Generating more revenue by valuing your existing customers

One thing big and small businesses have in common is the amount of effort and time it takes to acquire new customers. If I look at our own business, we create content to educate and help entrepreneurs, then get in touch with prospects who contact us or we’ve reached at, after that we get to meet them (either physically or virtually) and eventually we start working with them. These are as many steps as it takes just to acquire one new customer. And it’s a lot.

Traditionally, marketing tends to focus on the acquisition part of the business. Getting new customers into the door is what drives most businesses. But how valuable all these efforts are if we get customers get into door, only to let them run away from our business after their transaction? Or what if they run away even before they do business with you?

Customer Marketing

The term customer marketing can simply be described as marketing activity directed to existing customers, with the goal of increasing retention, loyalty, and advocacy. Nothing fancy or complicated here. Engaged and valued customers tend to spend more and stay around longer. Fun fact, the top-tier of engaged customers spend 3x more than others. And savvy start-ups and small businesses use this method to grow at a higher pace.

And the reasoning here is simple. We’ve demonstrated earlier how challenging and time-consuming it is to acquire new customers. In fact, acquiring new customers is 5x-12x more expensive than retaining existing ones. Not only it is easier to sell or do business with existing customers but because now they’ve seen the value of your product or service, they’re willing to spend more with you.

Another benefit of customer marketing for businesses is that it helps reduce buyer’s remorse. We’ve all experienced it at some point in our life. In fact, 82% of people report feeling guilt over a purchase. Picture this, you browse online or walk into a store and end up buying an overpriced pair of sneakers. Right after that purchase we start drifting into the buyer’s remorse zone. You question yourself and the intent of that purchase, its real value. And as a business your role here is to reinforce the customer decision by making them feel confident. But quite often, as customers we get left in the dust. But not your customers, not after reading this article, so let’s carry on. 

A bump on the road? Make sure to make up for it

This is not a coincidence that whenever a poor experience is delivered by a start-up and we contact their support team, 9 times out of 10 they deliver good customer service. A few years ago, when Ritual expanded their business to Toronto, they’ve demonstrated how they care about their customers. After experiencing a few sub-par orders with one of their partners, I contacted their support team. Not only they offer me a refund for the inconvenience but also added in a few thousand points towards my reward program.

This was an excellent recovery service from their part. But it was not just because they were showing empathy. It was because they were focused on treating their new customers the right way so these customers have a positive experience, that they’d be willing to share (like I just did) and Ritual can boost their revenue. That my friend, is a perfect example of service recovery.

No matter how much attention you put into delivering a great customer experience, there are some factors that are out of our control, or things sometimes just go wrong. The customer may understand, nonetheless as a business committed to valuing their customers, you can’t ignore them and have to step up. And turning something negative into a good experience is financially rewarding in the long run.

Turning your customers into fierce advocates

By now, the notion of word-of-mouth is common knowledge. To cut the noise created online by companies promoting their products and desperately in need of attention, customers rely more and more on their peers’ experience with a brand. There’s no fluff here, just the truth coming out customers’ mouth. The latter is fundamentally the difference between brand advocates and influencers. Influencers are far less committed to a brand, as their endorsement usually relies on a financial transaction. 

From a business perspective, we need to identify how you move from acquiring customers to turning them into brand evangelists. And it goes back to this concept of delivering an exceptional customer experience that doesn’t end at the purchase stage. To gain your customers trust you need to offer a great product/service, have a memorable brand, create a good customer experience. With this recipe, your new advocates will help you elevate your brand by keep doing business with you but also by attracting new customers.

Make sure to check in on your customers 

This concept applies to most, if not all businesses. By being proactive and reaching out to your customers, you want to refresh their mind that your business is still here. This is a great way to trigger some buying intents and not letting valuable customers fade away. Depending on the type of activity or the size of the audience, those check-ins can be automated or manually done. Retailers and restaurants can set up some emails to be deployed after x number of days following the last visit/purchase. Online businesses can execute the exact same method based on abandoned-cart, last time a customer browsed a website, or the last purchase.

This method does wonders when operated intentionally and strategically, Here at Brand6ix we help entrepreneurs and start-ups understand the different ways to re-engage their customers depending on their goal and activities. Here are few examples on how to  reconnect with inactive customers. You can send them a birthday note/promo code, email them an update on a new product only if relevant to their profile (no need to spam here), genuinely ask for feedback or why they stop doing business with you.

Those are just a few ways to re-engage them. Feel free to contact us if you’re curious to know more about customer marketing and/or customer re-engagement, we’d be happy to give you some advice. Until then, see ya.

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