When you formed your JV business, where did you acquire your customers? Did you combine mailing and contact lists to offer existing customers great new and improved benefits with your JV business? Did you advertise to a specific demographic and target market?

Wherever your JV customers came from, it is important to realize that repeat business is essential for most businesses. In addition, it is important to remember that customers, new or returning, have a choice and can always go to your competitors if they feel you have not earned their business.

What can you and your JV partner do to keep the customers returning time after time? Here are four great ideas about how you can treat your customers to assure their loyalty.

1. Give the Extra Value

No matter what you sell in your JV business, always go the extra mile for your customers. As an example, say five other businesses selling hair products just like your JV business. What attracts customers to your place of business? It could be that you offer a free trial, you give complementary samples along with a free wash, or maybe it’s because you simply sell the products cheaper by running a low overhead.

Regardless of the reason, people will choose your business over another because of the value they receive. Be sure you give them the extra value so they keep coming back.

2. Respond Promptly

Do you and your JV partner operate a service business? How quickly do you respond to customer calls or inquiries? Do you answer calls right away, or let it go straight to message?

Responding right away to your customers gives them the impression that their problems or needs are your top priority. Even if you can’t answer a call right away, returning a message within an hour or two is essential for letting the customer know you are on top of his or her problem and will be there to serve his or her needs.

3. Go for Never-Ending Improvement

Don’t just sell the same product or service again and again, over and over. To earn loyal customers, you must not only meet their needs, but also constantly improve so you always provide that “wow” factor and stay ahead of the competition.

Try to improve the quality of your manufactured goods. Even the packaging of your JV product is a facet that can be improved. Or in a service industry, strive to include more value for your services, such as more streamlined packages, or new methods to include with your service.

4. Always Demonstrate Respect

One of the best ways to keep customers coming back is to simply respect them. Remember when it was customary to refer to customers by last name, such as Mr. or Ms. So-and-So? It is sad to think the days of respect are gone, but you can bring them back in your JV business.

Always speak to customers with a smile. Attempt to resolve conflicts with sincerity and a respect for the customer’s needs. You don’t have to say the cliche, “have a nice day”, but substitute that farewell with something like, “thank you for your business”, “we’ll see you next time”, or perhaps, “it’s been a pleasure”.

Loyal customers are the backbone of your JV business. Give them the reasons they need to make the choice of loyalty. Your JV business will be glad you went the extra miles.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

If you write a blog and want to expand your audience, or a business that needs more customers (who doesn’t want that?) you really need to be creating videos and uploading them for people to view!

Your competition is taking customers from you that have no idea you exist if they are uploading video and you are not. If they aren’t producing video for YouTube or their own sites then you need to make sure you get those customers they are missing.

Compete.com lists YouTube with 85 million unique visits in July of 2009! Just imagine what it could do for your site if you happened to create a viral video that got 100,000 views… 200,000 views…. 1 million views! A certain percentage of those people would visit your site and a percentage of those would sign up for your newsletter or buy something from you.

Now if my math is right, and you get 1 million views for a video and only 3% of those viewers visit your site that is 30 thousand visitors! If 3% of those signed up or bought something, that is 900 signups or sales! Sound good to you?

I know it’s very difficult to get a video with 1 million views, but take a look at YouTube and see what videos are that popular. Why do they become popular? What is great about them? It’s not the production value, it’s not because they have celebrities or cost a large amount of money to create.

These videos are crazy popular because they are extremely funny, or cool, or amazing for some reason. The videos can be planned out, but wildly popular vidoes are not outwardly selling anything, there is no pitch. If you want to create a viral video you cannot be selling in the video, let the video sell for you!

There’s an old saying from my door-to-door sales days “Sell the sizzle not the steak”. Well what does this mean to you? If I’m selling plant food for gardeners, do I tell them how wonderful the fertilizer is and how many nutrients are in it? NO! I am not selling them fertilizer, I am selling them BIG TOMATOES, that’s the sizzle!

Give for free something of value in your video. We are a camera repair shop and can’t make videos about how to repair every camera, but your customers are looking for something regarding your business, so find out what it is and give it to them!

Teach them something, give them information they are looking for, entertain them. [If you become an authority on your subject your customers will happily tell others about you].

No need to spend thousands on professional video production, but they must be easy to watch and understand.

• Make sure your camcorder or digital camera records good quality video, and no it doesn’t have to be HD quality for YouTube!
• Use a quality microphone. Poor audio will drive away most viewers, guaranteed.
• Use a solid backdrop, don’t show your cluttered basement or office or bedroom unless this is part of your presentation
• Write a script or at least notes regarding what you want to say
• Practice and view your results before publishing it. Ask others for opinions and feedback!
• Yes, you will hate the sound of your own voice, but that is how you sound to the rest of us so don’t worry about it.

Just go for it, things will get better as you go!

Now I’m off to try and figure out what my customers are looking for regarding digital camera repair for their Sony, Canon and Nikon cameras and then just give it to them.

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