Do your marketing efforts focus on new customers—or on those who are already loyal to your brand? The answer should be: both.
When you consider that acquiring a new customer is five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one (Harvard Business Review), it makes sense to focus on keeping the customers you have, happy.
According to an article in Marketing Land, marketing to existing customers drives business growth. In addition to recommending you to others, satisfied customers positively impact your bottom line in many ways.
• They are more open to upsell and cross-sell opportunities, increasing their lifetime customer value.
• They’re less price-sensitive because they know you’re worth it.
• They are more resistant to outreach efforts by competitors.
Given these bottom-line benefits, it’s smart to develop concentrated marketing campaigns that connect with and engage existing customers. But where do you start?
Consider these four questions when marketing to existing customers.
Are we delivering on our brand promise?
A brand promise is a contract between you and your customers. It sets the stage for the experience they should expect to have. By evaluating your business objectives and comparing them against the customer experience, you’ll get a clear picture of what your customers are experiencing. Is your internal and external messaging consistent? Are you over-delivering in some areas and lacking in others?
By gathering feedback from these prompts, you can fine-tune your messaging and delivery, bringing what you do and what you say you’ll do into closer alignment, which equates to a better customer experience.
Who are our most satisfied customers?
It’s likely that you have a system in place to gather customer feedback. So, use that to you advantage in strengthening your brand story. Consider using customer testimonials, case studies, guest speakers, etc. to build your brand reputation and help you stand out among competitors.
Do we have a strategy for growing ancillary revenue from happy customers?
Are you meeting your customers’ needs? How can you provide greater value? At Shamrock we use Business Reviews: We crunch the data on previous orders/products/categories, etc. and provide these summaries to our customers. Then, we ask for feedback and take the opportunity to share our other products/services to cross sell and upsell. Always, you want those suggestions to be relevant to your customers.
What are our competitors doing?
Understanding the reasons why you win or lose business is an important to keeping customers happy and your company primed for growth.
How does your product or service stack up against the competition? What are they doing that you aren’t? What are your salespeople hearing from customers? Answering these questions will help to shape your view of where you stand in the marketplace and can help identify areas that require greater attention.
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Focusing creative efforts on customer retention benefits your bottom line. Are there other questions that you use to identify ways to provide a better customer experience? I’d like to hear from you.
