Customer Marketing – A Guide to Stronger Relationships

Customer marketing is a must when operating within a highly competitive marketplace. Customer loyalty and retention are paramount, and it is imperative that you deploy all necessary resources in order to ensure consistent customer engagement.

Customer marketing deserves a prime spot in your overall marketing strategy. Remember − retaining a customer is far easier than attracting a new one. As such, your customer marketing efforts are central to ensuring the long-term success of your business. Additionally, effective customer marketing will aid in separating yourself from your competitors, thus elevating your presence within the marketplace.

In order to fully understand the importance of customer marketing, and the strategies therein, let’s take an in-depth look at its varying components and the utilities you can leverage to achieve success.

What is Customer Marketing

At its core, customer marketing refers to strategies aimed at retaining current customers. Attracting new customers − though vitally important as well − is handled by separate marketing campaigns, and you should take care not to conflate the two endeavors.

Different strategies can be used to implement customer marketing, and we will take a thorough look at several of those later on.

5 Benefits of Costumer-Centric Marketing

The benefits of customer marketing are profound and will serve to bolster your business in appreciable, meaningful ways. Let’s highlight a few of the key benefits.

Customer Retention

First, successful customer marketing lends itself to the retention of current customers. Why is this so important? Well, consider the fact that 60-70% of total business sales are repeat customers. That’s an overwhelming majority of sales and firmly reinforces just how critical customer retention truly is. Put simply, this is an area you cannot afford to neglect.

Increased Customer Loyalty

Second, customer marketing is a surefire method to instill customer loyalty. As a business owner, you know just how challenging it can be to attract new customers in such a highly competitive marketplace. In today’s day and age, consumers have an incredible amount of options available to them, and the battle for their business is fierce. Therefore, do yourself a favor, and implement the necessary customer marketing strategies to bolster customer loyalty.

To further explore the importance of customer loyalty, consider reading through this insightful piece regarding loyalty in the hospitality business. Although your business may or may not be under the hospitality umbrella, the content of the article is absolutely applicable to other industries.

Strong Advocates for Your Business

Furthermore, customer-centric marketing is a fantastic way to establish strong advocates for your business. The more often a customer engages with your business, the stronger their connection and, consequently, the more likely they are to share their experiences with others. Keep those customers coming back to create a legion of advocates!

Better Communication Across Departments

Efficacious customer marketing is an enterprise that needs to be performed by numerous different departments within your company. The marketing, sales, and customer service teams all need to participate in various ways in the overall customer marketing strategy. This will, in turn, lead to increased communication between these departments and result in a more streamlined, effective process.

More Profits!

The goal of any business is to consistently grow its profit margins. In that vein, customer marketing is an excellent means of making this goal a reality. All of the aforementioned benefits combine to result in the ever-important growth of your bottom line.

Customer Marketing and the Subscription Economy

Customer marketing and the subscription economy go hand-in-hand. In order to understand how, let’s take a moment to define what is meant when referring to the subscription economy.

Put simply, the subscription economy is a business model that revolves around selling a subscription to customers, rather than one-off purchases. The subscription model has proven to be enormously popular over the past decade, with incredible growth propelling its success. In fact, according to Entrepreneur.com, “the subscription economy has grown almost five times faster than the S&P 500.” Clearly, subscription models are highly profitable.

In addition to their economic benefits, subscription models also represent an ideal method of achieving customer retention. When a customer enrolls in a subscription service, they are automatically agreeing to be a repeat customer − they are paying a recurring fee to access a particular product.

As such, subscription services are integral to customer marketing. If you haven’t already, be sure to further explore the realm of subscription services and how you can implement them into your business model.

Customer Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing 

Both customer marketing and traditional marketing have their place in a comprehensive marketing strategy. With that said, it is important to understand the difference between the two strategies.

Traditional marketing refers to marketing endeavors performed through the use of “traditional” outlets – any advertising that takes place “offline”. According to Indeed.com, direct mail campaigns, billboards, radio and television advertising are some examples of conventional marketing.

In contrast, customer marketing in the 21st century is principally performed through digital platforms. Online advertising through social media – such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. – is the primary avenue for customer marketing.

9 Customer-Driven Marketing Strategies

Now it’s time to examine different strategies to ensure successful customer marketing. Each of the following will complement the other and serve to benefit your business!

1. Online Reviews

The importance and influence of customer reviews cannot be understated. Consider that, according to Forbes, an incredible 91% of consumers between the ages of 18-34 read online reviews prior to making a purchase. Accordingly, you must leverage your positive reviews by placing them prominently on your website. Doing so will highlight customer experiences, thereby encouraging continued business.

