The Complete Guide to Customer Acquisition

 

The one thing that most businesses agree on is that acquiring new customers is a challenge. In the 2018 State of Inbound report, 69% of businesses highlighted customer acquisition as their biggest marketing challenge.

Acquiring new customers is not only hard, it’s also becoming more expensive. 

According to HubSpot Research, the cost of acquiring new customers has increased by over 50% in the past 5 years.

So where does that leave you? 

Well, first you have to understand why this has happened…

The first reason is that trust between businesses and their customers is at an all-time low. According to the new Trends in Customer Trust report by Salesforce Research, 54% of customers don’t believe that companies have their best interests in mind.

The second is that the way we buy things has changed. In an article published by Think With Google, they explain how customers narrow and broaden their search in unique and unpredictable moments, completely reshaping the traditional buyers’ journey.

While these might seem like big challenges to overcome, the good news is that they aren’t. Essentially understanding your customers hold the keys to acquiring new customers. 

Now I know that this might seem like an obvious statement but let me explain...

By understanding the needs, expectations, goals, and challenges of your customers, you’re able to be a helpful resource, build valuable relationships (for them and you), and ultimately trust.

This also translates into understanding which channels they use regularly, what information they are looking for, and how they make decisions.

What is clear is that yesterday’s strategies won’t solve today’s problems. Businesses need to realign their focus by putting their customers at the centre of everything they do. 

So we wrote this guide to help you understand customer acquisition. In it you’ll: 

• Understand the importance of customer acquisition to your business growth 
 
• Develop a customer acquisition framework for your business
 
• Learn to calculate your acquisition costs
 
• Learn how to measure the success of your acquisition efforts. 

• Why is customer acquisition is so important?

  Acquiring new customers is the key to the success of any business - it really is that simple. A little earlier I mentioned that customer expectations and buying behaviour has shifted, and that the only way to adapt is to put your customer at the centre of your efforts. 

  Allow me to introduce you to the flywheel: 

• 
  
  

• Image source: HubSpot

  Do you notice that your customers are at the very centre of this model?

  The flywheel approach focuses all your customer acquisition and retention efforts around your customers and as you successfully acquire and retain customers, your flywheel starts to generate momentum that drives your business forward. 

  Your flywheel momentum is gained through the variety of marketing, sales and service activities you engage in to attract, acquire, and keep your customers.

• Customer Acquisition Framework

  According to Verhoef and Donkers (2005) ‘’acquiring customers has become a more complex task than it used to be because each channel has specific characteristics’’. 

  This is, of course, very true. Your business needs to grow but working out how to scale your marketing activities while driving long-term value can be a difficult nut to crack.

  This is why you need a framework that’s able to scale, is data-driven, and of course, generates ROI.

  It should look like this: 




• 
  

The customer acquisition framework can be divided into two sections:

Foundation - This section revolves around understanding and aligning your marketing actions with the overall goals of your business and the customers your business is trying to attract. 

Execution -  This section is focused on execution. It starts by looking at what content you need to create and then looks at the channels it will get distributed through, the data you need to collect, and the tools needed to successfully execute your customer acquisition strategy. 

Let’s take a closer look at the elements that make up each of these sections.




At the bottom of the sheet, we like to develop a SMART goal statement. This process allows you to organise your goals in a way that makes sense to your business, but also provides a sense of direction for you and your teams. z

2. Buyer Persona 

In every business there is usually more than one type of customer or buyer persona. 

A buyer persona is: 

“semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”

We need to profile them and collect as much data as possible in order to deliver a highly targeted customer acquisition strategy. 

We do this by researching all their demographic data, their company data, and psychographic data. 

These insights provide you with a holistic understanding of who your ideal customer is, allowing you to develop a strategy that’s highly targeted and specific. 

As a part of this process we also like to understand what channels and devices they use and what kind of content they like to consume. 

This information helps build an effective data-driven marketing and sales strategy. 

Okay, so you now you know your buyer persona. Next up is understanding the buyer’s journey.  

3. Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey refers to the process people go through before making a purchase. At each phase of the buyer’s journey, customers are trying to understand their problem, the solutions available, and the best service providers available.

Below is a diagram of the buyer’s journey.







Image source: HubSpot

Awareness - During the awareness phase of their buyer’s journey, potential customers realise they have a problem and are doing research to try to define what it is. 

Consideration - During the consideration phase, prospects are conducting research to understand what solutions might be the best for them.

Decision - During the decision phase, prospects are shortlisting brands and service providers, ultimately whittling it down until they make their purchase decision.

Understanding the phases of your customer’s buyer’s journey is an essential element of the customer acquisition framework. Without it, you have no context of what information potential customers are looking for and the questions they might be asking.

The phases of the buyer’s journey dictate the type of content you need to create and how it should be distributed. 

Execution Layer

We call it the digital marketing stack. 

It’s the combination of the tools and activities you need to successfully execute your digital marketing strategy and achieve your business goals.

The digital marketing stack is composed of four layers:

1. Content




Content forms the foundation of all marketing activities. Whether audio (podcasts), visual (video), or written (blog posts, press releases, ebooks, case studies etc) content is at the heart of every customer interaction.

This is where the buyer persona research, you did earlier, comes in handy. Content creation should be the result of a clear understanding of the needs and challenges of your ideal customer and their buyer’s journey. 

Blog posts are great for the early-stage research prospects do to understand and frame their problem. Webinars can give you a platform to help educate prospects during the consideration phase while video testimonials and case studies during the decision stage while prospects are comparing you against your competitors.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example from the popular graphic design tool, Canva. 

Their content marketing team leverages content partnerships with companies who share the same sort of audience, such as HubSpot and Buffer.

A content marketing strategy along with word-of-mouth has helped Canva acquire 10 million users per month.  

Here are some more stats that really show you the value of content marketing: 

• It costs 62% less than traditional marketing. 
 
• It boasts a 6x higher conversion rate.
 
• According to HubSpot, 53% of marketers say blogging is their top content marketing priority. 
 
• 54% of consumers would like to see more video from brands and businesses that they support. 

2. Channel 

Digital marketing channels can be defined in four broad categories using the PESO model: 

• Paid - Pay per click (PPC), display advertising, paid social.
 
• Earned - Mentions in publications, guest blogging, organic search results.
 
• Shared - Social media, forums.
 
• Owned - Website, blog, email.

READ: Here’s why you need a content distribution strategy

Each channel defines the type and format of content required, the data it generates, and the tools required to execute the strategy effectively.

Your buyer persona research will highlight which channels your persona is more likely to engage with. 

You then need to decide which channels will be worthwhile engaging in, in order to help you generate leads and acquire new customers.  

3. Data 

Collecting and analysing data is critical to understanding and optimising your customer acquisition efforts. There is no “one-size-fits-all” strategy in business and merely assuming what worked in the past will work again, is bound to lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

Each channel and content type should define its own metrics but these also need to be viewed in the context of the goals you defined earlier.  

Data helps you become more efficient by providing insights into each channel, allowing us to optimise our efforts and double down on what is working.

Data also helps you become more effective by focusing your efforts on the desired outcomes i.e acquiring new customers. If you aren’t achieving your goals then it doesn’t matter how efficient you are being. 

4. Tools 

The tools and software required to develop and deploy your customer acquisition strategies is a layer of the digital marketing stack that is often overlooked.

If you want to understand and manage the relationship you have with your prospects and customers you need a CRM.

If you want to send out bulk email campaigns you need email marketing software.

If you want to collect and analyse your data you need a data analytics and reporting tools.

These are obvious examples but often teams have big ambitions for their marketing but, without having the right tools to successfully implement and maintain their campaigns.

Without proper implementation, all the work done up to this point is wasted. It’s also important to remember that in the digital world, where there is a tool for everything, you get what you pay for.

Not all CRMs are created equal and while different tools might boast similar features, price is often an indicator of quality. 

Customer Acquisition Strategies

Customer acquisition strategies vary from industry-to-industry but when it comes to acquiring customers through digital channels then there are a couple of things every business should be doing.

Below are 5 customer acquisition strategies to kickstart your efforts:

1. Get started with paid

Paid advertising is the quickest way to start driving traffic to your website and although it can be an expensive channel it is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of getting things going.

According to research conducted by WordStream, 64.6% of people click on Google Ads when they are looking to buy an item online. It’s safe to say that utilising paid advertising can have great results. 

The key here is to make sure your ads drive visitors to landing pages specific to their search term. If they land on a page that isn’t closely related to what they were looking for you will notice high bounce rates and low conversions. 

2. Use email marketing to nurture your leads

An email marketing strategy is an effective way of nurturing prospects into leads and then into customers. In fact, 89% of marketers say that email is their primary channel for lead generation. 

Lead nurturing is a way of helping prospects move through their buyer’s journey. Email is a great way to personalise your communication for the specific stage a prospect is in.

Here are a couple of ways that you could do that:

• Product update emails. You could develop a nurturing sequence that conveniently highlights the latest updates in your product or service offering. This is a great way of keeping existing customers engaged, but also for warming up some of your middle of the funnel leads. 
 
• Additional resources emails. You could send potential customers additional resources to help them think through their problem based on where they are in your funnel and the sorts of content they have been engaging with. 
 
• Newsletter emails. You could develop a monthly newsletter that highlights both industry trends, but also promotes some of your latest content offers. 

Here are some top tips to consider as a part of your email marketing strategy: 

• Segmentation. According to MailChimp click-through rates are 100.95% higher for Segmented emails than unsegmented emails. 
 
• A/B testing. Testing multiple variations of the same email has the ability to improve your conversion rates, but also uncover what messaging and design resonates with your audience. 

The key to any great email marketing strategy is that it needs to be targeted, personalised, and segmented effectively. Not to mention the importance of A/B testing your email assets. 

3. Make sure your website is fast and mobile-friendly

Your website is your storefront. You need to understand what people see and effectively map out how your persona would navigate your site in a way that moves them a little closer to closing a deal. 

You also need to consider how your website performance is affecting your conversion rates. Slow websites have high bounce rates and low search ranking which means less traffic and low conversion rates. 

Even small improvements in site speed can have a big impact. Walmart found that for every 1-second improvement in page load time, conversions increased by 2%.

Make sure that your site is user-friendly, loads quickly, and is responsive on multiple devices. 

4. Create topic clusters to get your site ranking

Creating content is a great way to generate keywords that Google can rank your website for but how you connect your content together is equally as important. 

Topic clusters are a collection of interlinked articles or pages around one umbrella topic. They ultimately allow you to provide greater visibility for search engines to identify your content. 

Organising your content better makes it easier for search engines to understand and improves your rankings. This is essential for driving organic traffic to your website and ultimately acquiring more customers. 

5. Create lots of great content

Content is at the heart of every marketing campaign and is essential to any customer acquisition strategy.

According to Marketo, 89% of customers do online research before making a purchase. 

Everything your prospects read, watch, and listen to is content created by either you or your competitors and ultimately it’s the business that provides the highest quality, most informative content the most consistently that wins the sale. 

Customer Acquisition Metrics

Fundamentally, the desire to acquire new customers is the desire to grow your business. While growth is great, its comes with a couple of hurdles. 

Choosing between different campaigns and channels while ensuring the revenue generated from new customers isn’t exceeded by the costs of acquiring those customers can be tricky.

The key to making these decisions is measuring your progress. Below we dive into four metrics:

1. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
2. Customer lifetime value (LTV)
3. CAC/LTV ratio
4. Net promoter score (NPS)

1. Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

We’re going to start with calculating your acquisition cost. Understanding this metric will give you the insights you need to grow your business in a sustainable way. 

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost of marketing and sales to acquire a customer. It is one of the defining factors in whether your company has a viable business model that can yield profits by keeping acquisition costs low as you scale.





Understanding what your CAC will help you make growth-driven decisions for your business. You can do this calculation for specific time periods which will help you measure the success of a specific campaign. 

You can and should isolate activities to measure your success. For example: If you want to work out the CAC for your PPC activities then you’ll use the same calculation, the money you spent divided by the customers you brought in.

This allows you to analyse each of your marketing channels, what you’re spending on each of them and how much each customer you acquire costs you. 

2. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

In isolation, your CAC can be misleading. It looks exclusively at the cost of acquiring new customers and doesn’t take into consideration the return on investment (ROI) generated from those customers. 

Calculating customer lifetime value (LTV) helps us balance this calculation. Your LTV is the average amount of money your customer will spend over their entire relationship with your business.  

This calculated by multiplying the average number of purchases customers make with the average price of each purchase.







Your LTV in relation to CAC will help your company adequately measure how long it takes for your company to recover from the investment you make to acquire a new customer.

It also ensures that your customer acquisition strategies are sustainable and contributing to your company’s profitability.

3. CAC/LTV Ratio

Understanding your costs and measuring the ROI generated from your acquisition efforts is important from an optimisation standpoint but do little from a prioritisation perspective.

Your CAC/LTV ratio is essential to help you prioritise which channels and customers you should pursue with your customer acquisition strategies.







Your CAC/LTV ratio also provides a little more clarity as your business takes on more complexity with different product offering, customer segments, and more campaigns. It does this by reducing both your costs and ROI to a single number that you can use to measure their performance with. 

4. Net Promoter Score (NPS)?




Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer retention metric but also plays a vital role when measuring the success of your customer acquisition efforts. This is because customer retention is also an effective acquisition strategy.

According to the Bain and ROI Rocket 2017 Advocacy in Retail Study customers who are promoters spend 3.5 times more than those who are dissatisfied with your product or service. 

And according to research conducted by the Temkin Group: loyal customers are 5x as likely to make a repeat purchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 7x as likely to try a new offering, and 4x as likely to refer.

So happy customers not only spend more but they also refer more new customers.

NPS offers you a simple metric to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction. 

Ways to reduce your Customer Acquisition Costs

The data you’ve collected over time should have brought to light a number of things. It should have told you what’s working and what’s not. 

In this section, we’re going to look at a few ways that you could look at reducing those acquisition costs for greater revenue growth. 

1. Conversion optimisation. 

Your entire website needs to be optimised for conversions. This means everything from landing pages, emails, and CTA’s need to be A/B tested to prove or disprove theories about your persona and their buyer’s journey. 

Conversion optimisation should include: 

• Design - This could include testing different CTA colours and gradients. You need to ensure that your CTA’s are eye-catching and stand out. 
• Copywriting - Test variations of your copy. The more specific you are to your product or service the more likely a user will convert.
 
• Placement - The placement of CTA’s across your website need to be logical and mapped according to a specific journey. 

• 2. Focused customer retention efforts. 

  I came across AOL’s story recently and while these companies are no longer relevant, the story is.

  Back in early 2000, AOL adopted an aggressive customer acquisition strategy.

  More customers =  revenue growth and market share. 

  This makes sense. They were in a highly competitive space and had to fight off competition from all sides. But there was a major shortfall in their model which their competitors took full advantage of. 

  They had no focus on customer retention, only acquisition. This left AOL with a customer satisfaction rating of only 32%, leaving the door wide open for their competitors.

  It’s the reason no one says “AOL it”.

  A business model that focuses on delighting and retaining its customers also costs less. 

  According to HubSpot’s 2018 Customer Acquisition Study it can cost up to 25x more to acquire a new customer than retain one you already have.  

  Key Takeaways

  It’s important to realise that your customers new and old are at the centre of your business. A customer acquisition framework that leverages this will drive success and boost customer retention rates. 

  In order to grow your business in a profitable and scalable way, you need to think of your customer acquisition activities as a process. A process that can be assessed, analysed, and optimised to deliver better results. 

• https://bit.ly/3x3tG52

Do you have a customer retention plan?

 

Why a focus on the fundamentals of customer retention is essential to business growth

Many marketers are grappling with the challenges posed by fundamental changes in consumer behaviours, increasingly competitive markets and a host of digital technology developments, mobile innovations and social media proliferation.

The good news is that marketers are far better placed to operate in this brave new world than they may think! The fundamentals of customers, brands and marketing have not changed.

However, customers are still the most important asset of any business, so in my view, the number one priority for marketing  to acquire and retain customers by creating a compelling value proposition and brand story that resonates with customers.

There is a danger if there is too great a focus on customer acquisition, then businesses spend too insufficient time on managing customer retention. Instead the balance is wrong and they focus too much on acquisition using paid, owned and earned media and insufficient time on understanding and encouraging customer loyalty and advocacy.

Creating a retention plan enables businesses to focus on these 4 key questions to improve customer loyalty identified by Kanti Banerjee in what he calls the Full Circle approach to Customer Retention.

Why is a focus on planning and managing retention essential?

The changes referred to earlier will yield opportunities for marketers to reinvent their value propositions, brand positioning and customer experience to take advantage of the new customer engagement opportunities. This isn’t easy (but it’s exciting and rewarding if you get it right) but best practice is starting to emerge with brands applying an obsessive focus to creating value for customers realising high payback:

• Starbucks – using mobile to enhance the in-store experience
• Sephora – using social media to making shopping a fun and collaborative experience
• Hertz – using micro-targeted, mobile messages (in the airport) to save their customers time and stress
• ASOS – personalising every aspect of the customer experience from web store recommendations to customer communications to parcel tracking

These brands have all started with the Customer. They have worked out how the new content, technology, media and channel opportunities can add value for customers, and then designed a technology and delivery solution to make it happen. They apply these 5 key modern retention marketing principles:

1. Deliver a seamless customer experience across all customer touch points.
2. Adopt a more reactive, real-time approach to customer communications – the customer is in control now and brands must respond quicker and more appropriately to them.
3. Unlock the power of content as a value creating resource.
4. Harness the power of social media to connect and empower customers.
5. Leverage the moment in time and place personalisation opportunities afforded by mobile interactions.

So in recalling the famous war-time poster, it is very much a case of marketers remaining calm and building on their existing customer retention programmes. This does require a certain data and technical literacy; creative and innovative nature; appreciation of the opportunities and constraints of new social and mobile channels. However these are extensions to current marketing strategy and must build on existing programmes rather than being pursued as new standalone initiatives.

They have kept sight of the fundamentals of marketing :

• 1. It is always easier to sell to existing customers than cold prospects – start in your own back yard with and high performance customer retention programmes.
• 2. Understand customer behaviours and attitudes and develop deep insights into needs and motivations. Identify and exploit the new customer insights resulting from customer engagement across digital, social and mobile channels.
• 3.Focus on key customer segments.
• 4. Be innovative and creative in developing and testing new value-creating initiatives.
• 5. Design customer journeys that co-ordinate interactions throughout the customer lifecycle and make it easy for customers to meet their needs at each stage.
• 6. Use personalisation as a competitive differentiator – other brands can copy your product, service model and pricing but they don’t know what you know about your customers.

None of these disciplines will be new to marketers. They are the core principles of the marketers’ craft which will underpin strong value propositions. The achievement of the brands cited above is that they have future-proofed these by adopting a new set of principles

The financial arguments for a retention focus are compelling too. Ross Beard compiled this summary of customer retention research which remind us why we should focus more on planning and managing retention:

• It is 5-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an old one

• It costs a company $234 every time they lose a customer

• Loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase

• 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience

• 78% of online customers recommend a brand to friends and other contacts after a great customer experience

The rallying cry therefore is for confident, assertive marketers to lead the way in embracing changes and fully exploiting the new technology and media opportunities to reinvent retention programmes that deliver an :

• enhanced experience for your customers
• increased ROI for brands

The new Smart Insights guide to creating a customer retention plan

To give more detailed advice on how to improve customer retention through a planned approach, I have written the recently published Smart Insights Retention Strategy Plan guide to help marketers review and improve their customer loyalty. It covers these 7 Steps:

• Step 1. Establish a clear framework for understanding customer retention effectiveness.
• Step 2: Benchmark your current retention programmes.
• Step 3. Create a customer retention and growth strategy.
• Step 4. Implement practical tools to support the retention programme.
• Step 5. Define typical retention KPIs and performance measures.
• Step 6. Use content marketing, social media and email marketing for growth
• Step 7. Align organisation and technology

https://bit.ly/3mICsQr

B2B Customer Retention Plan

 

How to Build an Effective B2B Customer Retention Plan

by Ben Harper

Customer churn is a top concern for any business—but especially B2B firms. If you aren't able to get on top of customer retention, your bottom line can be completely devastated.

The best way to reduce churn is to create a robust customer retention plan that both retains those all-important current customers and gives you a solid grounding to scale your business.

Why do B2B businesses need a customer retention plan?

Customer churn is part and parcel of owning a business, so it's normal to have customers leave every so often. However, if that "every so often" becomes "frequently," it's capable of ripping a big hole in your ability to run an effective B2B business.

In fact, preventable churn costs businesses $136 billion annually, according to recent statistics.

When your customers are businesses themselves, it's a good bet that once they've decided not to use your solution anymore, they'll go to one of your competitors.

That said, a good B2B customer retention plan isn't about being defensive. A decent strategy will keep your clients from running into the arms of a competitor for a while, but a top-notch retention plan will inspire your customer base, solidify loyalty, and create buzz around your brand.

Here are suggestions for building that plan.

Put customer education first

As good business owners understand, the customer journey doesn't stop once they've agreed to buy from you.

If your customers are left to use your solution without fully understanding its potential, they are likely to become frustrated and wonder what they're paying for. The No. 1 reason for service cancellation is a lack of ROI on a customer's initial investment after purchase, research shows.

What that means is education should sit right at the center of the onboarding process to ensure that your customers are aware of the potential of the solution you've sold to them.

Create explainer videos, schedule welcome emails, and keep customers informed of the latest versions of your product or service through regular communication.

You could have the greatest B2B solution in the world, but if your customers aren't educated about its potential, churn is likely to follow. Education begets loyalty.

Provide problem-solving resources

Once a business has invested in your solution, plenty of questions will be asked of you. Whether your business supplies SaaS solutions, physical products, or consultancy, it is expected to solve a pain point for another business. So if an issue crops up, you'll be expected to help solve it.

Of course, you won't have the time to address all of those issues personally, so it's a good idea to create resources that help customers solve problems themselves.

Create a bank of high-quality content that is readily available to your customers so they can solve an issue whenever it may arise.

Once you've put together a knowledge hub of videos, blogs, e-books, webinars, whitepapers, and other useful resources, you'll allow your customers the space they need to explore your product without your having to hold their hand.

Keep your ear to the grapevine

When customers decide they no longer wish to work with you, if you've been watching closely it won't come as a surprise. Red flags always pop up; by making an effort to watch out for them, you can prevent a customer from slipping away.

Red flags you should monitor:

• Your customers haven't logged into your platform for a while
• They've been searching for the terms of service or contract information
• Their engagement levels with your product are dwindling

When a customer's behavior shows signs of waning interest, try reaching out personally to see what you can do to help. Sometimes the simplest gesture is enough to pull a customer back from the brink.

Personalize your service

Customers yearn to build connections nowadays, and the B2B world is no different. The more a customer interacts with you and your brand, the more resolute that customer's loyalty will become.

The cornerstone of a high-quality customer retention plan revolves around creating a personalized service offering. Create loyalty schemes, send out personalized messages, and provide content that pertains to their specific situation.

It may not seem like much, but that all adds up to a valuable experience for the customer, which is particularly important when there are multiple decision-makers in your customer's business who use your product for different purposes.

Listen to your customers

After investing your blood, sweat, and tears into a business, it's easy to get defensive when a customer provides constructive feedback. But in that feedback is the magic that retains customers.

We've all heard the phrase "every day is a school day," but taking in information is just the first step. You have to actually use feedback to best possible effect.

Show your customers how you're taking their suggestions. Doing so can elevate your relationship with them from a simple business arrangement to an effective partnership.

Make communication a priority

Communication is the foundation of a B2B partnership, and creating an active communication plan ensures that your customers are happy with the service you're offering them.

Even if your customers are content with the way things are, it's good practice to reconnect with them from time to time.

Of course, it's not only about setting up meetings to discuss business matters. It should go deeper than that: You're connecting with the human beings in that company.

Once you're able to create an organic and friendly relationship, you can find new ways to solidify their trust, solve emerging problems, and increase upselling and cross-selling.

Remind customers of their value

In B2B relationships, emotions will always run a little higher than usual. Everybody wants the best for their business, so owners, managers, and employees naturally expect their partners to strive for the very highest standards.

That's why reminding your B2B customers how much you value their partnership is a powerful tool. Each time you make contact with a customer is an opportunity to excite, delight, and deliver best-in-class customer service. That approach should be engrained in the DNA of your business.

Every time you interact with your customer base, you should seek to reinforce why they chose to work with you in the place. There's always room for a small token of gratitude when they least expect it: vouchers, a free service upgrade, and things of that nature show your customers how much you value their ongoing faith in you.

* * *

Of course, the list of customer retention plan tactics in this article isn't an exhaustive one. Depending on your industry and the ways you interact with your customers, you'll think of how else you can bolster client retention.

However, by starting with the suggestions in this piece, you'll build a good foundation on which to grow your company and ensure your best customers stick around.

https://bit.ly/3hgCVYq

B2B Customer Retention: Re-engage Old Customers Effectively

Murtaza Amin

When we talk about business growth, much attention is paid to lead generation and nurturing sales. However, it is necessary to remember the importance of B2B customer retention and the many ways to re-engage old customers. While it is easy to lose sight of the importance of customer retention when it comes to the B2B industry, marketers can’t afford to overlook this aspect. After all, developing brand loyalists and fostering loyalty towards the brand are extremely important for the organisation’s long-term success.

Imagine this. You’ve got a killer new product. You’ve identified your target group. The company’s growth is steadily taking off. You’ve allocated resources for generating new leads and bringing in new sales. It looks like your organisation’s success story is in the making. In such a scenario, would you still dedicate a share of the company’s resources into retaining the customers you’ve already acquired?

Any marketer worth his salt knows that if you don’t reengage new customers, growth won’t be as abundant. To re-engage old customers, it is imperative that the entire process of customer communications, right from the very start of the sales funnel, is well-planned.

What Does B2B Customer Retention Mean?

A company’s ability to retain the customers it has acquired over some time is called customer retention. B2B customer retention activities involve strategies to prevent the organisation’s customer from deflecting elsewhere. Most importantly, these activities begin at the acquisition stage and continue throughout the lifecycle of the customer’s relationship with the organisation. Keys to customer retention and the best customer retention strategies require ongoing implementation for true success.

What is the Importance of B2B Customer Retention?

B2B Customer retention activities help you measure how successful your organisation is at bringing in new customers as well as how successfully it can satisfy the existing customers.

It is a well-known fact that retaining customers is far more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. Satisfied long-term customers are known to spend more money, make purchases more often, opt for offers, and refer their family and friends to your organisation. Some statistics show that even a small increase of 5% in customer retention rates can boost the company’s overall revenue by 25–95%! That’s a huge number by any standard!

Let’s take a look at some other benefits of retaining customers for your B2B organisation.

Assisted Advertising

Short attention spans coupled with the fact that customers have no shortage of options make advertising a game-changer in any industry. However, advertising can be expensive and difficult to access for many organisations. In such a scenario, loyal customers are an effective way of assisted advertising for your company. A referral or recommendation made by a loyal customer to a friend or family member can undoubtedly influence the decision-making process. Social media reviews and rating can also help in informing potential customers about your products, services or customer service.

Increased Revenue

B2B customer retention rates have a direct impact on growing revenues. Customers who have made purchases from you in the past and are satisfied with the products and services are an asset. Since satisfied customers are more likely to return to you in the future, loyal customers translate to repeat profits in the long run. Such customers are more likely to explore the other services and products you offer. They are also more likely to pay for premium subscriptions, sign-up for newsletters or pay premium prices.

Crushing the Competition

Today’s market has become highly competitive. If your customers are not satisfied, they will readily choose to give their business to your competitors. However, if you have the right customer retention strategy in place, you can build a base of loyalists for your brand. Such brand loyalists won’t just switch to a competitor without good reason.

While there are many more benefits to retaining customers, the critical fact is that such customers are simply better for business. They demand fewer resources and give you a higher ROI, helping you grow your organisation.

Strategies to Boost B2B Customer Retention

Now that you understand the value of your existing customers let’s look at some strategies to boost B2B customer retention rates actively.

Having a Comprehensive On-Boarding Program

Landed a sale or acquired a new customer? Don’t pat yourself on the back for a job well done just yet!

Once you acquire a new customer or make a sale, it is necessary to keep in touch with them and build a relationship. A great way of doing so is by having an onboarding program in place. Also called ‘welcome series’ or ‘client education programs’, the aim is to show them around the new product or service and help them make the most of their purchase.

By having such a program in place, you set the foundation for communication that will help you build a relationship with the customer. The on-boarding program for your organisation will depend on what you offer. However, video tutorials, case studies, on-demand webinars, e-books or premium, relevant content series are all great options. The point of the program is to help your customers with all the information they need to utilize best what they have purchased.

With a comprehensive onboarding program, you establish yourself as an organisation that puts efforts into helping the customer. Your investment in easing their journey with you is a great way to build loyalty from the very beginning. This is one of the most instrumental B2B customer retention strategies that can be employed.

By employing CRM cleaning and data solution techniques, it becomes easier to have an on-boarding or loyalty program in place.

Sending an Old-Fashioned Mail or Package

Gone are the days of sending and receiving mail or packages. The average customer today is inundated with emails and phone calls from brands trying to sell to them. In the B2B sector, if you are looking to re-engage old customers, it pays to be unique. Most customers don’t expect anything more than emails, messages on social media networks or a phone call at most. However, the element of personalisation and surprise that accompanies tradition mail today works well if you’re looking to grab an old customer’s attention. One of the important keys to customer retention is a unique communication approach.

When you send a valuable package with a personalised (preferably hand-written) note to an old customer, it can help them remember the positive experience’s they’ve had with you. This strengthens your relationship with the customer. We all know how impactful such relationships are for bringing in new business.

Accompany the package with something that is useful to your B2B client. Industry knowledge related books work well. Is there a newsletter or magazine that they might be interested in? Would they appreciate tickets to a convention related to their industry or segment?

Think about what will make a difference to the consumer while still staying relevant to the service or products your organisation offers. Effort on your part can go a long way in boosting B2B customer retention rates. The best customer retention techniques are ones based on customer-centricity.

Setting the Right Expectations

Communication is the key to the success of any relationship. Even when you want to boost B2B customer retention figures, the golden rule still applies. By being clear in what you can deliver, when you can provide it and how you can do what you promised, the scope for disappointment reduces.

Customers are known to get upset if their expectation or perceived parameters of service are not met. If your customers belong to different industries or if your product has multiple applications, this clarity is even more important. Customers coming from different sectors or industries might have different expectations. Some might feel that your product is too expensive. Maybe another customer is unsure of the ROI they’ll generate by partnering with you. Some others might expect meticulous ‘white glove’ service and attention. Transparency and a straightforward attitude are one of the simplest keys to customer retention.

At BizProspex, for example, we ensure clear communication at all stages of communication. Our CRM cleaning service and data solution technique organization’s values are centred on transparency. We tell our prospects exactly what we can do and how we can help them. This straightforward attitude has been one of the best customer retention strategies for us.

Rather than remaining unclear, it is best to set the right expectation early on itself. Communicate with your customers and understand their points of view, project requirements, goals or objectives and other needs. When your customer knows what to expect (turnaround time, maintenance or servicing, deadlines etc.), they’ll be happier in the long run.

Remember, happier customers are more likely to continue doing business with you, helping overall B2B customer retention numbers.

Highlighting Case Studies Early On In the Sales Process

As we’ve said before, B2B customer retention activities begin as soon as you first contact a prospect. If you want to re-engage old customers, you have to lay the foundation early on.

Early on in the sales process, it is best to determine if the prospect and your organisation are the right fit for each other. This helps you understand how you can work towards providing customers with exactly what they need. One interesting way of achieving this understanding is by talking about success stories and case studies.

Case studies help you highlight the company’s communication style, services or products, customer service, collaborative capacities, and the results that follow. Customers are in a position to understand how you can help them in achieving a particular objective or goal. You can also talk to them about how customers with similar needs have found the right solutions with your organisation. By doing all these things, you drive home the message that you’re the right partner for them.

In case of customers who you haven’t reached out to in a long time; talk about their past interaction with your company. Positive or negative, whatever the experience might have been, referring to previous collaborations can help you land new sales.

In the B2B scenario where products are expensive, and buying decisions take time, case studies help tremendously. They act as research by setting expectations and informing customers. This way they know what to expect from the start and helps in making informed decisions.

Customers who feel like you’ve given all the right information are more likely to trust you. Such customers are more likely to turn into loyalists, boosting customer retention rates.

Calling with a Clear Purpose

If you grab your phone to re-engage old customers with your organisation, make sure it is purposeful. Imagine calling someone to say ‘Hey! I just wanted to check in on you’ in the middle of a busy day. This person who might have other priorities is sure to get annoyed and band your company along with the other time-wasters they have come across. What a silly way to lose credibility! While cold calling is great, it isn’t all.

Rather than calling up old customers just for the sake of checking it off your list, be mindful and purposeful. This means that you should first identify what value addition you can give the customer. Maybe your B2B company is running a special offer to re-engage old customers with services they’ve availed in the past. Perhaps there is a webinar that they might want to register for. Is there a special deal this week that they might want to grab?

Whatever it is that you choose to talk about, make sure it adds value to the customer. This helps you establish your brand as trustworthy and concerned while subtly creating an environment that can garner more sales. If you end up sending a personalised package or mail to your old customers, it is advisable to make a follow-up call. In short, unless you have a compelling reason to call, don’t.

Asking for Feedback and Working on These Suggestions

Customer attrition or churn refers to the process where once-active customers have not made a purchase or interacted with the company in a while. In essence, this refers to when the customer has ended their relationship with the company. This attrition is hazardous to the growth of your company and must be prevented at any cost. Moreover, you can’t boost customer retention rates unless you understand the cause of attrition or churn.

The easiest and most effective way of achieving this is by proactively asking for feedback from your customers. Since the B2B sales process is not dependant on one decision-maker and usually involves a team, consider everyone’s feedback. There are a variety of customer feedback tools that will help you here. By using surveys and questionnaires, it will be easier to understand what contributes to a satisfied customer, trends related to buying habits and even factors that you can improve on.

In this way, you will be able to identify problems before they arise and improve customer retention rates. You can re-engage old customers in a more impactful way with the feedback you collect from your existing customers.

Apart from this, asking for feedback shows your customers that you genuinely care about what they have to say. With precise, to-the-point surveys, you add a new touch point in the customer’s lifecycle, strengthening your reputation with them.

Guess who they will think of when they’re reconsidering the purchase in the future.

Setting Up High-Touch Reach Outs

Customer attrition can occur due to some reasons that you can’t always control. However, what you can do is minimise the damage.

A recent trend in the B2B industry has seen more and more organisations sending out personalised emails and setting up calls with customers who have recently expressed their displeasure. While many customers tend to be vocal about their plight, many others don’t. By setting up a call and giving personal attention to an unhappy customer, you can boost retention rates.

Such calls aim to understand what the customer’s experience has been. Ask them about what they liked and didn’t like. Communicate how you will sincerely try to work on any problems they have faced. While this call in itself may not be enough to retain a customer or re-engage old customers, it is an investment that will reap great benefits in the long run.

Experienced representatives should handle this process of reaching out to customers who aren’t pleased with you. Usually known as ‘customer specialists’ or ‘customer champions, calls like these can take up a lot of resources and time. However, they are effective at showing that your company cares about their experience even if they aren’t continuing to bring their business to you. Even if you don’t end up re-engaging with them, you’ve still left things on a positive note.

Talking About Shared Successes

Research shows that people tend to remember negative events far more vividly than positive events. Even if there are more positives than negatives, people are more likely to remember the negative occurrences. This is also why customers are more likely to talk about negative events on social media platforms as opposed to positive ones.

When an organisation messes up — missed deadlines, inability to deliver on expectations etc. — there is a tendency to over communicate. Representatives will send lengthy apology emails. Teams will discuss strategies to fix any damage. Phone conversations for determining the next course of action will be abundant. However, rarely, if ever, do we put the same emphasis on sharing the positives.

When something positive happens, place an equal amount of emphasis on it. This means that if your product has helped in increasing ROI for a customer, talk about it! Tracking customer profiles can help you find more success that your customer has enjoyed thanks to your product or service.

Even when you’re looking to boost B2B customer retention rates, don’t shy away from talking about shared successes. This reminds them of how your organization helped them solve a problem. Even if they don’t need your services right now, they will think of you the next time they do.

Offering a Win-Back Promo

Is there a better way to boost B2B customer retention rates than with a win-back promo?

First things first, no single thing is enough to bring back a customer who has recently cancelled or decided not to purchase. With that being said, there is a certain level of directness to win-back promos that prove effective to re-engage old customers.

In most cases, it is recommended to send a detailed email to a customer who has recently churned with an invitation to try the product or service at a specially discounted rate. For customers whose deciding factor is mainly cost-related, this can work wonders! In this manner, your sales funnel benefits from win-back promos.

However, if you think about the longevity of customer relations, these types of customers might not be your most loyal patrons. Customers that are likely to re-engage at a low price point alone are also the most likely to switch to competitors.

All in all, while win-back promotions and offers can help you bring in sales, they shouldn’t be overdone.

Building a Customer Loyalty Program

Today, customer loyalty is gaining more and more importance from brands’ point of view. One of the best ways to improve B2B customer retention is to give customers a new reason to engage with you. Sure, you’ve offered them subscriptions and memberships already. But is there anything more you can do?

One of the simplest ways of promoting B2B customer retention is to focus on adding value to the customer’s experience with your brand. This can be achieved in the form of a loyalty program fuelled by offering rewards for referrals, loyalty bonuses and even regularly sharing user-generated, relevant content to their mailboxes. The focus over here is to provide customers with a new way to benefit from interacting with your brand.

Loyalty programs encourage customer retention rates as they subtly push people to visit your site more often, explore the content and products you offer and engage more holistically with your brand. In time, it helps cement your brand’s reputation as reliable, interactive and overall worth it!

How Can BizProspex Help You Boost Customer Retention Rates?

In an era where customer retention is essential to the growth of your brand, why leave any stone unturned?

Your business is bound to see increased B2B customer retention rates upon implementing these strategies. However, it is necessary to add on to this with good customer service, excellent products and services, effective marketing and communication strategy, lead generation tactics, and regular sales. Moreover, to best utilise your customer database to track and manipulate customer retention dates, the database must be accurately updated and relevant.

With BizProspex’s highly skilled and experienced team, you can boost your customer retention rates, fuelled by data of the highest quality. Backed by over 6+ years of experience and a successful track record of satisfied B2B clients, we are the perfect partner for all your data cleaning, CRM cleaning, data enrichment and tech appending partner for your B2B organisation.

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