How to Attract Repeat Customers to Your Small Business

As a small business owner, it can sometimes be easy to forget about repeat customers. We can turn our focus to bringing in new customers, while forgetting about those who have already decided to purchase with you. Working to attract repeat customers involves goals and focus around building relationships and brand loyalty, personalized messaging, as well as using marketing channels in different ways.

 

Why You Should Focus on Repeat Customers

Not only is it cheaper to market to those who have already made a purchase with you, but they are also more likely to spend more money with you. Your repeat customers can become your brand evangelists. These are people who share their love for your small business with as many people as possible. However, it takes work on the part of the small business owner to create this type of relationship.

Goals

Your goals when trying to attract repeat customers are going to be very different than if you were trying to attract new customers. Your small business no longer needs to educate the customer on who you are as a brand. However, you will need to work on building a relationship with said customer. Hopefully, whenever this person thinks of the type of product/service you offer, their first thought is to come to your business. This includes goals of loyalty and retention. 

 

Focus

When you decide to attract repeat customers with your marketing, your focus changes. When trying to build a long lasting relationship with a customer, your focus is going to be personalization and customer experience.

Customer Experience

Consistent branding includes a consistent customer experience. You should always strive to provide a quality customer experience, not just for those who are new to your brand. For example, no one wants to go back to a restaurant just for the food and service to be bad the second time around. If you are trying to attract repeat customers, then the experience they have needs to be consistent and positive. 

Asking for feedback is also important for the customer experience. If there are any bottlenecks or issues in your small business, you will be able to find and address them with customer feedback. It is helpful with loyalty and retention, because you are showing your consumers that you care. It could be that they are on the fence about shopping with you again, but after finding out you’ve taken their feedback into consideration then they are soothed and hopefully willing once again.

This only works if you actually take into consideration the feedback you receive. Of course, there are times that you will receive feedback that is not helpful, productive, or something you can change. However, if you receive consistent feedback about an issue – you should probably try to make a change.

 

Personalization

Personalization is huge when it comes to repeat customers. When you can provide someone with a personalized experience, they are more likely to stick with your brand.

Personalization no longer means simply adding, “Hi [insert name]” at the beginning of emails. That is personalization from 2005. In 2025, the capabilities small businesses have are different when it comes to providing a personalized experience. This can be done through messaging, and the type of channels and content you create.

Messaging

To attract repeat customers, you need to build loyalty and retention. To do that your messaging needs to be personalized and focused on creating relationships – not just selling. Here’s an example of personalized messaging:

Let’s say you run a local boutique where you sell everything from duvets to jewelry. Our customer, Sally, comes in and purchases only jewelry. She signs up for your email newsletter because she is interested in future sales you may offer. If you send her a bunch of emails about the duvet sale you have going on then she might unsubscribe, because she is not at all interested in duvets. If you create a segment of your email list that is for people who are ONLY interested in jewelry, then you can make sure to send that audience segment messaging that is ONLY about jewelry. Now Sally is receiving messaging about EXACTLY what she is interested in.

 

It could be even simpler than this. Here’s a real life example of creating relationships with your messaging: my vet sends me birthday cards every year for my cats. It may seem silly, but this means a lot to me. Knowing that my vet cares about my cats enough to recognize their birthdays and send out a card has caused me to become very loyal to them. They know my cats by name, as well as my significant other and I. This simple step has done so much to build a relationship with us. 

 

Channels & Strategies

Any marketing channels or strategies can work when trying to attract repeat customers, as long as you are focusing on building relationships and personalization. However, there are some marketing channels and marketing strategies that work best. Email marketing, loyalty programs, and upselling and cross-selling are great ways to focus on personalization and building relationships. These channels and strategies allow you to stay in contact with your audience, promote repeat shopping, and the personalized edge to each of these promotes more spending.

For example: when you are trying to cross-sell to a repeat customer, use their data! Understanding the type of products or services they are interested in can help your small business pitch products or services they are actually interested in – which will help the success rate go up.

Repeat Customers Matter

It can be easy for small businesses to forget about repeat customers when working on their marketing strategy. New customers are the fun and shiny new thing! But attracting repeat customers costs less money, and are more likely to spend more with your small business. Consider focusing some of your marketing initiatives on your repeat customers, your brand evangelists. If you’re interested in diving deeper into this conversation, check out this episode of the Small Owned Business (S.O.B.) Marketing podcast.

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