As a business owner, or as a person whose success relies upon the growth of the business you work for; you will understand the importance of having a strong customer base. This applies to both new and emerging businesses as well as well-established brands, your customers are what keeps the lights on!
When it comes to business objectives, we often fixate on growing our pools of customers. Whilst this is undoubtedly important, we often forget about how historic customers can still contribute to your company’s bottom line. Your business has a 60-70% chance of selling to your existing customer base, while the probability of you successfully selling to a new prospect falls to around 5-20%.
Even with the wondrous powers of modern marketing and the various tools, techniques and methodologies available to us, businesses still struggle to retain and grow their customer bases. To help you do this successfully or more efficiently, we’ve produced the following guide on some of the best practices for growing your customer base and taking your business to the next level.
What is a Customer Base?
So first things first, what exactly is a customer base? A customer base is defined as a group of people who repeatedly purchase products or retained services from a business. These customers are well engaged with your business and supply the biggest financial contribution to your company’s revenue.
Whilst the definition itself is relatively straightforward, customer bases should be dissected and organised into the following segments.
Loyal Customer Base
A loyal customer base should include the customers who have frequently purchased from your business. Over time, these customers have come to love your products or services and are happy to promote your business to their peers and other networks.
Every loyal customer unlocks a new opportunity to introduce your brand to a new pool of prospects who would otherwise be unaware of your business. By enhancing your customer service and rewarding customers with loyalty incentives, these customers will continue to return and bring new prospects to your business.
New Customers
New customers are essentially defined by their title. This customer base applies to people who have recently made a purchase from your business. These customers can be converted into brand loyalists by ensuring they have a frictionless purchasing experience.
For product-based brands, ensure your customer has everything they need to find success with their purchase. With service-based businesses, you could look to develop a more personalised onboarding process, one that aligns with the customer’s pain points, challenges and goals.
Potential Customers
Although these customers are not ‘technically’ customers yet, these customers still require your attention. Failing to do so will almost always deter them from purchasing from your business and instead, line the pockets of your competitors.
This pool of customers is still exploring your brand, uncovering how your products and services can help them achieve their goals. Demonstrations, explainer videos, guides and case studies are all great examples of tactics you can deploy to close the sale.
Discount Customers
Discount customers are savvy shoppers, they aren’t new to your business nor are they loyal to your brand. They will come round at times when your brand is offering a sale, discount or event, sort of like seasonal purchasers. Unfortunately, there is little you can do to convert these erratic customers into loyalists as they are likely to jump to whichever brand is offering the best price. Don’t worry about these guys too much.
Utilising Digital Marketing to Grow Customers
Now that we’ve identified the different types of customer base, we can begin to explore some of the best solutions to build and grow these segments.
You might think that acquiring leads and improving customer retention rates may seem like a huge challenge, and you’d be right in thinking so! However, with digital marketing and its subsidiary tools, you can leave your marketing strategy to do the legwork. With digital marketing, you can attract visitors to your business, engage your prospects and convert these prospects into warm leads, ready for your sales team.
Many digital marketing strategies go beyond securing new customers too. Your strategy should also factor in ways in which you can convert your customers into loyalists, long after their initial purchase. This part of your marketing strategy will become the driving force for customer advocacy and enhance your ability to find new prospects.
We know that building and scaling your customer base isn’t a simple process. To help you on your way, we’ve compiled some of the most effective marketing tools and tactics that’ll support you on your journey.
How to Build Your Customer Base
This part of the article applies to smaller or newer businesses that are yet to find their feet or may be struggling to find and generate new customers. Consider this section as the foundation for your strategy, after all, a solid starting point will make your future planning even easier.
1. Defining Your Target Market & Buyer’s Journey
The key to building your customer base lies in defining exactly who it is your business is targeting and why. Once you have a solid understanding of this, you’re lead generation strategy and marketing will slot into place.
By studying your target market and plotting their typical buyer’s journey, you’ll reveal their needs, challenges and goals as well as how they engage with brands online. These fundamental findings will help you shape your digital marketing strategy. Enabling you to invest in the channels and tactics that will generate the best possible return on investment.
To really get to grips with your target market you’ll need to do some research. Customer surveys and secondary research into your market are great places to start.
Defining your target market can seem like a huge task, and we’d be lying if we said it was easy. To give you a headstart we’ve created a downloadable persona development template. A persona is essentially a semi-fictitious representation of your ideal buyer, persona development involves carrying out research to identify unique insights about these buyers.
2. Building Your Online Visibility
The scale of your online visibility will undoubtedly impact your ability to generate new leads and build your customer base. There are various different ways in which your business can improve its visibility online from more basic tactics to more advanced techniques. Below we’ve outlined some of the essentials you’ll need to get started building your customer base.
Web Design
If you haven’t already got a website, this is the perfect place to start. According to a survey, over 83% of UK businesses now have a website. A website should serve as the hub for all of your marketing initiatives, without one, it will be considerably harder to achieve the results you need.
The cost of a website will depend on the size and functionality your business requires, you can learn more about budgeting for a new website here.
Depending on your market and the way in which your business trades, you may need to consider the eCommerce route. eCommerce websites enable brands to showcase and trade their products online. 38% of the UK’s entire retail market is dominated by eCommerce which demonstrates the scale of opportunities to be had.
SEO
In addition to having a website that serves as a hub for all of your marketing activities, you need to ensure all of your content is optimised for search. Search Engine Optimisation enables your brand to be found when users search online for products and services you provide. Around 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, with SEO, you can continually improve your prominence in search results.
Higher visibility in search engine results pages means more traffic and a greater opportunity to secure new leads for your business – bolstering your customer base. Now more than ever, markets are increasingly more saturated, meaning it’s more of a challenge to be seen by your target audience. With SEO you can greatly improve your chances to get eyes on your business, products and services.
Online Ads
Search engine marketing and other forms of pay-per-click advertising hold great strategic value in your overarching marketing mix. Techniques applied via Google Ads or Bing Ads are highly effective in driving quality traffic to your website, boosting your opportunity to secure conversions and sales.
Your online adverts should work as a supplementary channel to your organic search presence; achieved by your SEO strategy. In addition to running ads via search engines, you could consider using social media ads to captivate a different pool of users.
3. Publish High-Quality Content
To really captivate and retain the attention of your target market, you need to produce and share high-quality content. Content marketing is a low-cost or inexpensive way to enhance the reach of your brand and increase the flow of traffic to your website. This increased flow of traffic to your website will improve your opportunity to grow your customer base, particularly for your new customer segment.
You can leverage your research into your target market to build a content marketing strategy that influences your customers through their buyer’s journey. Content marketing can be a complicated beast, especially if you’re looking to utilise various tactics at any one time. We would recommend starting small and scaling up in line with the resources you have available.
The types of content your business produces should be guided by your customer research. This will help you produce content that resonates with your audience and encourages them to return to you for more.
4. Monitoring Your Successes & Failures
A fundamental part of building your customer base via digital marketing is to keep a close eye on your successes and failures. By consistently monitoring your progress you’ll be able to make better-informed decisions about how your marketing will evolve over time. This will undoubtedly take up some resources but it’s a crucial step in optimising your lead generation capabilities.
By reviewing which channels provided the most optimal results you can allocate resources to enhance these results. There’re various analytics tools out there on the market, both available for free and subscription-based. Consistent performance monitoring will enable you to discover opportunities for further growth, learning all the while what’s most effective for your business.
Digital Marketing at Loop Digital
At Loop Digital we specialise in planning, implementing and optimising digital marketing solutions for businesses across the country. Our multifaceted team have the skills and knowledge to deliver powerful marketing strategies and exceptional results. For more information about how we can grow your customer base get in touch with our wonderful team today.
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