Now, the first solution that many marketing business will tell you to use is social media to maintain a relationship with existing customers. However, the simple fact is that the people who are the most successful on social media are the businesses where their job is social media. As a tradesperson, your business is your trade so you don’t have the time to make enough interesting material to stay on people’s social media feeds. Treat it as more of a rolling testimonial and exhibition of what you have done. It works best as a tool to remind your customers how great your service is, or when potential customers want to check to see if you are worth making contact with.

Another solution is newsletters, either digital or physical. They don’t have to be frequent or too long. While we at Copy Express create a monthly newsletter with links to three articles that average more than 800 words each, you don’t have to do that much. Even something as simple as a quarterly to annual email with a few hundred words about what you’ve been doing, including links to your social media posts. More importantly, you should be talking about things customers should be aware of that should prompt them to contact you (ie. checking their roofs for leaks before winter comes). Newsletters have the advantage of being a less time consuming process as you only need to do it on an occasional basis. The disadvantage is that you have a the physical cost if you are mailing things out to people, or being unsubscribed to/blocked on email. If you don’t want to do a newsletter, why not just send out servicing or maintenance emails on the “anniversary” of their job? A gentle reminder of the work required to make sure their expensive item will last will likely prompt them to call you to do it for them.

A third option is to have a physical item attached to the product in a way that will remind customers who did the great job in the first place, and who should be called back to do more work. Now, while it can be as simple as a branding sticker, you can make it do so much more. For example, you could include servicing dates/reminders or care/maintenance instructions. You can tie a info tag on a power cord with a rundown of what you have done and have a tear off tag to give a discount on the next job brought to you. It could include links to your website listing details on how to care for what you have made, social media feeds, associated products or services they could buy. The list of information you can put on these is endless. The advantage of doing this that, unlike separate warranty cards or information sheets which get thrown out or filed away, your name is on the product, so when the customer needs help with it, they know who to contact. It doesn’t have to be in your customer’s face, something as simple as a “Designed & Installed by Custom Cabinetry” sticker on a cupboard door will work fine. You just need it to be in a place where they will see it on a regular basis and have your business name reinforced in their minds.

Now, in my opinion, your best strategy is to use all three methods. Keep your name associated with your work with an unintrusive sticker or job card on or in the product. Put interesting jobs and things that will prompt customers to contact you on your social media feed on a fairly regular basis. Follow it up with a contact newsletter or service reminder by email or real mail, and that’s it—a simple way to retain customers that isn’t in their face advertising. If you need help to set this sort of process up, because your business isn’t marketing after all, then call us at Copy Express, and we will help you get up and running in no time.