After The Sale: How To Stand Out

The holiday season is upon us, and you’re shopping, shopping, shopping… this is a wonderful time of the year to do a little market research.

Make notes on what retailers do well, and what they do badly.

Here’s what sellers to both consumers and businesses do badly: they forget about the customer once the sale’s been made. If you focus on the after-sales experience, not only will you sell more, but you’ll also gain a loyal repeat customer. It’s a great way for you to stand out.

Consider developing post-sales content for your site, and/ or blog.

Here’s some great advice. 5 Opportunities to Deliver Targeted Content Marketing | Heidi Cohen suggests you create:

“Post-purchase content. After-sale content supports the purchase process by showing customers how to utilize your products better. Offer practical advice such as showing customers how to put products together, giving them recipes or patterns or showing them how to use your products better.”

Also consider:

* Capturing email addresses so that you can follow up with customers. I haven’t seen any figures on this, but few businesses USE the customer contact details they capture. If they do maintain contact after the sale, they send out one or two messages, and then let the relationship die.

This is such a waste. Recently a copywriting client asked me to develop a social media strategy. Great idea. Then I discovered that the business had a huge mailing list — an absolute gold mine. I was thrilled because it made creating a strategy much easier, but was shocked that they had never sent out even one mailing to this list.

* Creating some content to send to the customer immediately after the sale, or to include with the product.

I love Apple’s products, and am always amazed at the though that’s gone into the product packaging. However, even Apple falls down here. There’s skimpy product documentation. Heaven knows it’s not difficult to include a little something with the product.

Consider sending or including some advice on how the customer can get the most from his purchase.

If you’re thinking “this will cost money”, perish the thought. You don’t have to shell out anything for printing costs — that’s what your website is for. Just include a link to an appropriate area on your site, after you’ve commissioned your writer to create some wonderful content for you.

This is the season to be jolly, and if you consider what happens after the sale, you’re laying the foundation of jolly profits in the new year.

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Tagged as: marketing, sales, web content