Customer Marketing

Customer marketing is a brand’s strategy focused on existing clients. It aims to improve their satisfaction and loyalty and raise retention and buyers’ lifetime value.

In the article, we explain why customer marketing is critical, provide its benefits and compare it with product marketing. Also, we give some tips on how to build a strong strategy and provide examples.

Why is customer marketing important?

According to Outbound Engine, it can be 5 times cheaper to retain an existing client than acquire a new one. These statistics highlight the importance of working with an actual buyers’ base and motivate many business owners to pay attention to their customer marketing strategy.

Effective customer marketing strategy lets you decrease churn rates and retain more consumers. It will directly influence your sales and profits, as increasing retention rates by 5% helps raise profits by 25% to 95%. Regular clients are likely to spend 300 percent more money than new ones. Also, repeat customers generate nearly 16 times more efficient revenue than one-time new buyers.

One more advantage is that a strong customer marketing strategy helps you turn new clients into loyal ones and then into brand advocates. Slideshare states that 72% of people share a positive experience with 6 or more other consumers. It lets companies get more free recommendations and, in such a way, attract more potential clients. Semrush Blog states that word-of-mouth results in five times more sales than paid ads. Consequently, effective customer management will help you drive more revenue and avoid overspending.

Continue reading to find out the benefits of customer marketing that influence your company’s success.

Benefits of Customer Marketing

Influitive states that 93% of B2B marketers believe that customer marketing is growing in popularity, and 62% are going to increase their budget on it. Below we describe the benefits and competitive advantages of providing consistent positive experiences to existing clients.

• A better understanding of consumer needs. Promoting your products to existing clients lets you study their pains and preferences based on real cases. You can get to know buyer personas better to deliver relevant and personalized marketing messages and persuade them to purchase more products. Also, regular clients tend to provide feedback more often, which lets you improve your products and service.
• Increased lifetime value. Effective customer management allows you to reduce the churn rate and encourage people to buy from your company again and again. According to CleverTap, 76% of brands are sure that lifetime value is an important concept, as existing clients are 60-70% likely to convert repeatedly. Moreover, high customer retention rates will let you keep a sustainable market share and increase it by attracting new buyers.
• Improved brand loyalty and satisfaction. Relevant marketing messages will help you provide better experiences to consumers and make them more satisfied with your brand. In such a way, you can raise your profits, as 90% of people are ready to pay more to brands that personalize their service. Also, it lets you reduce the number of complaints because 74% of loyal buyers can forgive a company for its mistake.
• Increased number of company advocates. Access states that 59% of regular clients are willing to recommend a company to their friends and family. Such recommendations are a powerful tool to attract new buyers and raise your sales, as 92% of people trust these recommendations. The importance of word-of-mouth marketing highlights the fact that it drives $6 trillion in global spending every year.
• Greater chances to sell more products. Firstly, 53% of regular clients are likely to try the brand's new products. It lets companies be more confident in their future launches and grow faster. Secondly, 65% of businesses can successfully upsell to existing consumers. Effective customer management strategy also increases the chances of cross-selling, as buyers will be motivated to purchase complementary products from the same company.

All these benefits stimulate many business owners to improve their customer marketing strategy. However, it may be difficult to distinguish this type of marketing from the product one. In the next section, help you differentiate them to avoid misunderstandings and improve your performance.

Customer Marketing vs Product Marketing

Both customer and product marketing have the same goal: to sell more products and drive more revenue in the long term. However, their approaches are rather different. Discover the peculiarities of these two types below.

Customer marketing focuses on building strong relations with consumers and providing personalized experiences. To make brands’ promotions more relevant, marketers identify the segments of clients based on their behavior, determine their needs and preferences, and create advertising strategies to deliver specific messages to each group. Customer marketing doesn’t focus on attracting new consumers and concentrates on the existing base of regular buyers.

Product marketing lets you improve all stages of the sales funnel. It helps companies generate leads, motivate them to make the first purchase, and turn them into loyal clients. This type of marketing focuses on the product itself and aims to create goods that will be highly appealing to the target audience. Product marketers study buyers’ needs, analyze competition, and deliver value to potential clients through product promotions.

Understanding all these differences will let you develop strong promotional campaigns and focus on the aspects that currently are more vital to your company. Let’s go further to study some tips on building a well-defined customer marketing strategy.

How to build a customer marketing strategy?

Building long-term relations with consumers can benefit your company a lot. Below we provide a step-by-step guide on creating a powerful customer marketing strategy.

1. Collect consumer data and study your target audience. According to Salesforce, 97% of marketers observe the rise in the company’s outcomes when it starts delivering personalized experiences. To reach the same results, you need to understand what audience you work with. Create a portrait of typical clients. Discover their demographics, needs, pains, and stimulus. You can use analytics on your social media, study consumer data in the CRM and conduct keyword research to find out what similar topics your buyers are interested in. You can also create a focus group of existing clients and interview them to collect more qualitative information.
2. Segment your buyer personas and prioritize them. Now you understand who your clients are, it is time to divide them into groups. It is better to define 3-5 segments of consumers based on the data that can influence your service and future promotional techniques. Also, you can create groups according to people’s stages in the sales funnel. Then, it is vital to set priorities. Smartkarrot states that 20% of your customers make 80% of your sales. Identify the most profitable segments and pay more attention to satisfying their needs.
3. Analyze your current strategy and optimize it. You may already have a promotional strategy, so it is time to improve it and make it more customer-oriented. Study your ROI and growth potential to understand the current performance. Then ask consumers to rate from 1 to 10 their willingness to recommend your company to their friends and calculate the Net Promoter Score on each stage of the sales funnel. Use the data collected to identify the roadblocks and find ways to fix them immediately.
4. Focus on providing positive customer experiences. It is time to optimize your products and services to meet consumers’ expectations. Pay attention to what experiences you provide at every touchpoint and make them positive and consistent. Keep in touch with consumers after the purchase to give them a feeling of their importance. Be attentive to their problems and help them solve them as fast as possible. Collect data about every buyer to make communication more personalized and build long-term relations.
5. Collect customer feedback and adapt your strategy accordingly. When you ask people for feedback, you make them feel that their opinion is important. It will help you increase their loyalty and engagement. However, it is not enough to gain reviews. Then you should make changes to your products and marketing. It will let you create more relevant campaigns, attract more potential clients and motivate the existing ones to continue purchasing from your company.
6. Launch customer loyalty programs. Offer people a strong competitive advantage to inspire them to stay longer with your company. It may be some coupons for holidays or a discount that grows after every purchase. If you sell services, you can offer every fifth or tenth procedure for free. Such a strategy will help you build long-term relations and motivate people to stay with your company.

