The Most Important Customer Marketing Might Happen After the Sale

The Most Important Customer Marketing Might Happen After the Sale

Customer marketing after the sale could help you grow more quickly, boost loyalty, and improve customer satisfaction with your brand.

Are You Overlooking Revenues Customer Marketing Could Help You Find?

Client acquisition is – understandably – assigned a significant portion of marketing resources expended in most organizations. However, growth doesn’t hinge on client acquisition alone. A Koyne study (sponsored by influitive advocate marketing) points out that after-purchase marketing, also known as “customer marketing” could be an untapped source of potential revenues that could help you grow your business even faster.

In the 2017 State of the Customer Marketing Survey, 93 percent of those surveyed indicated that customer marketing would become more important to their organization, and more than six out of ten said they planned to increase the amount of staff or budgetary resources devoted to these tactics this year.  Here are some important reasons for you to consider allocating additional marketing dollars, time, creativity and people to post-purchase activities:

  • Competitive Advantage:

Only 61 percent say they are satisfied with their organization’s current efforts, and most of those were from large companies. If you’re a small business owner, it’s likely your competitors are leaving money on the table and leaving their customers ripe for poaching, too.  In fact, 27 percent of those surveyed said their companies don’t even track this as a revenue source.

  • Financial ROI (return on investment):

Half (49 percent) of respondents said their marketing efforts result in moderate to significant revenue gains.

  • Customer Satisfaction:

Companies reporting financial ROI were 2.5 times more likely to have high levels of customer satisfaction.

Increase Revenue Using Customer Marketing After the Sale

The customer transaction is complete, so that’s the end of it, right? Not so fast, say those survey respondents who are making significant revenue gains after the sale. The study also lists the five specific marketing activities which are giving them the most positive ROI:

Customer Referrals

With every satisfied customer comes the opportunity to ask for a referral. Many business owners and buying agents network with companies which are similar to them in size, budget, and industry, which means they could become your best source of word of mouth marketing, if you ask for referrals (and maybe even reward them) when the time is right.

Testimonials and Reviews

While customer referrals usually occur in ones and twos, powerful, positive customer testimonials and reviews can influence dozens – or even hundreds – of potential buyers, especially over time. Encourage happy customers to leave a positive review for your company on public review sites, Facebook, Google, and ask to be able to use their post-sale comments in marketing literature (online and off).

Customer User Groups

If your products or services lend themselves to support scenarios, customer user groups can provide you with an opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell not only additional products, but services, maintenance, installation, and other types of support as well. Customer user groups can also be formed to help you learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of your products or services, act as focus groups, and give you beta testing ground before rolling out new products or updates.

Events

Events and announcements give existing customers a chance to re-up with your brand, upgrade, or replenish dwindling stock and supplies. These can be especially helpful if you have a long buying cycle, or if it’s typical for customers to move up to more valuable packages or products over time. Customer marketing with events also sends a message to your customers that they’re “insiders” who are valued by your company.

Newsletters

Keep the good times rolling! Staying in contact with customers after the sale using email newsletters is a low cost, low pressure way to keep top of mind awareness for your brand, stimulate referrals, and to help ensure your company has a chance to win repeat purchases and upgrades when the time is right. Your POS (point of sale) equipment and software can even help build your email marketing list. Many consumers even prefer to do business with companies that offer eco-conscious options such as having a receipt sent to them via email or SMS text message rather than being printed at the POS terminal.

Not surprisingly, most of those companies who are increasing revenues using marketing tactics like these say that their program’s priorities revolve around relationship building, communication, and customer care. They view each customer transaction with a long term perspective rather than a one-time score. Instead of selling buyers a bigger package or more product than they really need, they put the buyer’s best interests first and trust that after-purchase customer marketing will help produce repeat purchases, word of mouth referrals, and brand advocacy from among satisfied customers.

You might also like: Top 10 Types of Corporate Emails that Engage, Nurture and Convert

This is a perspective no company can afford to be without. As you evaluate the buying journey in light of potential customer marketing that can help you increase revenues, create a road map for buyers whose journey continues on after the sale, to future purchases, upgrades, options, and so on, and include activities that keep your brand top of mind and customer satisfaction high.

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