 Welcome to The Journey. Today we'll be talking about customer appreciation ideas for your business. So customer retention is the foundation for your business. You want them to keep coming back and possibly even telling others about your business. Make sure to have that occur. Tell them thank you or have a highlight of them in an article featuring a customer showing them appreciation. So today, Nellie and I are going to tell you five ways that you can show them that appreciation. Yeah, and that first way is just a simple thank you. Your appreciation to them does not have to be something super elaborate over the top. Sometimes that thank you can go a long way. So yeah, just like Nellie said, it doesn't have to be over the top, spending loads of money on people. Sometimes they just like to hear the words coming out of your mouth that you appreciate them being your loyal supporter. And that also encourages them to be loyal to your brand. Yeah, like when you see them coming if you have a store, if they're coming to the storage, tell them thank you for your business. Or on social media, it makes it so easy to interact with your audience with a couple of clicks a button. It could be a comment on their posts saying, Hey, thanks for the follow. Or I've even seen some brands go as far as creating a video message saying, Hey, so and so, thank you so much for giving me a follow. I see you do pottery, like how's that been going actually extend the conversation out beyond just to thank you and it goes a tremendously long way. Like think about if a celebrity or a big brand actually did that for you, you would freak out, right? Like you tell your friends like, Yo, go daddy just gave me a shout out and said, thank you. Like, what is this? It's crazy. And you could absolutely do that with your brand. So the second way that you can show your customers appreciation, just, you know, ask them how they feel about your business, your service, let them know that their opinions matter. Now, during the rest of the day, maybe you're in retail, you may not have a lot of time to actually take in what they say. You can actually send them a survey. Let them know that a survey will be coming to increase the likelihood that they will actually take it. Yeah. Feedback is a gift, but you need to make sure you act on that feedback and show your customers that you're acting on that feedback. So the last thing you want to do is like, cool. Thanks for all this advice and then just ignore them. Chances are they're never going to give you feedback again. But now if they say, Hey, I wish you were open later on these days, especially around the holidays, that'd be awesome. You take that into consideration and actually adjust your hours to help them out that you've heard their feedback, you've implemented on it and it goes a tremendously long way. It's definitely a win-win. And your customers are happy. You're happy because your customers are still coming to you. So no brainer. So for the third one, nearly did talk about this a little bit earlier, but you can also highlight certain customers. Say you do business to business. You can have a blog and you talk about certain businesses that you really appreciate, you know, connecting with or if you're a B2C type business, you can highlight certain customers and I like this. You can actually take a nice photo of them with their permission and just ask them before a little blurb or while they enjoy coming to your business. Share that on social media, tag them in the post. You'll be curious or interesting to see how they react when you actually share that. Yeah. You can also seek out user generated content. So say like you're a fashion brand or you have food, you do whatever you do and your followers and your customers post about your content just because they want to use that content on your own post, on your own feeds and give them shout outs because essentially they're doing the work for you. They're marketing for you. Tell them thank you, like recognize what they're doing and give them that shout out. Exactly. And also just remind them, hey, tag us in your post so we can give you the love right back to you. That way you know you'll be notified when they tag you and talk about all the beautiful things that you haven't offered. The next way that you can show your customers your appreciation, give them a little personalized gift. Now, I know we did talk about not necessarily going over the board and spending a lot of money. So if you do want to spend a little money, a way to go is to give them something that will show that you put some thought into it. Now, if you give everyone a paperweight or chocolates, that's nice, but it's just not as personal. If you have something specific that you know a customer enjoys, maybe something related to where they're from or what they enjoy doing, that goes a whole lot longer or further than actually giving something that everyone else is going to have. Yeah, you're exactly right. I know when I was looking for a new car, I went to a bunch of different dealerships. I ended up buying on the spot. I wanted to take some time for myself, really think it over. But about a week or two later, I actually got a gift basket and a personalized thank you card from one of the salesmen on the floor. We talked about this chocolate that I liked and he actually sent a gift basket with that chocolate and a handwritten note and it went above and beyond with a simple thank you. The gift basket wasn't a ton of money, but it made an impact on me. I ended up buying a car through him because he did that. So those little extra things you can do that are very thoughtful, especially if they're personalized based on the conversation you have with your customers goes a heck of a long way. And at the end of the day, people would like to know that they've been heard and you've paid attention. So putting all that personalization into that gift, you're definitely going to get a loyal brand ambassador. Yeah, and something to note with that, especially that gift is it wasn't overly promotional. It was just a gift from one human to another. So when you're creating these personalized gifts, don't make it just promotional material about your business. Make it about that interaction you've had with that person because that's going to set you apart. If it's just swag that you have from your company, it's just going to look like everything else and it's not going to impact that customer. And it wouldn't be genuine. It would be just another tactic for someone else, your customer to put your business advertised. You want to make it personable and also not promotional at all. All right. And for our last tip, you can host a customer appreciation event. Oftentimes, say if you're in a retail industry during the course of your regular day, you may not have a lot of time to interact with your customers on a personal level. So having this event takes you away from behind the counter and puts you front stage where not only can you interact more with your customers to learn more about them, but they can also get to learn more about you and reinforce the reason why they like, know and trust you because we've heard in the past people love doing business with those they like, no one trusts. Absolutely. And then those people will probably take people with them to introduce to your business. I know there's a business in Arizona, it's Back Fifth Health and Spine. They're a chiropractor. They put together an event every fall where they have some booths for local businesses and they give out free back massages and they have a couple other really cool things. So it's really cool to go and I end up bringing people with me because they're like, oh yeah, free massages and they get introduced to the business because I'm such a loyal fan. They just give back to the community. It's such a great way to just connect and have those conversations and it's not about trying to sign up new people. It's just about cool let's give back and then they happen to have their business there. They show how awesome and those people that bring me with end up becoming their customer just because they see that personal interaction. Well, nearly you know, I love this quote. I may have said it before. Zig Ziglar once said, you can have everything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want. So like nearly said, if you do more for others, at the end of the day, you'll end up getting more for yourself as well. Now if you follow these tips, your customer appreciation game will be on point. Make sure you like this video. You've got some value out of it. Comment below your favorite customer appreciation event or something you've done to appreciate your customers. Make sure that you subscribe to our channel and bring the bell so you're notified when we have fresh content coming out. This is The Journey. Thanks for watching. See you next time.