Now you are ready to make your product, service, and promotions really customer-centric. However, it may not be enough to stand out from the competitors. Continue reading to study specific marketing tactics to engage with consumers effectively.

6 Customer Marketing Tactics

According to the survey by North Highland, 87% of businesses consider customer experience as their top-growth engine. It is vital to implement well-defined tactics in such a competitive market and make every touchpoint special. We provide some ideas to empower your marketing strategy below.

1. Deliver certain emotions. To empower your promotions, we recommend you avoid boring describing the product’s features. Instead, show the way your goods can make consumers’ lives better. It lets you give people a feeling that they need to purchase your product if they want to live ‘like in the ad.’ Remember that you should provide consistent experiences at every touchpoint to make emotional connections stronger and turn new customers into loyal ones.
2. Create a feeling of exclusivity and urgency. Marketers often use this technique to attract leads, but it also works with existing clients. You can provide buyers with a unique offer or a discount that they can use for a limited time. Such a method will let you raise sales of specific products you promote and, at the same time, allow consumers to feel their exclusivity. It will lead to a rise in their satisfaction and prevent them from brand switching.
3. Use content marketing and engage with consumers online. Social media is now one of the most suitable places to build relations with your audience. Choose a few platforms your clients use the most and build your community there. You should create content that will be helpful for both potential clients and existing ones. Also, you can create your company’s blog to provide more specific data and engage with clients through different channels. It will let you save money and drive more revenue because content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates 3 times more potential clients.
4. Stay in touch with clients after the purchase. It is vital for clients to feel an emotional connection with your brand. Ask for feedback and later report on changes in the company based on the reviews. Also, you can create tutorials on how to use your products on the website. It will help people study your goods better and feel that you care about them after the purchase. Congratulate the most loyal buyers on birthdays to give them a sense of their importance and deliver more personalized messages.
5. Use reviews in your promotions. When you have already collected the feedback, it is a good idea to use it in your marketing campaigns. Customer success stories will let you attract more leads because 90% of consumers tend to trust a recommended brand, even if it is a review from a stranger. Moreover, 95% of buyers read reviews before purchasing anything. Such promotions will benefit both your lead generation and retention of the existing clients because they will feel that their opinion is valuable to your company.
6. Motivate consumers to become your brand advocates. You can make your clients work as your best brand’s promoters. Create a referral program to inspire people to recommend your brand. Offer a discount for buyers' mentions of your company on social media, promo codes for consumers’ friends after the first purchase, or gifts for the ones who attracted more clients. It will keep them engaged, let you save costs on traditional marketing, and help generate already warm leads without much effort.

Use these ideas to make your customer marketing strategy powerful and effective. Study the examples of successful strategies from well-known brands below.

Customer Marketing Strategies with Examples

Attention to the experiences you provide and consistent service are the most important aspects of successful work with existing clients. Find out the brands that stand out from the competition and have effective customer marketing strategies below.

CULTNAKED

This clothing brand uses UGC content on their social media constantly. In such a way, they show their products worn by existing clients, create a strong connection with consumers, and raise loyalty. The brand posts photos of both famous personalities and unknown girls. It lets the company create an image of a premium brand chosen by the stars but affordable for everyone. Such collaboration is beneficial for both a company and a client. When brands post user-generated photos, buyers consider that they are important and feel motivated to purchase again and build long-term relations.

Linkedin

This employment-oriented social media platform allows companies to find their ideal candidates. Also, they have a blog that they use to post success stories of businesses that use Linkedin to improve their performance. This tactic is powerful for attracting new leads and retaining existing ones. Every brand wants to get their story into the Linkedin blog because many people read it and the article can work as a company’s promotion. At the same time, the platform also benefits from such content as it helps them provide value to existing consumers and build strong relations with them. Moreover, other companies can use these articles as guides to improve their performance and, in such a way, get interested in working with Linkedin.

IKEA

This world-famous furniture and home accessories developer cares about consumers’ experiences by using concern reporting. Buyers can always write to the company about their problems with discrimination, corrupt activities, or environmental violations connected with IKEA’s work. The company will solve them and raise the level of their services. At the same time, people will feel that their problems are vital for the brand. It can help IKEA retain clients even after negative experiences.

Congrats, now you know what customer marketing is and why it is essential. Build a strong strategy and empower it with SendPulse’s products. We offer email, SMS, and web push services to deliver relevant messages to different segments of your clients. Collect data about every buyer in our CRM system to make communication more personalized. We provide free plans on most products to make your customer marketing performance even more successful.

Last Updated: 22.03.2023