Are you familiar with the Pareto principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule? This principle states that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. Add to that the fact that it costs 10 times more to acquire new customers than to sell to your current customers. According to eMarketer, you have some analysis to do on the profitability of investing in your current customer base.
Despite the power of these figures, B2B marketing professionals are still investing energy in acquisition campaigns, which means they are spending a lot of money. Today, more than ever, marketers need to focus on the value of the entire customer lifecycle. From acquisition, where the goal is to acquire customers at the lowest possible cost, to engaging those customers by developing conversations on the channels they use; but also retaining them and providing added value, ultimately turning them into brand ambassadors.
The fundamental principles of the customer base
Think beyond acquisition and focus on customer base marketing, which revolves around the lifecycle of each customer, not just the first purchase, by identifying and marketing products or trying to cross-sell to an existing customer, in order to satisfy them, retain them, and turn them into ambassadors.
Marketing to your customer base can be divided into 4 categories: Cross-selling
This is the concept of offering products or services complementary to those initially purchased by a customer. Let’s take a simple example: when you go to a fast-food restaurant, you are asked, “Would you like a drink or a dessert with that?”.
Upsell
This means selling more of the same product or an improvement, an “upgrade.” Still using our fast-food example, “Would you like a large meal?” is a perfect illustration of upselling. They are still selling you the same food but offering you the option of having a larger portion.
Retention
Retention helps prevent “churn” (= customer loss) by keeping current customers satisfied and bringing them back to your product or service as much as possible. Customer loyalty begins with the first contact with a customer and continues throughout the lifetime of the relationship. This includes successful customer onboarding, activation, engagement with the company and its products, adoption and use of the purchased product or service, achievement of goals, customer satisfaction, and intent to repurchase.
Loyalty and Ambassador
This final category is the stage of building trust between the company and repeat customers by rewarding them for their repeated activities and leveraging their high satisfaction, brand loyalty, and willingness to act as brand ambassadors in order to grow your marketing efforts. Indeed, research conducted by BzzAgent, a word-of-mouth marketing company, shows that a loyal customer is 50% more likely to influence a purchase decision than an average customer.
Marketing to your customer base is a “Win-Win” situation
Marketing to your customer base creates a more engaged customer base by helping them maximize return on investment – by onboarding them successfully, offering them personalized, automated, and actionable advice to ensure product adoption and use, and gradually opening their horizons to new features and complementary products.
Marketing efforts on your customer base are not only beneficial for your customers, but also for your company: Sell more to your existing customers
You have already done the hardest part by winning a new customer. Now that you already know them and know what they are interested in, you can leverage lead scoring through demographic, professional, and behavioral data to identify opportunities to expand your footprint and create cross-selling and upselling strategies. You can even prioritize your best customers by offering them a unique offer tailored to them.
Target your best sources of growth
Staying attentive and responding to customer behavior helps you determine their interest in specific products or services and identify customers who are valuable opportunities. You already know your customers’ interests, so approach them in the right way: on the right channel, at the right time, and with the right message – the one that truly interests them. There are different approaches to targeting your customers. The first is to focus your efforts on the customers with the highest potential, with the greatest lifetime value based on their purchase history, high maturity, and the breadth of the features they use. Another thing to consider is identifying at-risk customers early, as soon as they are acquired, and developing campaigns to reduce churn. These two strategies can be used simultaneously to continue bringing satisfaction to your customers and identify the different ways to keep dissatisfaction, and therefore churn, at bay.
Focus sales on the best opportunities
For a B2B company, the benefits of the customer base also extend to the sales department. Salespeople can have a better personalized dialogue, based on knowledge of your customers, the behavior and interests they have expressed, in order to prioritize conversations and focus on deals to close.
Measure marketing’s impact on growth
Like any other marketing strategy, with the right metrics in place, you will be able to demonstrate the impact of your marketing investments on company revenue. Focusing on the entire customer lifecycle allows you to gather relevant data that gives you insight into how your marketing investments influence the company’s growth, beyond the customer’s first purchase and up to their full value.
