So you’ve got the basics of a customer marketing strategy down, and things are going good. But how do you turn it from good to great? Here, we share some of the secrets to making your customer marketing successful.

In this article we'll discuss:

How to update existing content to suit your audience

One of the best things to look at, when it comes to improving your approach to customer marketing is to look at the content you have already created, and how you can make it even better.

Being able to analyze your existing hub of content, means that you can identify the most successful and unsuccessful pieces. From there you can better understand what part of your industry your customers find most useful.

There are a few methods to consider when analyzing your existing content:

Treat your existing customers as if they're new prospects

Taking the steps of inbound marketing and reapplying it to those customers that’re regular visitors to your business can be a good way to see where your funnel is working, and how to make it more efficient.

  • See what attracts your existing customer to you, to ensure you are advertising the relevant content.
  • Convert your customers into leads. These are people who you have direct contact information for.

Do you have subscription-based content, events, or courses for them to sign up to? If you do, what other versions of these could you create to entice more customers to sign up?

  • Opportunities. If you've successfully reinvigorated their interest in you, what other opportunities could you offer them that they would benefit from? Existing customers are a great base to cross-sell to.
  • The next part of the inbound marketing funnel is customers. You already have those, so what would be the next step? Well, it’s advocacy.

Loyal customers that’re enthusiastic about the content and opportunities you offer them are the perfect group to advocate for your product on your behalf. Create a championship program or advocacy membership to offer them exclusive gifts, learning opportunities, and insider knowledge.

Involve your customers in the product making/marketing process

Customers want to be involved with you and your product. If your customers feel like they’re a part of the process of actively improving the product they're using, then it can go a long way to increasing the value of your relationship.

In the same way, by providing customers with resources to better use your product, you’re investing in their education and their personal learning journey, and this won’t go unnoticed. Some of the ways to do this include:

  1. Holding informative events/webinars that demonstrate how best to use your product.
  2. Asking customers to participate in case studies, showing off how they found your product, why they chose it, and why it won over your competitors.
  3. Staying in touch. Have a community forum for your existing customers to engage with you and each other. And be active on it! The more they hear from you, the more likely they are to see you as a reliable business.
  4. Send customers email updates. However, with 40% of consumers saying they have at least 50 unread emails in their inbox, it’s important not to go overboard. . But one update email informing regular consumers about the state of your business, along with links to your most recent content, can keep them in the loop with the latest developments.. (Also a quick happy birthday email never went amiss either!)
  5. Social media is your friend! You can do all sorts of things on a social media page from regular updates, debates about industry topics, live streaming, and more. Social media is a constantly moving ecosystem with a massive amount of content being uploaded daily. Make sure your social media is up to date with the immediate important stuff.

Increase sales by optimizing how you use your existing customer base

Understand and track each customer's journey and goals. From the onboarding stage, you should be invested in the customer's intentions for using your product. Build trust from the start by understanding your customer's values. Ask them what they want to gain from this product and ensure you can meet their customer needs. This is a good way to track your customer's progress and set targets that’re high, yet attainable.

From this information, you can identify customers that have a real need for additional services. You can provide a wonderful service to those who need it without annoying customers who don’t.

Bring them resources with an idea of why they would be useful. Make sure you're not just offering them an upgrade just for the sake of it. Perhaps they've hit a milestone in their journey, and now your other product will be useful to them in the next stage of their journey.

Be transparent about prices. Don't hide extra costs for these resources. If your price tag accurately reflects the quality of the service you're providing, they should know if they're happy to pay for it. If your customer can’t afford it, consider alternative pricing strategies, such as tiered pricing.

Prove the value of this service by showcasing how it's worked for other people. 37% of customers are more likely to trust everyday people when it comes to claiming the validity of a product. People who have already bought the product and still advocate for it, are the best marketing strategy you have, with case studies and testimonials handy resources for attracting new prospects.

How measuring performance can improve your strategies

Understand your company's short and long-term goals and where your department fits in with them.

Customer marketing is less about the acquisition of new customers and business, but about retaining the ones that already exist. The aim here isn't to expect a large annual increase in customers, rather for your existing customers to remain the same. Customer retention should reflect a company's growth but isn't expected to double its figures each year.

Keep a close eye on product marketing and customer success. Product marketing can let you know that your marketing messages are on the right track and that the company as a whole does not suddenly change its intentions halfway through the customer journey. You're coming to them as a united front, even if you have slightly different goals in mind.

Customer success has a similar role in that they are focused on ensuring your customers are successful in their goals. They can tell you more about customers’ experiences and give you insights into improvements to be made from the feedback they get. Having a close partnership with these departments is important, as is knowing where your aims differ.

It’s also essential to understand that customer marketing is a separate funnel to these other departments. Your aims are slightly different from theirs, and your success will look different.

If your company only gains 15 new customers in a year, but only loses 3 of the 900 customers you already had, then your existing customer base has increased by 12. Your customer marketing has been a success as you have managed to retain a large base of customers to keep your bottom line steady.

Why is collaboration important in customer marketing?

The role of a customer marketer is to understand every need that must be met along the customer journey. While it’s not your responsibility to market the product itself to new customers, you must understand the goals for doing so.

Knowing who your potential customers are and analyzing that information against existing customers can better help both stages. If there's a trend you see in your existing customer base that isn’t present in the buyer persona, then that is information you can pass on.

Likewise, if your company has a new product coming out, you can market this to your existing customer base, knowing which user persona is best suited to the product.

To source this information, talk to the customer success and sales departments. Is there some gap in the market that your customers want you to fill? Did your produce get them 90% of the way, but left them hanging with the last 10%? These are questions that marketing and success can find out from feedback, and can then be fed through the funnel to sales and product marketing.

Talking to customers is always going to be a unique experience. Though your customer may have one defining thing that connects them (your product), they are from all different walks of life with different mindsets and goals. Some of these may be a mystery to you, but this is where collaboration and communication come in. Taking the time to understand each and every customer, and your customer base as a whole gives you unique insights to then use to better your marketing strategy in the future.

What is customer churn?

So that’s all to know about the secrets to successful customer marketing. But what if it goes wrong?

When customer marketing fails, your users will stop buying your product or service and seek a solution elsewhere. This is called customer churn.,

Reactivating churned customers and winning back their trust is notoriously difficult. Therefore, you need to understand what customer churn is and methods you can implement within your team to negate the threat of it happening.

Discover more

So, you’ve read about what customer marketing and you’re now looking to understand what goes into actually implementing it into your existing network. Well, we’ve just the thing for you with our Customer Marketing Certified: Core.

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