It is universally acknowledged that to earn a sale from a customer is incredibly difficult. Depending on the industry you're in and the price of your products, it could take weeks or months to encourage a customer to do business with your brand.

Even if you're in the FMCG industry where impulse buys are the norm, the first purchase is always the hardest to get, let alone the home appliance industry. Repeat sales can prove to be more valuable than new customers, simply because you have to invest less in each recurring purchase, meaning that your return on investment goes up each time they make another purchase.

If you're looking for quick, simple and effective ways to generate repeat business in some industry including FMCG industry and Durable Consumer Goods industry, for example you are a home appliance distributor, the following strategies will serve you well.

Build relationships with a loyalty program

Loyalty programs help keep your brand top of mind for consumers, which is one of the best ways you can reward your VIP customers and win them back.

To carry a loyalty program, to be frank, is to let customers earn cash back on purchases. For example, a customer gets 10 points for every $1 he spends, or once he’s accumulated 100 points, he can redeem them at checkout for $1 off his next order. If he or she buy an expensive product, like refrigerator by $500, then the redemption is attractive.

It may reduce your profit to carry a loyalty program. But compare with the money you’d have to spend to acquire just one new customer, offering customers a 10% discount toward future sales is profitable in the long run.

After a customer makes a purchase, you could send a follow-up email offering 10% of his next order, good for 30 days. Or offer $10 off a $40 purchase. Get creative. You could also include a discount code with each product that you ship.

Keep in contact with your customers

If you want to start using strategies that not only help you win back customers but also makes sure that they never go too far to win back. Send them emails regularly - but don’t go overboard. Send them special offers, e.g., 25% off; buy 2 get 1 free.

Be sure to send them your newsletter, noting all the great deals you’re offering, as well as your new products. Sometimes just giving your customers early access to new products is enough to let them know you’re thinking of them (and pre-sales never hurts).

Make it easy for your customers to log in to your site. Attract them to follow you on Facebook and Twitter or anywhere else.

Remarketing

Re-targeting is where ads are displayed around the web to people who have already engaged with your website or are part of your contact database (as a lead, subscriber or existing customer).

Using display ad retargeting, you can re-capture attention by ”upselling or downselling” across the marketing funnel and re-engage your audience across the web. This helps you to generate attention and leads by addressing relevant challenges to each stage of the customer journey and helps to reinforce brand messaging.

To do retargeting, you can add a piece of JavaScript to your website. This script captures the details of those who visit your site by placing a cookie in their browser. Through cookie matching, users are added to an audience that is available for re-targeting for up to 180 days.

Users are then served relevant ads as they browse across the web and on social media.

Use FAQs & Help Pages

According to a survey, 70% of website users now expect a company’s website to include a self-service application. This supports the most recent found that buyers are now using the self-service FAQ pages on a company’s website just as often as speaking with an agent on the phone.

Self-service expectations are high. By creating an effective FAQ, you are delivering an excellent service. But that’s not all. An effective FAQ can also help you increase sales, reduce incoming calls and help you build trust.

Your FAQs need to cover common questions for everyone, but each individual visitor must be able to easily find their own specific concerns.If there are a lot of questions, then group them by topic or theme.

An effective FAQ should be written exactly as you would expect to hear questions and answers in real life between a prospect and a member of your sales team. First, think carefully about the demographic you are targeting. Your prospects should be able to hear the questions in their own head as they read them. So instead of the standard ‘Welcome’ message at the top of the page, you can use “Hi. How can we help?”

Over-Deliver on Customer Requests

Find out what the consumer wants and then over-deliver on their expectations.

To really stand out from the crowd, you’ll need to deliver on promises and delight customers in the process. The opportunities to inspire and surprise customers are endless! Accepting a return you might not normally take, shipping out a package earlier than expected, and providing information before it’s asked for are all great ways to over-deliver.

Over-delivering on expectations inspires delight and excitement in customers, upping the odds that they’ll come back for more.

Moving customers from acquisition through engagement and ultimately retaining them is the only way to put your hard-earned marketing efforts to work for you to enable long-term success. With a wide variety of value-adding marketing content, perfectly personalized win-back emails, and a loyalty-building rewards program, you’ll be well on your way to turning all your past sales into repeat customers that not only purchase from you, but love being part of your brand community while they’re at it.