TL;DR:
3 Simple Ways Marketing Can Improve Customer Retention:
Gather and respond to customer feedback
Give customers a warm welcome
Stay in touch with customers year-round
Let's get into the details ↓
Recently, I had a 45-minute meeting with a small business owner, Sarah (name withheld), to talk about marketing and company revenue.
Sarah took ownership of her father's insurance agency and has a great system in place to generate leads for her business.
But Sarah was facing a challenge that many small business owners face:
While her pipeline was full of new business opportunities, she struggled to retain these customers year after year.
We walked through retention scenarios, and she came to this realization:
"A 3% increase in customer retention? That's about $120k in revenue," she said.
💡
While there are a number of ways to improve the customer experience (processes and systems, team training, customer service and support, etc.) - today I'm going to share how marketing plays a vital role in this, too.
Here are 3 simple ways marketing can move the needle on retention:
1. Gather & respond to customer feedback
"Get closer than ever to your customers." - Steve Jobs
Treat customer feedback (the good and the bad) as a gift.
They're literally sharing with you ways you can improve your business.
Here are a few data points you're mining for:
Why do they buy?
Why do they stay?
Why do they leave?
How can you improve?
Why do they choose you over others?
How do they feel about your product/service?
Ask for feedback, and use it to help inform your business strategy.
...and yes, there are feedback tools you can pay for. But sometimes, it's as simple as asking for it via text / email, or even a tweet.
Check out how Sam Altman, Founder of ChatGPT, gathered feedback before his launch:
2. Give Your Customers the Warmest of Welcomes
A poor customer onboarding experience is one of the top reasons customers leave - statistically falling right after the wrong product fit and lack of engagement. ( Source )
Pre-purchase, your future customers invested time getting to know:
You
Your company
Your product/service
Your customers' reviews
Now that they've decided to move forward with your business, give them an official "warm welcome" 👋🏻
To start, consider implementing a welcome email, or sequence of emails, with a video that digitally greets them with open arms and shows them around (tools, services, resources, events, team, etc.)
The key here is this, though. They won't give "boring" the time of day.
Try and make it feel:
→ Personal
→ Friendly
→ High-touch
3. Stay in touch with your customers year-round
"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better." - Jeff Bezos
The goal here is this:
Prove you care beyond the transaction.
Show up proactively and consistently with value.
Here are a few ways you can do this:
Newsletters
Birthday texts
Handwritten cards
Quarterly check-ins
Staying in touch with your customers on a consistent basis can help build a tighter relationship, enhancing that "know, like, trust" factor.
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These are just 3 of the many ways I see marketing moving the needle on customer retention.
I'd say the important point to make here is this:
It's less expensive to retain a current client than it is to acquire a new one.
When we pigeonhole marketing to ONLY focus on new business and leads, we miss out on more profitable opportunities that point directly to revenue (and a strategy that still supports new business via referrals, a topic for another day).
That's all for today.
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