Everyone always turns to marketing to try and drive their sales and bring in more custom. Marketing is in all fairness one of the most effective techniques, but there are things that you can do that don’t involve waiting for the wonders of marketing to take place. There’s so many other areas that you can focus on, and you probably won’t need any help being successful through them.

With marketing, you almost always need the help of a marketing consultant to make sure you get the best results. So, if we’ve caught your attention, here’s how you can bring in more custom without using marketing techniques.

Improve Your Customer Service

This is probably something that needs to be improved across the board, and a lot of it is often out of your control. If you’re a larger company with a few shops, and many employees, there’s only so much you can do to try and control how your customers are treated. The best thing you can do is monitor any complaints, and check in with store managers regularly to see how staff are interacting with customers. If you want to succeed, you need to be going above and beyond to try and please them.

Alternatively, you could focus on the finer things that will keep them happy and keep them returning. For example, if you’ve got a call center or an office in which you answer queries, you could consider putting music on hold calls to give your customers something to listen to. It is ruder than you might realize to leave them listening to nothing and waiting for you to return. Furthermore, you should always try and keep the time they’re on hold to an absolute minimum. The longer they’re waiting, the more time they’re having to think and get annoyed. The quicker and more smoothly things are dealt with, the sooner they’ll come running back for more.

Upselling

Upselling is a trick that all your employees can use to try and get you more custom. Upselling works by trying to attract a customers attention to another product at the time of purchasing the one they intended to. It will usually be related to the product they’re buying, and it is an effective technique to use if you do it right. All you need to do is be proactive about upselling, but don’t be too over the top. The last thing your customers are going to want is to have different products shoved in their face. Gently ask them if they’d be interested in the intended product, and always accept no as an answer.

Rewards & Benefits

Customer rewards are one of the best ways to keep people spending. All you need to do is set up a reward scheme or something along the lines of that. When you customers spend a certain amount of money, give them something in return. It could be a free product, a discount off their next purchase etc. It’ll help to entice new customers as well as bring old ones back.