5 concrete tips for customer retention

Build your freelance business on your regular clients

Regular clients are the foundation of your freelance business, and a bulletproof client retention strategy will pay back 100 fold. And while it's a thrill to get new clients and tempting to focus your energy on them, it makes perfect sense to focus the majority of your efforts on existing clients.

It's between 5 and 25 times more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an old one - depending on the sector and industry of course.

That's because you don't have to spend any money, time or energy selling or marketing yourself to old customers.

As a freelancer, if you care about your business and your finances, you need to prioritize the good old clients who pay the rent and keep you sharp.

And in this post, we'll go through 5 concrete tips to do just that.

Tip 1: Become your customer's go-to person

If you become an integral part of the customer's business, and not just the "external contractor", they will begin to see you as part of their organization - making it harder to replace you.

To become a bigger part of your customer's business, you can do the following:

• Helping them with things that aren't included in your core service (remember to charge for it)
• Use your network to get them other suppliers
• Understand your customer's business to help you deliver value

Let's say you're a freelance graphic designer and you're creating graphics for some posts for a client's Instagram. The client's regular copywriter is sick and an important post needs to be finalized today. You write your own posts and wield a skillful pen. You offer to help out and the customer accepts.

When you help, the customer doesn't have to spend energy either finding a freelance copywriter at short notice or writing the posting themselves. This is a great help for the customer, even if copywriting is not part of your regular service.

It could also be that the client needs a photographer but doesn't have the time to research the market themselves. You talk to them about it and offer to activate your network and find the right candidate. The client accepts.

If you want to be your customer's partner, don't be limited by your profession. Instead, do your best to deliver the value your customer needs. Focus on winning your customer over - again and again.

Tip 2: Make loyalty a bonus

The following are just some of the benefits of having loyal, regular customers:

• It's significantly more expensive to get a new customer than keep an old one (as we saw in the intro)
• It's up to 14 times easier to upsell to existing customers compared to selling to new customers
• The lifetime value of a fixed customer has no limit in principle - by definition, a one-off job does
• The longer you have a customer, the more time they have to recommend you to others

With such significant benefits, it's important that you prioritize your partnerships - and that the customer is in no doubt about it.

This means you need to provide incentives to stay with you - it should be a bonus to be loyal.

For example, you can give good prices to loyal customers who shop all year round. It doesn't have to be big discounts - but the signal value of just 10% is greater than the financial loss.

It also means that you need to engage with your customer's business - not separate your service from their business. The less time they have to spend training you, the more time they have for their core business. It is therefore in the customer's interest that you become indispensable. Use this to your advantage.

Make sure your customer can feel that you care about their business and not just your next invoice. If their business disappears, so does your revenue.

Remember that - and then make sure your customer's business thrives!

Don't be afraid to give your customers a Christmas present. It's a small expense for you, but the signal value is significant.

Tip 3: Prioritize signal values

And speaking of signal values - yep, they're important for effective customer retention.

It's kind of in the word - signal values. Signals are valuable, and they matter more than you might think.

To maximize the effect of signal values, it can be beneficial to:

• Avoid invoicing small items that can look, well, petty on the invoice
• Spend extra time and energy on good, energetic and polite communication

It can send a bad signal if you include emails, phone calls and client meetings on the invoice. The customer may think that it's not value-adding work for them and therefore not worth the money - even if it's time you could have spent earning money as a freelancer and therefore time you should in principle invoice.

If meetings, emails, phone calls and communication/coordination in general are getting out of hand, you need to talk to the customer about it. However, if possible, you should avoid invoicing communication with the customer if you want to prioritize the regular collaboration.

As we've already mentioned, the customer needs to feel that you are there for them. This means that you need to respond quickly and be sharp and precise when you communicate something.

If you can save the customer a clarifying email because you've got it right from the start, you've saved them a small extra task - and small tasks add up in the long run!

Tip 4: Service, service, service!

Excellent customer service that's the same in person, on the phone and over email is second to none.

• 70% will spend more money on a company where customer service is top notch
• And perhaps more importantly, 72% tell others about their experience when it has been excellent

In other words, it's a direct recommendation of you for investing a few extra minutes in serving your customer. A recommendation that can lead to a new regular customer - and a big financial boost to your business. It's a few minutes well spent.

The advice is simple: Listen to your customers - and ask what they need!

If the customer is complaining about something, it's really very simple: Stop doing it.

And if the customer on the other end appreciates something, just stay in that groove.

In the same way: If the customer needs something new or your service needs to be customized, you should make every effort to accommodate those requests.

And last but not least: Give your customers a kick in the ass when they need it. Advise with honesty, authority and finesse - that's what they pay you for!

Tip 5: Under promise, over deliver! Lower expectations, then go all out

Is there anything better than being pleasantly surprised? Getting an extra bonus that you didn't expect or pay for?

When you enter into a customer relationship, you must:

• As a minimum, meet customer expectations - and do everything to surprise positively, never negatively!
• Engage with your customers in a constructive dialog when they complain - and then learn from their complaints!

Make sure your customer understands what your work entails, what it costs and what results they can expect. The last two are especially important so that they don't end up with an unexpectedly high invoice price and unfulfilled ambitions on top of that.

It can be salvaged if you get off to a bad start, but it's an unnecessary road bump that you might as well avoid with the right expectations.

A simple rule you can strive for as a freelancer: Do what your competitors can't - and develop such unique value propositions that you can't be outdone!