At times, marketing can be seen solely as a lead-generation machine. But the reality is that marketing must also be a key player in maintaining the customer relationship throughout the lifecycle. Even the most savvy of marketers can slip into a post-sales lag in marketing efforts, thereby letting their relationship with a newly acquired customer fade after a sale is made.
A satisfied customer can be the most powerful form of marketing for a company. Your company must make a conscious effort to create customer evangelists: customers who are faithful to your brand and who herald its offerings and attributes. Customer evangelists can help you extend your brand’s influence organically, reduce the cost of acquiring new customers, and create authentic and impactful marketing.
Leading organizations are fostering relationships with their existing customers to deepen trust and loyalty to their brand. Customer satisfaction is achieved through marketing and sales departments partnering together to deliver a more personalized customer experience. Re-align and ramp up your focus on customer engagement to create a platform for lifelong customers who advocate your brand.
But how can you create customer advocates?
In our new eBook created with Marketo, Customer Obsessed Lifestyle Marketing, we share powerful and incisive strategies to enhance your customers’ engagement by improving their experience with your brand. Forrester found that some form of word-of-mouth recommendation accounts for 80% of all B2C and B2B purchases, proving that customer advocate marketing is key to strengthening your client base. Here are a few tips for post-sale engagement to create customer advocates:
- Find out how your customers want to be engaged.
When someone becomes a new customer, be sure to thank and welcome them. With all of the marketing noise out there, it’s essential to show your appreciation for their business. Develop a cadence of personalized messaging based on their experience with your brand. Consider even asking customers how they want to engage with you; this can be achieved through a subscription-management strategy. Discover what they want to gain from being your customer. - Develop personalized engagement plans.
As your relationship with your customer grows, measure his or her activity patterns. Monitor how they choose to interact with your brand by taking into account both their demographic and engagement data. Not all customers should be treated the same. Identify different customer types and develop a personalized engagement plan to increase customer satisfaction. - Deliver what your customers want from you.
Discover what they are hoping to gain as customers of your brand, and then identify how you can help them get the most out of their experience. As you get to know your customers in a more personalized and intimate way, make it a goal to proactively engage them: It’s not enough just to keep up with customers’ demands in today’s hyper-connected global marketplace. You have to know what your customers want before they do to ensure long-term engagement. This way, you’ll be well-equipped to align your brand with your customers’ success by demonstrating that your investment in their future goals or aspirations.
An organization that focuses on the needs of their customers — as well as their customers’ customers — will rise above the rest. Creating customer advocates is the most effective way to grow and sustain your company’s brand equity. Don’t let your potential customer evangelists fall to the wayside; empower your organization’s marketing team to further your customer’s success with your brand. Learn how to increase engagement with your customers throughout their lifecycle to create your best advocates in our new eBook, Customer Obsessed Lifestyle Marketing.
