The Customer Boomerang Theory

Apple, among others, constantly alert users with updates to iTunes, MobileMe / iCloud, but it’s not by accident! It’s enforcing the brand, that they are a company who continually evolve their software and they want you to know about it.  

This idea is important in online businesses. Keeping our puny brains informed and reminded every day about a brand and services it provides is a carefully crafted and conscious decision by the vendor. It has great value in making or altering a customer’s perception about the company without direct advertising and marketing. Its like a little back door onto the back of their minds.

How can you leverage this kind of approach to get some good service brownie points from your customers? Well it’s easy and it can be implemented any time.

The key for is to have a planned list of updates that you can make a big deal about. For Internet based businesses, email and the website itself are the medium you would use to communicate these updates and messages. Facebook and LinkedIn are masters at getting you back on the site with an email about notifications and updates.

Throw the boomerang....

You may have a list of features that would be great to have but your customers could live without. When the project is running and gaining traction but you need to improve customer retention and brand visibility, update the project with a new feature (e.g. add product to wish-list, SMS notification on available stock), declare it launched with an elegant email or notification to your existing customer base informing them of the improvement and track how many return (+10 brownie points for each).

Even if customers don’t come back straight away, they may have read the email and made a sub-conscious note, and your brand perception increases as you are actively evolving your service to their needs.

There is also a presupposition that the work is done from your profits (and it probably is), which everyone will agree is a nice thing to do (except shareholders), and can help enforce the message that the project are a success and is growing.

The bottom line : By showing evolution and progress of your business you can improve brand recognition and trust, so take pride in not having already invested Jillions on your business software and enjoy growing the business step b y step and tell everyone about it as you do.