Marketing in an All-Digital World
By Amy Grucela
Customer Retention and Expansion as a Growth Strategy
The latest major shift we’re seeing on the strategy side is a halt on new prospect pursuance. Many companies are pivoting strategies to instead secure their house, starting with the protection of existing revenue, followed by the growth of their current customer base. For certain marketers, this is a huge shift. Demand generation teams need to put on their customer success hats, while the revenue growth teams need to build additional revenue streams from their current customer base. It is more important now than ever to get inside the minds of customers. As you move from demand gen to customer retention, there are few major things to consider.
Three Things to Consider When Switching From Demand Gen to Customer Retention
1First, understand why retention is critically important.
It allows you to grow more consistently through a downturn. After all, modest growth is still net growth.
It gives customers a solution that works for them while also providing value. Those customers are happy customers.
In turn, it encourages those happy customers to become advocates for your brand. And one day, when prospecting is at the forefront again, your biggest cheerleaders will make this process a whole lot easier. (Don’t discount the importance of word-of-mouth—especially in narrow industries!)
2Then, monitor for churn signals among your customer base.
Leverage your intent data to monitor the customers looking at alternatives to your solutions.
Pay attention to the usage patterns of your solution. If your solution isn’t being heavily used, it’s likely not heavily valued by that organization. Think about new ways to engage prospects in better usage of your product.
Score customers the way you would score prospects to help identify customers at risk.
3Last, instead of thinking about content marketing in terms of convincing buyers, think about creating content that convinces them to stay.
Analyze these customer stages and build appropriate content to support each.
1 | Onboarding 2 | Early adoption 3 | Longer-term engagement 4 | Raving fans and advocates
Now is the time to refocus on the customer
persona versus the buying persona.
We are hopeful this opportunity will lead to greater success when prospecting becomes a priority again. Your new buyers will love feeling heard, all because you took this critical step in gaining a greater understanding of them. If you’re interested in more content like this, read part one and part two of this series, or watch the webinar that inspired all three posts.
Reach out if you’d like to talk to us about marketing your brand in an all-digital world, and follow our weekly series for more business and marketing strategies.
