Everyone is constantly looking for ways to acquire new clients, but few marketers worry about client retention. When economic times are tough the natural instinct for many is to first panic, and then aggressively search for new business. The best marketers know that just the opposite is the right approach. Finding new business is important but if you are completely ignoring your current client base you will lose the business that you take for granted.

Customer Loyalty is extremely important to any business regardless of the economy. When the economy is down it becomes absolutely vital to retain customers. You aren’t the only business that may be feeling the pinch. Think about all of your current clients that are looking for ways to save money right now. You better hope they have no doubts about the value you provide their business. If you have done a poor job at retaining a high level of customer satisfaction you will be part of their first cuts.

Having a strong customer loyalty strategy will also help you acquire new business. Word of mouth is still one of the most effective ways of increasing sales. About 40% of your most loyal customers will recommend your services to others. Only about 10% of your clients that are relatively satisfied will recommend you. Unhappy customers will not recommend you and might actually convince others to not do business with you.

So where to start? The first step is to develop a strategic business plan that concentrates on retention instead of acquisition. Part of the plan will be to have a customer loyalty program in place. You can look to create this yourself or outsource to professionals. The program will help you with loyalty research that allows you to listen to your clients and find out what they are happy with and what they are unhappy with.

There is customer loyalty software available that can help you measure this. The ultimate metric you will be evaluating is your Net Promoter score. The Net Promoter score measures one simple thing – “How likely is it that you would recommend a company?” The details that surround your score are the elements you will look to adjust to increase your score.