In an age of Social Media, Omni-Channel Retailing and extending global connections, the choices are becoming greater by the day for consumers. With so much choice, we are becoming more and more driven by price and service when making buying decisions. The flow on effect from this means that businesses are needing to shift focus to brand recognition, values and a strong reputation for great products and services in order to keep customers on board.  Keeping up can be daunting, but there are some simple things you can do to help to improve customer retention within your business and keep your brand heart beating strongly.

Developing strong customer acquisition and customer retention strategies are extremely important to your business’ longevity and to your online reputation. Though the cost associated and overall time spent to acquire customers is typically higher than that of customer retention, both elements have a direct effect on a business’ success and should be regarded equally. With the ever-growing Internet and Social Media space small and large businesses alike have enormous opportunities to reach new prospects and hold on to their established clients.  

As a small business owner, having a digital toolkit to help run your business will not only give you back some time but will ensure that your business looks and runs like a successful business.  These beauties are Connect Plus must-have tools, we just couldn’t successfully run our business without them in fact!

Social Media Marketing works when it connects with our emotions, and no seasonal selling period has the opportunity to connect emotionally than Christmas. So why do so many retailers focus on discounting rather than connecting with their customers? Evoking emotion is a way of tapping into motivation, a way of bypassing pure logic alone, and a way of demonstrating that your brand cares about things, that it has a personality and a ‘human side’. So this Christmas, be social. 

Let’s put it out there, it is not overstating things to say that social media has changed the world. Along with the web and mobile, social media has changed how we communicate. More than that, it has changed how we behave and that in turn is changing the world of business. Today every business needs to make social media a part of their strategy. 

Christmas, it's a word that strikes terror into the best business owner, marketer or anyone working in retail but it's also the most wonderful time of the year with 40% of revenue for many businesses coming from the month of December alone.  And that figure alone should have you diving for the paper to start drafting your promotional campaign to ensure that you maximise the opportunities the season brings.

The connected customer has emerged as the driving force in a world of constant innovation, mobility, and disruption. New technologies have put customers in the driver’s seat of the marketplace giving them power over which brands sink or swim in the digital age. Businesses that treat customers with awareness and intelligence and put the customer experience at the centre of their business strategies will succeed in this new connected world.

Vanity metrics simply don’t affect your bottom line. When you measure things, you want to measure things you can test, improve, and simplify in order to build the company’s business. Driving more page views without noticing the high bounce rate doesn’t do that. Neither does having 10,000 followers - none of whom like, comment or share your content.

One of the most fundamental lessons that every business should know is that it costs around six to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. In today’s ultra-competitive market, where revenues are under pressure every quarter and margins are continuously squeezed, this lesson is more relevant than ever.