There is a concept that is often overlooked by different businesses, and this is Post-Purchase Marketing. As the name itself introduces it, this is a marketing strategy that is applied once a purchase is done. This means that your target audience already knew your brand, visited your site or online shop, selected the desired product, and went through the purchasing process.
For many digital marketers, this is where the process ends, however, there are certain things that you could still do once the purchase is done to continue in touch with your customers and strengthen the relationship between your brand and them. This concept is also referred to as post-sale marketing, and in this article, we will show you the benefits of having it among your arsenal of strategies to continue engaging with your customers and keep growing your business.
Definition of Post-Purchase Marketing
We as small business owners are for sure familiar with some of the processes that are required to grow our online presence, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, or email marketing.
However, sometimes we may think that it all ends after we get our target audience to perform a purchase with us, especially if we are new to the digital marketing world. As you can imagine, this should not be where our efforts end, if we made our visitors convert into customers, it is now a good idea to try to make them come back to us and continue purchasing.
This is what post-purchase marketing is all about. It refers to all the strategies that can be applied in a post-sale customer journey. The idea is to continue being part of their lives, generate an intimate relationship between them and us, and make sure that we are among the list of brands that they will go to when they need something related to our business.
How Post-Purchase Marketing Can Help Your Business
We truly believe that paying special attention to your post-sales marketing strategy is a crucial thing that every business needs to have in mind in order to continue expanding the limits of their brands. While it is crucial to grow your reach and increase Shopify sales, it is also important to look for the additional benefits of this strategy. Remember that you will be directing your efforts to a reduced audience that has already converted once, so the probability of them turning into loyal customers increases. In the following sections, we will mention some of the benefits that a post-sales marketing strategy will provide to your brand.
Better Engagement
If you continue connecting with your customers and providing additional valuable information, benefits, special offers, or anything that they care about, it is more likely that the relationship between you and them will strengthen.
This will make your customers feel like they are understood by your brand, as you share the same tastes, interests, or passions, and you will be taken as an authoritative voice in your area and will become a place to go to when they’re searching about the latest trends in your area.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Another interesting benefit of keeping close to your customers after they make a purchase is that it could serve as ‘free marketing’ if they recommend your products to friends or acquaintances.
You should always be around offering interesting data, latest trends, special offers, and increasing engagement as we mentioned in our previous title. This will lead to your customers being satisfied with the service that they are receiving for their purchase. A happy customer is always willing to recommend such services to friends, and this is where our business increases its visibility through word-of-mouth.
Improving Your Products Based on Feedback
Keeping in touch with customers is also an excellent way to see what they think about your brand. It is not only about them receiving information or offers, but also giving them the space to share what your products are to them, how they help them in their everyday life, and what could be done better in a future version of the product.
It is very important to be always open to criticism, and let your customers know that you hear what they have to say and that you will take their words to make your products even better.
What Can You Do To Implement It?
As you can see, there are several benefits that regular pre-sales marketing tools cannot provide, and can only be obtained after a purchase is made by keeping in touch with your clients. However, you could be thinking about what ways there are to put into practice a post-purchase marketing strategy, and here are some ideas that you could have in your arsenal to start thinking about it.
Social Media Interactions
When an individual reaches your brand and makes a purchase, it is likely that they already follow you on one or several social media platforms. However, it is a great practice to encourage them to do it if they don’t.
Social media is a great place to continue building a relationship with them and generating a community of people interested in the same things. Also, some of these platforms have integrated e-shops that facilitate the purchase process, like TikTok Shop or Instagram.
By being active on your social media platforms and interacting with your customers through comments, reactions, or likes, you will strengthen your bonds and this will encourage them to continue buying your products.
Although this is a very used method that many brands are aware of, it is not the only way to keep in touch with them, as you will see in our following titles.
Newsletters
When a customer finalizes their purchase, you may also encourage them to subscribe to your email list. A newsletter is another great way to continue building a relationship with customers, and you can share different pieces of information that are related to your area of business.
Consider creating a newsletter if you have not one already, and you could periodically send your subscribers news, latest trends, and exclusive content, along with information about your products, releases, special offers, etc.
This will position your brand as an authority in the field and will favor your customer’s perception of you, which will increase the chances of a new purchase.
Loyalty Programs
A loyalty program is another tool that is considered part of a post-sale marketing strategy, as it encourages your customers to repeat their purchases to obtain various benefits by doing it.
In general, loyalty programs offer different discounts based on previous sales. As an example, you could contact your customers to offer them a certain percentage of discount on a product because they recently purchased something at your brand. This will encourage customers to keep coming back to you in the future.
Different Ways To Keep in Touch With Your Customers
There are different channels that you could use as a brand to maintain your contact with your audience. In the following section, we will specify some of them, and share some thoughts and best practices to take into consideration with each of them.
Emails
Emails are the most used way of communication today, and billions of emails are sent and received on a daily basis. This is great, as it means that people are constantly checking their emails, but it also means that we need to be extra careful with what we write so we can achieve our objectives in our communication and not go unnoticed in a crowded inbox.
It is a great idea to take advantage of grammar tools, like a punctuation checker or a writing tone detector, so we make sure that our message is polished and causes a positive impression. Also, an important task is to work on the subject line as it could make a difference between a deleted post-purchase email or one that is clicked into.
Social Media
As we mentioned in our previous section, social media is growing every year and they are a key aspect of today’s relationships between brands and customers. It is very common for brands to have an active presence on social media platforms and interact with their customers through direct messages, comments, likes, and reactions.
Your social media platforms will also work as a community of people who share the same interests, and your customers will be able to interact not only with you but also with other users. This sense of community strengthens even more the relationship between you and your followers and increases the chances of turning them into regular customers.
Videos
Videos are another tool that businesses often use to their favor when it comes to post-sales strategies. The video-form content provides a different approach to your customers, and it generates an even closer relationship with them.
When developing your video marketing strategy, you should consider including videos with testimonials about your products, reviews, and information about them that your customers could find value in, and that could make them come back to you for their next purchase.
Blogs
Blogs are for sure another way to create content online that relates to your area of business and that helps position your brand as an authoritative voice. You should focus on generating quality content that is relevant to what you do and what your target audience expects from your brand.
A good idea is to include posts in your blog about case studies, that is, a story that you tell to your audience about how your brand helped an individual or a company in a certain aspect of their life or business. With that, you will give tangible examples of what you can do for your readers and increase the possibilities of conversion.
Final Thoughts About Post-Purchase Marketing
While many businesses tend to overlook post-sales marketing, here is the idea that we want you to have after reading our article: Pre and post-sales marketing are equally important. While the former is especially important to increase the visibility of your brand, get to new customers, and increase the reach of your business, the latter is crucial to make the relationships with your customers stronger.
There are several ways to strengthen this relationship, and among the tools that you could use to that goal, are social media, emails, newsletters, loyalty programs, and anything that you could think of that could serve as a way of communication that would make your customers feel closer to you. Don’t forget that a happy customer is more likely to come back and convert into a loyal client and that the whole idea of post-purchase marketing is to keep them happy and ready to make their next purchase.