Furthermore, take care to properly manage your online reviews – respond promptly and respectfully, and take reasonable measures to correct any customer dissatisfaction. Proper review management is an excellent way to show customers you value their business, and is an effective method of separating yourself from your competitors.

To fully understand the importance of online review management, dive into this excellent article!

2. Testimonials

Consider customer testimonials as a more thorough version of customer reviews. Soliciting and promoting customer testimonials − either written or recorded in-depth feedback from a customer regarding a positive experience − is another means through which to bolster customer loyalty and satisfaction. Display these testimonials on your website and include them in your promotional materials.

3. Loyalty Programs

To increase customer loyalty, consider offering programs specifically formulated around loyalty. Offer incentives to repeat customers to keep them coming back − tactics such as exclusive offerings, discounts, point systems, and free merchandise are all worthwhile options to explore. Repeat customers want to feel valued, and loyalty programs are a wonderful way to accomplish this.

4. Referral Programs

Designed to encourage existing customers to recruit new customers, referral programs are another means of instilling customer retention and loyalty. Offer benefits and rewards to existing customers for referrals − doing so will keep current customers happy and also bring about new business! Referral programs absolutely deserve a spot in your customer-centric marketing endeavors.

5. Giveaways

Everyone loves a giveaway! Giveaways represent a fun, straightforward means of customer engagement. Pick an appealing item that will entice customers to enter into your giveaway and be sure to promote it heavily. Giveaways show your customers that you value their business and stand as an expression of gratitude.

6. User Generated Content

User-generated content, known as USG, refers to content posted on social media by consumers. Leverage the power of social media by encouraging your customers to promote your business online. Offer incentives for doing so, and consider scaling the rewards to encourage continued USG.

7. Community Building

Community building is an effective and worthwhile component of customer marketing. It can be performed both online and offline.

Examples of digital engagements include webinars, chatrooms, and social media events. Online community-building events allow you to cast a broad geographical net to capture the largest audience possible, as consumers are not restricted by their physical location. Furthermore, these events often require little or no overhead, as they are typically performed by current employees and in an office setting. For proof of the power of digital community building, be sure to read this incredible article on video storytelling to engage your audience.

Community building can also be performed through more “traditional” enterprises, such as the sponsorship of local community events and organizations. In fact, engaging with the local community is a great way to show customers that you care about and value the area in which your business operates, which will serve to further instill customer appreciation.

Utilize both digital and traditional community building to effectively engage with your customer base!

8. Online training materials

Online training materials are another vital component of customer marketing. Providing insightful and helpful information regarding the function, usage, and intention of a given item will instill a sense of gratitude within your client base. Furthermore, this allows you to exemplify your expertise in a given area by providing thoughtful, helpful, and informative materials to your customers. Finally, accessibility is key here – be sure that this information is easily attainable!

9. Customer Support

Offering exemplary customer support is a vital component of customer marketing and is fundamental to achieving repeat business.

Customers expect to receive a commendable level of support throughout their buying journey. From inception to completion, it is of the utmost importance that you offer assistance along the way. Making customers feel supported and valued will not only lead to repeating business, but will also encourage current customers to share their positive experiences (whether it be through word-of-mouth, online reviews, or customer testimonials).

Be sure that you are dedicating the required resources to customer support – doing so will reap tremendous rewards!

Measure Your Customer Marketing Success

Implementing all of the aforementioned strategies will no doubt result in fantastic customer marketing. With that said, it is not enough to simply execute the above – you must also track your progress!

Keeping tabs on the efficacy of your various endeavors will not only help you identify areas that are yielding positive results, but will also highlight zones that may need bolstering or revisions.

In order to properly measure your customer marketing efforts, consider investing in thorough analytics software. These powerful tools provide invaluable insights and performance metrics regarding your online marketing efforts and will allow you to hone your customer marketing measures to achieve maximum success.

For more information regarding analytics software, check out this awesome article on Google Analytics.

Work with a Customer Marketing Agency

As a business owner, you no doubt have your hands full of a plethora of tasks that demand your attention and time. As such, consider enlisting the services of a skilled customer marketing agency. Doing so will provide you with the peace of mind that all the components of a successful customer marketing campaign are being executed and managed by a team of experts. Do yourself a favor and reach out to the knowledgeable and experienced group at Mediaboom today. Allow them to guide you through their recommended services and get started on your journey to finding new levels of success!