Building up a brand and a loyal customer base takes time, but achieving this does not mean that you can ease off on the marketing strategies.
Every business will have competitors, and with new businesses forming all the time, the number of competitors can easily increase.
Defensive marketing strategies are primarily targeted at your customer base, with the aim to ensure that they remain your customers rather than being tempted by offers from your competitors.
Price strategies
One way that competitors can tempt customers away from you is through competitive pricing. You need to find a way to counter this through your own pricing strategies. Exactly what these are will vary depending on the product or services that your business offers. Common strategies include “buy one, get one free”, a price reduction on certain products or services, and sale events.
Pricing strategies may not always mean reducing your prices. If you are retailing luxury items, then your customer base may be suspicious of anything that seems cheap, and emphasising the quality will be a far better strategy.
The key point is to ensure that your customers get good value for money. If they are happy with this, then they will be less likely to look elsewhere.
New products and services
It is easy for an established business to start to look tired and not as up to date as their customers would like. This means that they will be far more likely to be tempted by a new business that offers something different. Keep on top of the latest developments in your industry and see how they can benefit your customers.
An established reputation will include a high level of trust from your customers. This makes you the ideal company to introduce something new, with an advantage over a less established competitor.
Advertising a new product or service will enable you to take advantage of your reputation for reliability while ensuring that your brand remains at the forefront of new developments.
Good communication
Bargain prices and new products are no use if your loyal customers do not know about them. In-store advertising will only inform them if they regularly pass or visit the business, but the digital age has opened up many ways of communicating easily with your customers. Building up an email list of your customers can allow you to send them information on the latest news.
Social media is another area that allows you to communicate directly with your customers. Promoting a price reduction or new product on Facebook or Twitter is quick and easy to do, with the potential to reach many.
Protect your image
Bad reviews and negative publicity will prevent new customers from coming to your business and may put off loyal ones. The internet provides an easy way for negative feedback to be left, and much of it may be malicious rather than genuine.
It is important to respond to genuine criticism in a polite, professional way, but when your business is being bombarded by spam reviews, it can easily drive down your rating. These reviews can also appear high in internet searches, meaning that they harm the image that you wish to portray.
Using a professional service to keep your brand image genuine and positive is a step well worth taking. Reputation Defender utilises the latest technology to boost your online image and keep malicious attacks on your business from appearing highly in internet searches.
Reward loyalty
However much you wish to attract new customers, it is important to remember that established customers are likely to represent a higher proportion of your profits. Rewarding those makes them feel valued and encourages them to shop with you more frequently. It’s a win-win! The form of these rewards will vary depending on the nature of your business.
Many businesses use a reward card where their customers collect points that they can spend in store. If you provide a service, you could offer loyal customers a discount. An attraction or leisure service might offer every tenth visit at a reduced price or even free.
Effective marketing campaigns
An effective defensive ad campaign needs to tackle your competitors. Use them to stress your strengths, particularly when these draw attention to the weakness of your competitors.
Before starting this campaign, make sure that you understand why you are losing customers to your competitors and how to attract your target market back to you.
You also need to make sure that the campaign remains true to your brand image so that your loyal customers remain that way.
The post Six defensive marketing strategies appeared first on TheMarketingblog.
from TheMarketingblog http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2019/02/six-defensive-marketing-strategies/
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