For any business out there, your customer base is your lifeline that keeps the ball rolling. Thus, it makes sense to look at strategies that can help you gain an advantage over your competitors.
While there are several tactics you can employ to impress new customers, the first impression you give matters a lot. Regardless of your niche, customers tend to have a preference for the kind of establishments they want to shop at.
To not pay attention to the factors that impress new customers go “Wow! This place is exactly my vibe!” would be a mistake. In this article, let’s look at three ways to impress your customers and turn them into loyal clients.
3 easy ways to impress new customers and clients:
1. Let Your Brand Image Shine Like a Star
We hear a lot about brand image from marketing gurus and there’s a lot of advice going around. Unfortunately, a common tactic that you can observe is that people simply try to imitate the established players.
They may boast on their About Us page about how ‘innovative’ they are, but their offline and online presentations paint a different picture. On their websites, they all adopt the same minimalist vibe and take inspiration from Apple.
Sure, it’s a safe option, but there’s no excuse for doing this when you have modern AI-driven website builders like Hocoos that make website building a breeze. If you are a business that has access to such services and still go the default WordPress template, you really aren’t doing yourself any favors.
Look, we aren’t saying you need to go all flashy and choose bright colors and weird UX and UI choices. No, all we are saying is… add some personality to your presentation. Let customers know that you are proud and happy to showcase a unique style. People are tired of businesses hiding behind generic, safe personalities. Be different.
2. Overwhelm With Quality
These days, “meets expectations” is not enough to impress new customers. Remember, there are hundreds of other businesses all competing with you in your niche. Odds are, that their products aren’t all too different from yours. It’s not uncommon to see different businesses field the same product sourced from the same distributor.
Thus, to really break through and make a great first impression on a customer, you want to overwhelm them with quality. If you ensure that even your baseline products are superior to your competitor’s mid-end equivalent, you are set.
Of course, it’s going to be more expensive and eat into your margins, but if Apple has taught us anything, it’s that quality has its own marketing value.
Even if it might mean selling your cheapest products at a higher rate than your competitors, it will be worth it. Apple wouldn’t have the brand image and identity it has today if it decided to sell lower-quality, $150 smartphones. They set their quality expectations too high and move from there.
When you overwhelm customers with high quality, you create the image that when you patronize our business, you get nothing but the best.
3. Keep Product Offerings Simple
The burden of choice can be overwhelming for a lot of people. If they visit your store or website and are greeted with hundreds of product types and options, it doesn’t help as much as you think.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to you if you are aiming for some sort of Amazon equivalent. However, it is important if you are focusing on a specific niche or field. There is a sort of satisfaction and calmness that customers experience when they don’t have to deal with evaluating and comparing products against each other.
Yes, some enjoy the process of finding the best value for money, but a large selection can often reduce sales.
This has been observed in research as well. One study by Sheena Iyengar from Columbia University had a store offer jam samples. They tested two sets of samples. One with 24 flavors and one with 6 flavors.
The results showed that only 3% of people bought products when 24 flavors were offered. In comparison, 30% of people made purchases with the 6-flavor set. Choices are good, but don’t let it overwhelm your customer.
Conclusion
To impress new customers isn’t just for bragging rights. Any business that wants to build a loyal base needs to understand that this technique is highly effective. Mediocre products and services might have been okay in the past, but with the amount of competition most businesses face, you want to up your game.
