Before, companies were only concentrated in bringing in new customers. So all of the marketing strategies were focused on calling the attention of prospects. 

With the era of customer success, it was proven that you can also bring more revenue in with the same customer base. Meaning, your current customers will be buying more of your product if they see value in your solution. With this, a new way of marketing started to emerge: customer marketing.

But, what is customer marketing?

Customer marketing is any form of marketing that is targeted to your existing customer base. Customer success has proven to be important in taking care of your customers, delivering value, driving retention and even upselling and expansion.

Customer’s marketing main goals include:

1. Increasing retention

2. Driving product adoption

3. Driving upsells and expansion

4. Increase referrals and advocacy

5. Increase brand loyalty

6. Improve customer experience

Customer success and customer marketing work together as a team to make sure the customer is getting the most value out of your solution. 

Your existing customers are important (and in fact I would argue sometimes more important than new customers). They represent opportunities to increase revenue. It is also cheaper to maintain an actual customer than it is to bring a new one. 

 If I had to choose a KPI to measure the success of customer marketing, that would be account growth and increased ARR per customer. Maybe a customer today is paying $5,000 annually. 

Customer marketing would be responsible of making sure this customer spends more down the road. Customer success would be responsible of identifying upsell opportunities, and customer marketing of delivering the messages that resonate with the customer to get them to buy more of your solution.

Customer marketing would then be responsible for:

  • Creating content that demonstrates the value of specific features of the solution to be sent to the actual customer in the right moment, at the right time and when the opportunity comes around.
  • Providing personalized recommendations based on product usage and current use cases that could result in an upsell.
  • Working together with customer success to identify power users and create testimonials that can be then used with other customers to prove the success of a specific feature.
  • Turning customers into advocates and promotors of your brand.
  • Analyzing NPS surveys and gathering feedback from customers to better understand what works for them. Translate this positive feedback into articles, blogs and communications that sell additional value.

 So here’s a story of customer marketing being successful: I bought a Purple mattress 2 months ago, it was one of the best products and one of the best experiences I’ve had so far. Best sleep of my life. So, a month ago, this comes up in my mailbox:    

Complete the suite. “We hope you’re enjoying your new mattress! But like vanilla ice cream, what you add to it can make it even better”. 

I should probably get the pillow. 

Now, this is not SaaS, but it’s the same concept. Getting a current customer to buy more from your product is the definition of customer marketing.  Some examples of activities that would be part of the customer marketing team include:

  • Referral programs
  • Newsletters
  • Customer events
  • Content marketing (blogs, emails, you name it)
  • Upselling campaigns
  • Advocacy programs
  • NPS
  • Customer communities

It’s time to re-think your marketing strategies. Invest in customer marketing, you will see the ROI.

This article was written specifically for the Success Hub by one of its members. The article remains ©copyright of its author, but full permission is given to Success Hub to publish the article or any part of it for any reason.

If you would like to submit your own article for inclusion at the Success Hub please write to us at info@practicalcsm.com and we will be happy to discuss the matter further with you.