As a B2B marketer, what’s your number one “obsession?”
Back in 2007, Forrester remarked that: “While B2B marketers obsess over customer acquisition metrics, they ignored monitoring the factors that make customers happy long after deals close.”
Almost a full decade later, marketers are still neglecting the sales funnel stages that come after prospects convert to customers. In 2014, Econsultancy found that while 34% of marketers indicated they will increase investment in acquisition, only 18% plan to focus on retention.
While the obsession with lead generation isn’t difficult to understand, marketers need to wake up and realize that customer churn is not to be taken lightly. For one reason or another, customer retention and loyalty consistently take a back seat to acquisition, and current marketing budgets are a clear indicator of this.
Unlike lead generation, retention campaigns can take a much longer time to yield results. For example, when you publish a landing page or launch a PPC campaign, you can see and measure the results relatively quickly. This usually isn’t the case with customer retention, given that “metrics” such as loyalty and relationships are much harder to quantify, and their results are nowhere near immediate.
Marketers who ignore the last sales funnel stages, in which customers need to be “delighted,” are missing out on the opportunity to create brand ambassadors. Just because a prospect finally converted into a customer doesn’t mean your work is over. Don’t leave your customers hanging. Similar to prospects, they need to be engaged with through marketing, and feel like your company appreciates their loyalty.
Three things to keep in mind when planning customer retention campaigns are:
It goes without saying that you should always check your Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ Company pages for comments or questions a few times daily. But let’s face it: social listening is so much more than just monitoring incoming messages. If possible, devote at least 30 minutes daily to track social networks in real time.
Quick Tip:
If you only have time to monitor one network, it should be Twitter. Download TweetDeck, Twitter’s free monitoring tool, and start tracking company mentions.
When was the last time you actually spoke to a customer? It’s not a crime to pick up the phone and speak with them every once in a while! After all, how else can you really understand your target audience and create marketing content for it?
Quick Tip:
Conduct a feedback survey every six months. This can be as simple as selecting a few dozen active customers, writing up 10 questions, and scheduling a 15-20 minute call with each one. Keep a record of all of the answers, and make sure to follow-up with specific customers if you’ve implemented their suggestions
Break tradition. Try not to be one of those marketers who dismisses the sales team. Instead, leverage all of the incredible insights they have on your customer database. Set up bi-weekly meetings with either an expert from sales or customer success, and ask them about key areas such as pain points, challenges and new industry trends.
Quick Tip:
Devote 5-10 minutes of each sales rep to discuss one specific pain point. Afterwards, turn this information into a full blog post. Another idea is to directly reach out to a customer who experienced this challenge, and quote his or her experience.
Before developing an inbound marketing plan to keep customers happy, read on for tips on using social media, content marketing, and email to achieve this goal.
Depending on whether you’re B2B or B2C, you need to find out which 2-3 primary networks your customers spend the most time on. Twitter is often the key channel to monitor, followed by Facebook for B2C and LinkedIn for B2B. Your customers may also be active on geographic-specific channels, such as Viadeo or RenRen.
Quick Tips:
You may have heard that email marketing is still alive and kicking; in fact 48% of consumers say that they prefer to communicate with brands via email. Even though marketers are quick to create nurturing campaigns for prospects, they forget the later sales funnel stages require constant communication too.
Email marketing is a helpful way to stay top-of-mind with customers, make them feel appreciated, and ensure that you keep them engaged throughout.
Quick Tips:
Content marketing isn’t just for the top sales funnel stages. Its main purpose is to attract prospects in the awareness stage – but don’t let this be it’s only purpose!
When planning blog posts, webinars, and even website content, take the needs of your customers into account to ensure they’re always being met.
Quick Tips:
---
If you start investing more time and effort in customer retention, this doesn’t necessarily detract from your acquisition efforts. If you think about, the two actually go hand-in-hand. Successful customer retention campaigns can actually bring new business, especially when it comes to word-of-mouth recommendations.
There’s no “right” way to delight your customers. Just remember that they chose your company for a reason, and you want to make sure they remember what that is. Whether you reach out on social, through content, or by email, remember that your target audience always wants to learn, feel appreciated, and stay in the loop.