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Without customers, your business is nothing. No customers and clients means that there’s nobody to buy your products and sign up to your services. This isn’t a sustainable business model, and you’ll eventually go bankrupt and be forced to close your company. Nobody wants their business to end up like this, so what can you do to stop it?
Communicating with your customers is arguably one of the best ways to ensure this never happens. Of course, there’s usually a balance that you need to strike in order to deliver on customer expectations while also maintaining control over your products and services. But regardless of how you attempt to balance this, you should always be willing to listen to your customers because they could offer you some fantastic feedback.
But how do you get closer to your customers so that they’re willing to offer criticism? Here are some ideas.
Engage with your customers on social media
Social media is perhaps one of the best platforms for a business to communicate with their audience. This is because these are open platforms where everyone can just have a conversation with anyone they want to. For a business, you can be open to speaking to your audience, answering questions, and even responding to feedback.
Every small business has a goal of getting noticed on social media. It can be hard at first since you don’t really have followers to spread the word, but as you get noticed and your brand starts to grow, getting on social media becomes increasingly important as both a way to advertise your company and its products, but also to engage with your customers.
Provide ways for customers to give feedback
If you aren’t giving your customers methods to give feedback, then you’re not going to receive any–it’s as simple as that. There are a couple of options, such as using services like Qualtrics to create surveys and generate reports. There are lots of Qualtrics alternatives as well, all of which can help you communicate with your customers in order to understand their preferences and also get closer to them.
You can even offer some incentive for giving feedback on your products and services. For instance, every time they complete a survey, you can give them a small discount on their next purchase. You can even combine this with your business newsletter to encourage people to sign up to your mailing list. Using these two strategies is a great way to attract new customers and retain them.
Make appearances in public
If you can afford the time, effort, and money, then it’s never a bad idea to try and make public appearances. This can mean renting a booth at a trade show, attending public events, or even just having a physical store.
These are great options to get closer to your customers as it gives them a chance to communicate with you directly. There are many different kinds of events that you can utilize as well, but the activities and audience you attract will largely depend on your business.
