Developing Loyal Clients

You can learn a lot of lessons in marketing and business from animals. I’ve learned a lot of them from the dogs I’ve had over the years, believe it or not. One of my Welsh Pembroke Corgi’s would sit for hours while I was writing or shooting video and never leave my side. He’d always be there, my little loyal friend.

What does that have to do with marketing? What does that have to do with business?

Loyalty… plain and simple.

How do you develop loyalty in your clients?

Dogs will sit with you all day, every day, in your office, while you work, it doesn’t matter to them what you’re doing, how much money you make, what kind of mood you’re in or anything else. They are just there and they are loyal.

How do you develop that same thing in your clients?

You develop loyalty with your clients pretty much the same way you do with a dog. You treat them right. You give them attention. You do what you say you’re going to do. You feed them on time – with your clients you might equate that to looking out for their needs or as taking care of certain things for them.

You develop loyalty with your clients the same way you do with your dog, your friends, or in your relationship with your significant other. By doing what you say you’re going to do, by giving them love and attention, by continuing to give them great content and by being there for them and taking care of them.

It is a simple marketing lesson.

Loyalty is one of those tricky things though – it takes you a while to gain trust and to develop loyalty, and many times, one small slip, one mistake, and you can lose all that you worked for. It doesn’t take much to lose it, so you have to be ever vigilant and aware of keeping your word and being authentic.

The other thing about loyalty is that it has to be reciprocal. If I’m loyal to you, I expect loyalty back. If you kick the dog too many times while he’s sitting there with you patiently waiting to be taken out for his walk, he’ll get up and move and you might find him the next day in the other room instead of at your feet – keeping them warm.

Developing loyalty with your clients is a really important issue that we don’t talk about very much. It is a really important marketing and business issue, that you should spend some time thinking about and developing a strategy for in your business.

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