With Valentine’s Day coming up, now is the perfect time to show your customers some extra love. As a small business, it’s crucial to cultivate that feeling of appreciation for your customers and to build stronger relationships. Here are four of our favorite ways to show your customers love on social media and in person.
1. Offer special deals
A significant way to show appreciation is to offer your customers and followers exclusive deals. You can offer them "early access" to sales or provide a punch card for your business, where they are rewarded for multiple purchases. You could also try a "buy one, get one free" deal. These offers will incentivize customers to purchase more from you.
You can also offer a "new customer discount" for their very first purchase. Or, try giving birthday and anniversary discounts. For more ideas, check out our post on how to drive sales.
Special offer examples:
Early access sales
Punch cards
Buy one, get one free sales
New customer discounts
Birthday/anniversary rewards
Click on any sale image below to try it out!
See the Valentine's Day Sale collection
2. Appreciate your customers on social media
There are a lot of creative ways you can show your customers love on social media and make it a regular part of your content strategy.
One of the easiest to start with is creating gratitude posts, thanking customers for visiting your business or helping you to reach a new sales goal. Make sure you reply back to comments too! Look for loyal customers who follow you on social media, and follow them back. And lastly, try running a social media giveaway for one of your products. Not only does this show appreciation for your current customers, it can also bring brand awareness to new potential customers.
Another way to earn some customer goodwill is to keep them in the loop—either on social media or through email newsletters. Regular communication help to keep you top of mind for your customers.
Here are three social media "thank you" designs that you can customize for your own business.
See more "Customer Appreciation" templates
3. Give loyalty rewards
To increase customer loyalty, offer a referral bonus for every new customer they refer to you. You can also run an after-hours event that frequent customers can attend, like a girls' night out, where women can come shopping with their friends and receive exclusive discounts for your products. At these special events, you can offer gifts or giveaway drawings for customers.
Another event idea that works well for service-based businesses, like real estate agents or those in financial services, is a client appreciation party! It is a fun way to bond with your clients and let them know you want them to stay in your network.
Reward ideas:
Referral bonuses
After-hours events
Client appreciation parties
Here are a few examples of event-based posts - tap to try!
4. Enhance their shopping experience
If you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can show customers love through an enjoyable in-store experience. Here are some easy ways to enhance the in-store shopping experience:
Offer free product samples to customers
Have a community board advertising local events
Consider revising your return policy to give customers more time to return items
For online stores, ensure shopping with you online is as easy as possible. Things like broken links, poor photo quality, and vague product descriptions are all things that turn customers off from buying. Like the in-store experience, there are some personal touches you can add:
Samples with every order
A handwritten note thanking them for their order
Free shipping with a certain amount of money spent
Check out our February Social Media Calendar for more ideas for the rest of the month.
