Keep your prospects close, and your existing customers closer.
Advice that’ll resonate with any PMM worth their salt. 🧂
We’ve been told umpteen times that selling to an existing customer is a) easier and b) cheaper. After all, why start from scratch when you’ve already done the hard work?
While 99.9% of orgs have devoted teams such as Customer Success to keep existing customers sweet, what role can a customer marketing strategy play in upselling products and increasing revenue?
In this article, we'll be:
What is a customer marketing strategy?
A method hinging on customer segmentation, engagement methods, and customer advocacy programs, customer marketing strategies hone in on leveraging the experiences of existing customers, to improve both retention and growth.
With so many PMMs adopting customer marketing strategies as part of their setup, we were curious to see how they defined the process. 👇
“The process of providing your audience with the types of communications and experiences they need, want, or like as they move from prospects to customers then, ideally, to advocates.”
“The mission of customer marketing is to turn customers into advocates who expand and renew their relationship with the business. Where PMM is responsible for overall GTM strategy, CM plays a role in driving go-to-customer strategy.”
“Activities designed to drive retention, loyalty, advocacy, growth, and community participation for current customers. The strategy, which is different from marketing to acquire new customers, relies heavily on maximizing strong customer relationships.”
Benefits of customer marketing strategies
Irrespective of how you may define customer marketing strategies, it’s clear to see why many companies adhere to its key principles, with a string of benefits tied to the process:
Greater propensity to buy
We’ve all been in a position where we’ve experienced mediocre customer service.
Similarly, we’ve also been made to feel like royalty by a company and been inclined to put our money into their pockets, instead of their competitors.
This principle applies when marketing to existing customers; they’re 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more compared to new customers.
Key takeaway? Never underestimate the influence of great customer service; a positive initial experience with your product will boost the chances of a repeat purchase.
Get to know your customers
When PMMs are doing their utmost to attract new customers, buyer personas are used to try and understand the target market.
Sure, it’s effective, but it takes time. And time, as they say, is money.
Rather than PMMs imagining who your customers are, customer marketing strategies help you to use real life examples, through use cases and case studies, to develop personas.
Customer retention
There’s nothing worse than working hard to attract customers, only to see churn rates slowly increase.
Customer marketing strategies are pivotal in staving off churn and increasing retention rates. If a customer marketing strategy is executed well (i.e. your messaging hits the right spots, they’re engaged, and your relationship’s watertight), then why would they go anywhere else?
The longer your customer uses your product, the more reluctant they’ll be to sever ties - and that’s only good news for your revenue chart.
Customer advocacy
Customer advocacy: it’s one of the most valuable ways of adding to your customer base. There’s every chance you could land additional business in the form of recommendations or referrals.
When a customer sings your praises and tells every man and woman under the sun how good your product is, they effectively do the hard work for you, offering their respective networks authentic, reliable feedback.
Customer marketing epitomizes good practice
Break down the core elements of customer marketing, and the strategy is reflective of good practice - period.
Customer marketing strategies encourage PMMs to maintain customer relationships, grow revenue, and assist teams in retaining customers.
Want to learn more?
Product marketing is and always will be a customer-centric role. A core part of your job is to value the voice of the customer and advocate for their wants, needs, and pain points. It’s your responsibility to make them feel heard. Therefore, customer marketing is an integral part of what you need to do to ensure that you’re staying true to this.
The Customer Marketing Certified: Masters course has been designed to give you invaluable, practical insights into streamlining your customer marketing approach so that you can ensure that:
- Your customers are happy,
- Your products are the best they truly can be,
- Your brand reputation is consistently positive, and
- That you bring in increased revenue for your organization.
So what are you waiting for?
