How can small businesses utilize the art of ‘thanks’ vs soliciting for sales? This can become a very thin fine line as stewarding a consumer (potential or repeat) has the ultimate goal of converting to sales.

By definition, stewardship, means the care, handling and management of resources.  Your resources in this particular aspect is your consumer. You must manage and care for them with the benefits of your company, while encouraging them to be loyal and continue purchasing in the future.

In the consumer marketplace, with a wide range of products and services that a consumer can pay attention to, you want them to pay the most attention to your brand. How can this be done? First, you must attract their senses and/ or emotions to investigate your product or service. Then, by briefly showcasing benefits of your company will you be able to convert them to purchasing. Now, how do you steward the relationship to build trust and loyalty?

Stewards within your company

• Sales Representatives – their whole job is to steward the potential and repeated customer to ensure a smooth start to the foundation building of the relationship between your business and the customer. From discovering what their need or issue is, thoughtfully presenting solutions, to a successful transaction – the sales department has a whole process built in place to manage how they entice the potential consumer to conversion to the handoff to customer service.
• Customer Service – your customer service team, is your biggest advocate and protector of your company. They work diligently to ensure that issues are managed in careful manner to appease the consumer without hurting the company’s product or reputation. A well-trained customer service representative or team will be a great resource in fostering the relationship with your customer.
• Marketing Department – the department’s job is steward a broad range of potential customers through marketing collateral (printed, electronically, etc.) to transfer to sales reps, while also keeping current consumers loyal and also managing the relationship while working with customer service.

Here are some ways that the marketing department can steward and work on building the relationship between your brand and the consumer.

• Say ‘thank you’ – whether this is in-person or through a follow up email from a recent transaction, this can be the best way to make the consumer feel good about their recent purchase.
• Sending a survey – many stores put the information on the receipt for consumers to complete after a purchase. This placement is a great reminder to the purchaser to remind them of their buying experience.
  • Follow up with an incentive to completing the survey. A small discount for their purchase is a great way to bring them back to discover what other products and services your brand offers.
• Birthday Messages – printed or electronically, this is a great piece for stewarding your customers. Many CRM programs have this piece of data already in place and can automatically send out messages when needed. This allows for your company to personalize the relationship, while hoping for conversion in to sales.
• Anniversary Messages – again, printed or electronically, this is another great tool to use for maintaining a strong and consistent relationship with your consumers. Reminders of how long their loyalty is to the company will also convert to more sales. CRMs should also house this piece of data to ease the use of it in marketing pieces.
• Newsletters – may not include a purchasing benefit, such as a coupon or free item, but this can keep the consumers interest in the company in the forefront. Highlighting new initiatives that may or may not need outside support will stir intrigue. Don’t forget to present results of past initiatives or successes that needed support from your audience. This will make them feel they have the inside scoop before it reaches the masses.
• Holiday messages – this does not need to include an incentive to purchase, but can be used as a reminder that the company is thankful during the year. Showcases the company in a more human light instead of a constant seeker of sales.
• Personal outreach – through your customer service team, stories of your customers can reach different departments of the company of how the company has touched that consumer or their family. Having a representative of the company personally reach out with a phone call or letter, will have a great impact on the customer and the company. But MUST be done with good intentions or reputation can be put at risk.
• Social media – since this is the largest channel to reach the masses (whether they follow your company or not), being able to steward users (at a large scale or through specific targeting) within the different social media platforms will bring in awareness and ultimately, transactions. This can be a combination of elements above or a ‘check in’ to see what the best way to interact with your audience through this channel is. Since social media is a very fast paced and high emotion channel, this will need to become a place of trial and error.

Remembering that today’s consumer finds the overall experience more valuable than the product or service can open a lot of doors for opportunities to get to know your customers. However, this can also be very overwhelming and uncertainty of the return on investment can fall within the minds of your management team. Testing on small samples of your audience may be the best option in order to showcase results to roll out for your entire database. How can we keep our consumers interested, loyal, and aware of our company’s offerings without smothering them with communication?

Building your strategy to incorporate methods of stewardship will be important as your build out your content and campaign schedules for the year. Consulting with Colleen Eakins Design will help ensure that each design piece tells a consistent story for your consumer.