How To Use Promotional Merchandise To Build Brand Loyalty

During a time when everyone is cutting down on their spending, it is important to reward loyal customers and what better way to do so than with personalised giveaways. Statistics show that even in a recession, around 60% of customers are willing to pay more to use a particular business if they have received a high level of customer service from them. Add to this the fact that an average organisation loses roughly 30% of its customers annually you can see how important customer service is in the current economic climate.

Whilst it is important to attract new customers, it is just as, if not more, important to retain existing ones. it costs 6-7 times more to attract a new customer than retain an old one. So why is it that only 12% of organisations spend money retaining customers?

It has been proven that customers will stay loyal to a company if they are valued and as these statistics show maintaining a strong relationship with customers is vital to an organisations success. There are many ways you can show value to a customer, one way is through providing a customer feedback form. This shows that you are interested in the customer's views and can be a cost-effective way of getting new ideas to improve your business. This will also help with market research and in understanding your customers. A disadvantage of this is that a customer is more likely to fill in a feedback form if they have had a bad experience, than if they have had a good one. One way of combating this is to offer some sort of incentive to be filled in which is where personalised giveaways can come in handy.

If you don't want to provide feedback forms, or already have this in place, simply giving away personalised items can also show a customer their value to you. There are so many companies giving freebies to new customers that by giving gifts to existing customers you would be setting yourselves apart from the rest. A personalised giveaway could be something as small as a pen or a notepad, but it is guaranteed that your customers will feel more valued receiving a gift than a flyer or advertisement.

Personalising the gift also shows more value of the customer as they feel you have gone out of your way to reward them. So there you have it, personalised giveaways are great for PR, building customer relationships, retaining customers and advertising. So why not thank your existing customers today with a personalised giveaway?

For more customer service statistics:

http://returnonbehavior.com/2010/10/50-facts-about-customer-experience-for-2011/

http://www.customer1.com/blog/customer-service-statistics