Getting Your Customers to Work for You

The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global economy. As businesses and consumers alike struggle to make sense of the new normal, acquiring new customers in an uncertain climate has become a monumental challenge. Accordingly, many companies have pivoted to focusing on customer retention and leveraging their existing customer base to generate new revenue in a variety of creative ways.  

Enter: the customer marketer. In order to leverage existing clients, you’ll need to move them past simply being satisfied, and into becoming full-blown evangelists for your product. This has made experienced customer marketers a hot commodity over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, as with many commodities these days, the demand for seasoned customer marketers far exceeds supply — so here are a few tips on how you can start a customer marketing initiative on your own. 

Why Has Customer Retention Has Taken the Place of Customer Acquisition?

While it may seem counterintuitive, marketing has become more “hands-on” as remote working becomes commonplace. Teams are moving out of their cubicles and making themselves known to customers across industries. As clients come to know “the faces behind the brand,” and forge a more human connection with marketing teams, leveraging these relationships has become paramount.

This change in direction has seen customer acquisition become less of a priority, while retaining (and leveraging) existing clients has taken on new significance. Companies have a 5-20% success rate in selling to new customers, while having a 60-70% success rate for existing customers. With such a difference, it’s easy to understand why account retention and growth are taking priority.

How Can You Promote Your Brand Through Your Existing Customer Base?

If you haven’t already, you should consider changing your business model to focus on the existing connections with your current client base. As the marketing experts at Drift explain in their 2021 report, your goal is to create a level of understanding that prompts trust in your brand, through which you can leverage your customers to promote your products and enhance your brand reputation. 

Here are some of the key methods you can use to leverage your existing customers. 

• Referral programs; hand to hand arrangements that are similar to product-led growth.
• Creating online communities where customers can connect and communicate topics revolving around your products. 
• Reducing product prices or creating free trials for software etc. This method can help gain customer trust and knowledge while allowing your customer to stay connected to your brand and creating more marketing opportunities. 
• Give your company a reason to celebrate customers through point systems, rewards, awards, blogs etc.

Final Thoughts

Customers expect personalized experiences and interactions between your team and themselves. No longer is the central focus for your business model customer acquisition, but growth and retention within your current client base. Rather than investing significant sums to generate unpredictable returns during an uncertain time, investing in your existing customer base will yield great profits, while reducing the expense incurred to generate interest from new clients.

Getting your customers to generate more customers is a mandatory part of a successful revenue equation. Check out our full-length Spotlight on Marketing to learn more!

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash