Would you agree that the purpose of your marketing and sales efforts is to increase your customer base or increase your revenue? What sometimes can be overlooked by B2B companies is that you can increase your revenue without increasing your current customer base. The best, most qualified leads for your business are the customers already buying from you. Existing customers have a higher conversion rate and are more cost-effective to target. Each additional conversion makes your customer more loyal to your brand and increases their chance of referring you new business. And we know that referrals are the lifeblood of SMBs, especially in the B2B space. Here are eight ways to get the maximum CLV (customer lifetime value) from your most important target audience.
“It costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer.”
Old Business Wisdom
Refine Your Most Popular Offerings
The first way you can get the maximum CLV from your current customers is by refining your most popular offerings. Make your most popular offerings easier to buy and use. User Interface and User Experience are important. The fewer difficulties and barriers to using your products and services, the easier it becomes for your prospect to say yes to a conversion.
What part of your offerings do your clients love the most? Focus on enhancing the most appealing aspect of your offerings for your customers. Then, look at the opposite end of the spectrum. What are the most common complaints and pain points clients have with your products and services? Look at ways to resolve those issues, starting with the most common. Are there parts of your product or service offerings that often go unnoticed or unused by your customers? Reducing the largely extraneous elements of your offerings will make them easier to use for your customers. Now, some of your current and future customers may need the removed feature, which makes it perfect as a feature for upselling and cross-selling.
Get Maximum CLV from Your Target Audience with Upselling
Once you’ve refined your most popular offerings, consider what extra you can offer that your current customers would appreciate and consider upgrading to access. You don’t have to read minds when it comes to upselling your existing customers. Reaching out to your most loyal clients or running a customer outreach campaign to gather feedback allows you to hear directly from your customers what would take your product and service offerings to the next level.
When it comes to upselling, your focus should be on what you can provide in addition to your popular products or services that will help your customers save them money, time, and frustration.
Can you offer a premium or upscale version? Examples include offering a premium version of one of your existing products and services. This upgrade could be a white label version of your service your B2B clients can use with their branding or a flagship product made with higher quality materials.
Another common way to upsell your current clients to reach maximum CLV is to create a service bundle. Combining one or two of your most popular offerings with your more niche offerings can give current clients a way to pick up the offerings they already use and try out one of your lesser-known offerings; allowing them to fall in love with it while saving money as opposed to purchasing the offerings separately.
Add-ons are one of the most popular ways to maximize your customer’s CLV. Creating a web of supporting offerings around your flagship offering is a great way to encourage your clients to spend a little more to get the premium experience from your most popular offerings. Add-ons could include additional modules, unlocking bonus features, or items that complement your primary offering to make it more useful. Another common add-on is an upgraded warranty or service plan that goes with your offerings.
Removing limitations is also a great way to upsell your current clients. This removal is an excellent avenue for reaching maximum CLV with enterprise or power users. Your clients that squeeze the very last drop of value out of your offerings are the ones that most commonly will abut the limitations of your offerings. Giving them a way to go further by providing an upgraded tier of service or a limitless enterprise option will help you reach maximum CLV with these clients.
Maximize your Client CLV with Cross-Selling
Just like with upselling, maximizing your client’s CLV with cross-selling is all about providing a product or service that will help your customers save money, time, and frustration, just in a way that their current offering selection is not. If you were able to conduct some customer feedback, you might see a repetition of similar problems crop up that are not related to your product offerings but are common pain points for your customers.
If that’s the case, look at creating a new product or service that will address a common pain point to your current client base. You already know the clients’ common pain points, so providing a quality service or product to address it is guaranteed to save them money, time, and frustration. It can be advantageous to include a section in your customer feedback investigating your clients’ “back burner” problems. These are problems they’re managing right now but would like to resolve, and they just haven’t had the time to figure out what that solution might be. Unaddressed pain points like these are great sources to tap with a new product or service offering.
To maximize your Client CLV with cross-selling, investigate complementary services that would be of value to current customers. Offering a limited-time promotion for services specific to a customer is one approach, as is creating a notification for signups if you offer a limited product release or seasonal-based offerings. Defining scarcity for a limited offering and promoting it to the right client is a great way to increase their CLV.
You can also partner with another company in your industry for cross-selling through a cross-promotion. Affiliate partnerships, referral rewards, and cross-marketing are solid ways two companies can help each other be more successful.
Use Recurrent Revenue to Increase Client CLV
Recurrent Monthly Revenue (RMR) is a proven business model for maximizing client CLV. RMR creates a continuous stream of income from your client base instead of a one-and-done purchase and has become the go-to pricing strategy for most software. Can you offer a worthwhile membership program or forum for your customers that will help them do business better and faster? Monthly service and support offerings are common avenues for increasing client CLV.
If you provide a product, is there a way to leverage it into a service that will offer you RMR? A perfect example of this is Adobe’s Creative Suite. The original software suite was pricey, one-time purchases, making it difficult for some small businesses, individual workers, students, and prosumers to purchase. Today, Adobe’s Creative Suite is a subscription service, and its low monthly price makes it easy for a larger target audience to buy.
Increase Your CLV By Staying Present in Your Target Audience’s Mind
Sometimes increasing your revenue and client CLV is as simple as avoiding “out of sight, out of mind.” Keeping up communication between your business and your clients is critical for building client relationships. And, client relationships are of the utmost importance for B2B companies. Developing trust and rapport is the best way to create brand loyalty and turn a customer into a referrer and brand evangelist.
A solid way to keep your customers coming back again and again after purchase is by sharing your knowledge and expertise freely. The cornerstone of content marketing, you can nurture a client’s CLV by providing them with consistent value. Sharing your knowledge and experience is a trust-building exercise. It shows your customers you are an expert in your industry and helps them get the most value from the purchases they make with your products or services.
Some balk at giving away high-quality, valuable information for free but, the truth is that anyone coming to take and use your advice without turning into a customer was never a prospective customer to start. When you provide free value of this nature that saves your customers time and money, they’re reminded why they choose to do business with you, just like having excellent customer service.
Another benefit of regular communication with your clients is making sure they know all your company’s offerings. You would be surprised how many of your current customers aren’t aware of all your company’s offerings. Sometimes the only reason they haven’t purchased your product or service or purchased a competing solution is that they were unaware of your offering.
Make your communication with clients valuable and worth their time. Share industry news, ideas for their business (even if it’s not related to your offerings), and make sure they know your current and future offerings. Reach out to ask your clients how they’re doing, develop a personal rapport, and listen for their unmet needs. What are your customers struggling with, and how can your offerings help make their lives easier? Making a personal connection with your existing customers is a fine way of ensuring they return to you, again and again, helping you get the maximum CLV from your most important target audience.
Improve Maximum CLV by Increasing Loyalty
Providing value for your clients doesn’t stop with communication and sharing your expertise. Building loyalty in your clients makes it easier for them to say yes to purchase and reduces the amount of competitor research and shopping they perform. One of the simplest ways to build loyalty with your customers is by providing a worthwhile guarantee.
One of the keys to success for Amazon is its customer service. Packages get damaged, lost, and stolen. Amazon built a loyal base of users by making it easy to shop with them because customers knew if something went wrong with their package, Amazon would take care of it hassle-free. Even though it’s not an official guarantee, in practice, it’s just as good and helped Amazon become the retail juggernaut it is today.
Another way to increase loyalty is by making your customers feel valued. Many companies ask for customers to complete a post-purchase survey or a feedback form. However, for your clients to feel valued, it helps to reach out independently to them (not in conjunction with a purchase or customer service experience). Ask for feedback and tell your client why it’s valuable, plus how you will use the feedback to make the company and customer experience better.
If you want to use marketing automation to improve your customer loyalty and improve client CLV, consider using it to provide your clients rewards or discounts in association with return purchases. Send out coupons or discounts for their next purchase when they complete a purchase to get them thinking about what they will buy next. You can also send exclusive offers to your best clients, offering early signups or pre-order discounts for new offerings. These improve conversions and make your clients feel like they’re unique and valued by your business.
But, don’t make it all about business. To increase customer loyalty, you need to make your clients feel valued. Send a note to a customer who has a birthday, is celebrating a business anniversary, or other occasions. Follow them on social media and occasionally like, share, and comment on their posts. These little personal touches help your customers feel valued as people, not just conversions, by your business. It makes customers want to continue doing business with you, and when there’s an opportunity to do more business with you, they will be happy to take it. All help you to maximize the CLV of your current clients.
Ask for Referrals
Your customer’s lifetime value can be measured in ways beyond their purchases. The best clients for a business are the ones that refer people to your company who, in turn, become clients. Asking for reviews and referrals are some of the most challenging things to do in business, but it’s worth it. Social proof or third-party recommendations are some of the best marketing and sales material you can have as a business.
Give your best customers options for how they can support your business outside making a purchase. Consider directing them to a third-party review site or asking them directly for a referral. You can also provide your best evangelists with easy access to your marketing materials (PDFs, FAQs, videos, tools) so they can share them with potential customers in their network.
Using Marketing to Get the Maximum CLV from Your Most Important Target Audience
Having a great agency partner will help you make the most of your marketing and use it to attract new customers and get the maximum CLV from your existing clients. As a B2B-focused digital marketing and branding agency, Bold Entity can help you learn about your clients, their pain points, and how your business can make your customers feel valued while saving them money and time.
For more in-depth marketing assistance, consider adding an outsourced CMO to your company as a valuable resource and marketing guide. We dive into the benefits of an outsourced CMO solution for B2B companies in This Article, especially for B2B SMBs looking for cost-effective marketing leadership.
Together we can help you get the most CLV from your most important target audience. View our Portfolio to see how we’ve helped other companies connect with their clients. Then make sure to Contact Us to get started!
