Do you want customers to spend more money during their dining experience? You’ve got the patrons but their average spend is lower than you’d like?   Your patrons want to be made to feel like their dollar is driving further with each visit. They arrive at your venue with high expectations of value.

In previous blogs, I discussed ideas to increase your loyal customers and one way was to get ‘social’

“Socialise:
Social media has really opened an entire new world of business opportunities and allow you to promote yourself to your customers (and their friends) directly in real time. By offering a promotion or discount to your followers, at times that are quiet, or promote special interest occasions this will give people an incentive to purchase from you, while providing you with a channel to directly communicate your business benefits, promotions and news. Win-win! You can then pay to promote the offer to reach a wider circle of potential customers and patrons.”

I want to help you with my 5 tips to gain more revenue from your existing customers using social media.

For many companies, connecting with their existing customers is a natural fit for social media. These companies are seeing conversations about their brands, their competitors and their industry that provide them with an opportunity to engage others in dialogue.

There are two types of strategies that revolve around existing customers on the social media channel. The first is to offer customer service help through the social channel.

The second strategy is to attempt to increase value to the customer experience through the social channel.

The value of the customer base for companies is substantial. We’ve all heard that it costs more to get a new customer than to keep your existing ones. So it makes sense that we would see more companies developing strategies to engage customers with the social channel.

Social media represents a low-cost way for companies to engage customers in two-way dialogue and develop deeper relationships. Relationships are a benefit that is difficult to achieve with other marketing channels. One often-overlooked opportunity is to use social media to strategically drive incremental revenue from existing customers.

Tip #1: Give Customers Incentives for Making More Frequent Purchases

You have the ability to increase revenue by encouraging customers to make purchases more frequently.

For service industries, this may mean promoting add-on services, upgrades or premium offerings. For product industries, this includes encouraging customers to come back more often. How can you do this with social media?

You can offer deals and specials that are exclusive to your social media followers based on the level of customer or the frequency of purchase.

For example, you could offer exclusive discounts to your social media followers based upon the number of visits they have, or visit in a soft period or you could do a coupon for social media followers that provides a 50% discount off their fifth purchase etc.

Tip #2: Give Customers a Reason to Spend More at Each Purchase

The second way you can drive revenue from existing customers is to get them to spend more at each purchase. So if your average transaction is $35, the goal would be to get the customer to spend $50. This can also be accomplished by exclusive deals for social media fans and followers.

You’ve probably seen coupon campaigns many times that are designed to achieve this. Coupons such as $25 off a $100 purchase are aimed at increasing the amount spent at each purchase. Why do they work? In consumers’ effort to get to a $100 purchase, they tend to spend more. You can also look to promote package deals for their services that bundle offerings together. In this case, the social channel is used to drive awareness of the offerings with a clear call to action, versus promoting deals or coupons like we typically see for product-based industries.

Tip #3: Combine Email Marketing Offers

Keep in mind it’s important to maintain a balance of content on your social channels. The general rule is less than 20% of your content should be about your company. Therefore, a mix of your own content with information from relevant third parties is important.

The last thing you want is to have a social channel that is flooded with deals and promotions with very little customer engagement.

It will be important to think through why a customer would be interested in buying what you are offering and what the process is for them to actually make a purchase so that you can optimize the path to conversation from the social channel to the sales funnel.

Tip #4: Educate Your Customers about Your Other Products and Services

Another important element of increasing sales is to make sure customers are aware of the other types of services or products your company offers. You can do this by featuring a product or service profile of the week, which provides you with the opportunity to highlight premium services and explain what they are and why customers should care.

Don’t be boring; combine the types of content you use to educate the customer with blog posts, photos, webinars and videos.

Tip #5: Provide Consistent Value

At the end of the day, it’s difficult to keep an audience engaged if you’re constantly running another promotion on your social channels. Therefore, it’s important to find a way to balance your content and provide value to customers.

If your customers find value in the content you produce for your social channels, they are far more likely to keep coming back for more.

As you consider how to grow your customer base through the social channel, it’s important that you create a win-win situation. If you are only there to serve your own needs, customers will recognise your attitude early. Instead, find a way to combine your desire to increase revenues with the thing that motivates your customers the most.

I’m always delighted to help you with more ideas about where else you can increase your revenue through other means in a creative forum. If you’re interested in seeing more on The Training Establishment, click here to see what areas we can help you in: