Anyone who has gone through the customer journey and purchased your products or services can be considered an existing customer. It is critical that they are satisfied with their purchase in order for them to become repeat customers and even advocates for your brand. But if you really want to build a lasting relationship between your brand and your customer base, then you will need to increase your marketing efforts toward existing customers.
Why You Should Increase Your Marketing Efforts to Existing Customers
With existing customers, you already have a captured audience and initial information about their consumer behavior to start with. In addition, there’s value in keeping your existing customer base engaged. Here are the top reasons why you should ramp up your marketing initiatives for existing customers:
Increase Revenue
Current customers have already tried your product or service. And if you’ve provided a great customer experience, then your existing customers are a great audience for upselling, cross-selling, and other marketing promotions. Since they’ve already tried your product and had a positive customer experience overall, odds are they’re more likely to take up on your upselling and cross-selling efforts. Repeat purchases plus a larger basket size mean more revenue for your business.
Better Customer Retention
We’re in a global and digital marketplace. Your customers have a wide variety of brands to choose from, so building customer loyalty can be challenging. However, it’s still possible through a strong marketing strategy for existing customers. It’s essential not to cut off all ties once a user has already completed your desired action with them (i.e., made a purchase). In fact, that’s the stage when you should strive to engage with your customers. Making existing customers feel like they’re valued and approached in a more personal way can help you retain them.
Customer Advocacy
One step above a repeat customer or a loyal customer is an advocate. This is what can help you gain new customers or acquisitions. When an existing customer is truly satisfied with your product, your marketing efforts, and the overall customer experience, they are more likely to recommend your business to friends and family. They may even share their positive experiences on social media platforms, further amplifying your reach.
Increased Credibility
Having customer advocates can increase your credibility. As a brand, you not only highlight your products’ features, advantages, and benefits, but you also have the seal of approval from actual users. This can be effective in getting new customers, especially for those who are more likely to trust customer reviews or recommendations from their inner circles than what they see in advertisements.
Get Valuable Customer Feedback
Marketing to your existing customer base can help you obtain valuable customer feedback. Your email marketing efforts should not only be focused on selling but also soliciting customer feedback through surveys and product reviews. Since you already have a captured audience, it gives you more specific details on what your current base looks like and what they value. This can help you fine-tune various aspects of your business, from your marketing efforts to product development to customer success strategies.
Tips for Marketing to Existing Customers
Now that we’ve covered why you should market to existing customers, here are some tips to help you fortify your marketing strategy for existing customers.
Get to Know Your Audience
Since you have initial information on your existing customers, it can be easy to stop there. But putting in a bit more effort to analyze and find which information is more useful than others is crucial. It’s important to get to know who you’re talking to so you can craft the right marketing strategy for them. Basic questions such as the following can help you understand your consumers better:
- What did the customer buy?
- How much time did it take before making the purchase?
- How much do they spend?
- What are their motivations? Is it a discount, a gift with purchase, etc.?
- What could be their pain points?
Provide Great Aftersales Customer Support
Marketing to your customers after their first purchase is important in setting the tone.
- Thank you message
- Tutorial video or manual (if relevant)
- Request for feedback through a customer survey
- Invite to join your newsletter (if relevant)
- And information on where they can get customer support for any concerns or clarifications
Follow-up emails should always be customer-driven and aim to add value to your target audience—your existing customers.
Share Engaging and Relevant Content
Remember that when communicating with existing customers, you should not only be focused on hard selling. You should be able to provide engaging content that can add value to your target audience. Product-focused tutorials or blog posts or a good video marketing strategy are elements of great customer marketing. You should also aim for a more personalized approach to make customers feel that the content they’re receiving is purposeful and tailored for them and their interests. Marketing to any audience should not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Take advantage of the various digital marketing tools available to help you automate and improve your customer marketing strategy.
You can “protect your base” by not only providing excellent products and services but also by providing value through your marketing efforts. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to start strengthening your marketing strategy for your existing customers. With a strong customer marketing strategy, not only will you be building customer loyalty for repeat customers, but you’ll also be gaining potential advocates for your brand. This will help you gain new customers, who you will then work on moving along the sales funnel to become customer advocates as well.
