Overview: Attracting a potential customer is hard work, but it’s not the end of the process! If you want to build up to a transaction and create a new loyal customer, you have to engage with your prospect to keep them interested. Read on for some engaging advice!

Last week on our blog, we talked about how to attract new customers by thinking strategically, looking in the right places, and showing your audience that you understand them.

So let’s say you’ve grabbed the attention of some new potential customers. What do you do next? How do you strengthen those relationships and turn those initial contacts into transactions? In this blog post, we’ll provide some advice on how to engage with new customers.

CRM Is Your Friend 

Engaging with new customers is all about establishing relationships. You can do this by maintaining communication with your prospects, your leads, and your newest buyers. But how do you keep track of them all?

We highly recommend that you use CRM software. CRM means “customer relationship management,” and it takes the form of software that helps you organize crucial information about your customers — and provides you with important insights on how best to stay engaged with them.

A good CRM system will allow you to create entries for potential customers, then keep track of your history with them. This can include a detailed history of phone calls and emails, as well as important notes on contracts, proposals, and changes to the status of your projects with that client. CRM will also provide you with a central location to take notes on your clients, so you can maintain a high level of engagement with them.

You may have heard of some of the higher-profile CRMs like Salesforce, Monday, and HubSpot, but there are a variety of CRMs out there with different levels of complexity. Some of them even come in basic versions that are free to use! Shop around a little and see which CRM sounds like it best fits your business needs. (Here at MyUnlimitedWP, we’ve had good experiences with Zoho CRM.)

>> Related Reading: Best CRM Software for Small Business

Demonstrate Your Expertise  (But Don’t Get Too “Tech-y”)

Here’s one that should come fairly easily. If a potential new customer has noticed you and is considered paying for your products or services, you’ve already made some great progress. But your potential customer will want to be as confident as possible in your abilities if they’re going to become a paying customer, and continue making transactions with you.

To further this cause, try your best to demonstrate that you’re an expert in your field. This can happen naturally in the course of your communications with them — if you can answer their questions, you’re in good shape. Make sure everyone on your team who comes in contact with potential customers is also well-informed.

It’s okay if there are members of your team who don’t have a detailed answer for every single client question, but if they can’t answer a question in the moment, make sure they know which team member to refer the question to.

Here’s something else to consider: Remember in our blog on attracting customers, when we said it’s important to make sure customers know you understand them? Well, it’s just as important that those customers understand you. And this means two different things: For one thing, keep your brand voice consistent so your clients feel like they have a good grasp of your company’s identity.

Also, make sure they can literally understand what you’re talking about when you communicate with them! Your new customers are probably not as well-versed in the terminology and logistical language of your field as you are. So ditch the industry jargon in favor of clear, simplified language. Nobody likes to feel like they’re “the stupid one” in a business transaction!

>> Related Reading: Build and Maintain Customer Relationships

Have Conversations 

If you’re a business owner and you’re reading this blog on the internet right now, we’re fairly confident in guessing that your business has an online presence. You probably have some social media accounts, and chances are you have a Google Business profile. And you probably use these platforms to provide potential customers with information about your business.

But do you ever have two-way interactions with them on those platforms? If not, it’s a good time to start. Instead of just publishing a post on Facebook or Instagram and walking away, come back later to see if anyone has commented, and take the opportunity to respond back.

And if a customer leaves a review — especially a positive review — on your Google Business listing, why not leave a note to thank them, and tell them you look forward to seeing them again?

These are quick, simple actions, but they can go a long way toward showing your audience that your business is run by real people who want to develop real relationships with real customers. In today’s “extremely online” world, a business that engages with customers by participating in conversations with them has the edge over a business that never acknowledges its customers’ comments.

>> Related Reading: How to Respond to Google Reviews

Engage Your Customers With Good Content 

As we previously established, you want your potential customers to get the message that you’re helpful and knowledgeable — and you can do this by providing them with good content that will be accessible to them both before and after you establish a business relationship with them. Here are a few ways you can do that:

• Maintain a Frequently Asked Questions (or FAQ) page on your website so searchers can see you have the answers they’re seeking.

• Send out a company newsletter with information and links to resources of interest to your audience. (Just don’t send out too many or your subscribers might get annoyed and UNsubscribe!)

• Post videos featuring useful info or tutorials related to your area of expertise.

• Maintain a blog on your website, and regularly update it with topics of interest to your audience, and full of relevant information.

These are just a few ways you can engage with your prospects and put them on the path to becoming loyal customers! Just make sure all of your content is high-quality and demonstrates your dedication to helping your customers.

Reminder: Avoid the Hard Sell 

Engaging with customers is all about proving to them that you have the solutions to their problems, and making it easy for them to communicate with you. But remember, don’t come on too strong!

When you’re communicating with a new prospect, don’t get pushy. Don’t jump straight to  sales pitches or pressuring them to sign a contract. If you do, they’re likely to head for the virtual exit!

Instead, take it easy. Take some time to get to know them, and to let them get to know you. Demonstrate your value and your willingness to provide solutions to their problems, and you’re much more likely to gain their trust (and their patronage)!

In Conclusion 

There are many things you can do to engage with new customers, including several that we didn’t get to in this blog post. If you maintain good communication, show evidence of your expertise, and make an effort to develop genuine relationships, you’ll stay on the right path to making transactions and earning customers’ loyalty.

We hope this blog post has been of value to you! We publish new blog posts on a regular basis, and we have a large archive of previous posts, so we hope you’ll come back and read more in the future.

We also hope you’ll consider MyUnlimitedWP for your website support needs! We offer subscription-based plans that include security, updates, upgrades, and changes for websites built with WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and more. If you’d like to find out more, drop us a line… We’d love to engage with you!