a weekly thing to post a question. Then give it a few days to brew, go back in and read all of the comments and create a report.

Use Information That’s Already There
You’ll be surprised at how many studies you can find online that have already been conducted by companies in your niche. Don’t ignore these; use them to your advantage. You can either hire a virtual assistant or allow an intern to do this work for you. I don’t recommend doing this yourself because it’s a real drain on time.

Hire a Research Firm
Your final option is to hire a market research firm to take care of this for you. This is by far the easiest solution, but it does cost money. However, when you figure in the time it would take you to follow through with the nine steps in this post, that cost is justified. Plus, the information you receive will be of much higher quality.
If you do choose to hire a research firm, consider using our services at Research Optimus.
The overall goal of market research is to either confirm a hypothesis you might have about your market or to gain insight so you can predict future trends. Small businesses must be able to separate themselves from everyone else. This can only be done if you can figure out what it is that consumers want that is not being offered by your competition. Then you simply build your product/service around that idea.