With the new year in sight, one of the pressing issues for managers is how to improve upon the marketing successes in 2011. While acquiring new customers is an obvious growth strategy, marketers must also use analytics to unlock the real secrets behind marketing success. After all, your marketing dollars should stretch well beyond customer acquisition.
Often companies will focus on “net adds” as a success indicator, and fail to recognize the revenue growth potential by meeting the needs of their existing customers. I am not saying it is by design, but top-line growth is “sexier” to the management, and extracting that incremental dollar out of your existing customers needs a bit more work than designing a catchy marketing campaign – right analytics focus can help solve for the latter. The following 5 steps seem to have worked in my experience.
- Know your customers – demographics, location, spending habits, targeted wallet share, etc.
- Identify and create a portfolio of products that aligns with your customers’ needs and extends your brand beyond core product(s)
- Build relevant external partnerships to extend your products beyond the core competencies
- Target the products offerings to specific customer segments and avoid the “one-size-fits-all” approach to selling
- Lastly don’t forget to utilize all the available customer touch points including, social forums, newsletters, email and others
These steps need to be repeated periodically to capture any changes in market, customer needs, etc. But, the key is to consistently evaluate (say, during quarterly reviews) your portfolio strategy on all of the above drivers and refine as needed.
Remember, it is much cheaper to manage a customer than acquire a new one!
