Jumpstart Post Sales Strategy

Most companies focus their marketing efforts on getting new leads that convert into sales. But equally important to your growth targets and the bottom line is retaining your existing clients and customers.

Marketing to existing customers is easier and much more cost-effective than trying to win new ones. Studies have also shown that increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent can increase profits by 25 to 95 percent.

To convince a new customer or client to sign up in the first place, you will need to present your product or service as something that will significantly and positively impact their lives. When it comes to keeping existing customers, it is much easier to reinforce the status quo and keep them happy, which builds loyalty for your brand.

In addition to creating a large base of loyal customers, an excellent post-sales strategy will also help increase demand for your product or service and your brand organically through word of mouth.

 Here are some ways to quickly develop your post-sales marketing strategy if you still need to get one in place.

Improve Customer Retention with Excellent Onboarding

Customer onboarding is crucial because you only have one chance and a short period to make a good impression. You want to make it quick and easy so that you can immediately show how much value your product or service and your organization offer to your clients.

In the world of mobile apps, for example, more than two-thirds of new users are expected to remove or stop using an app within the first week.

Your marketing, sales, and customer service teams should be on the same page to avoid losing new clients. Your marketing and sales teams set your clients and customers with the right expectations, and customer service delivers on those promises.

Just one snag in your initial engagements can make a happy and potentially long-term client into a disappointed and unresponsive one. With a streamlined onboarding process, you set up your clients for success early on and increase the time they spend with your product or service, which increases the chances that they will find it valuable and irreplaceable. 

Be Personal and Connect with Customers

Personalizing your marketing communications means more than just addressing your customers by their first names. Your customers should feel like you care about them so that you can gain their trust and loyalty.

By regularly communicating with your customers, you can learn more about them and gather real measurable data about who they are and how they engage with your product or service. Knowing this helps you identify their pain points and improve your products and processes.

Understanding who your customers are allows you to improve your marketing efforts to address the needs of real customers with specific personas. Segment your customers into different groups and create separate campaigns for each one. Customize your content to speak directly to your customers more personally. And finally, use customer data to determine upselling and cross-selling opportunities. For example, you can offer exclusive sneak peeks and deals on new products and services to top customers who already extensively use your current offerings.

It is also essential to be persistent and utilize all available communication channels when contacting your customers. Making yourself easily accessible through different mediums will make your customers want to engage with your brand more.

A recent study found that one-third of customers who contact brands via social media have yet to get a response. Not responding presents a huge missed opportunity that many companies can immediately improve overnight. 

Empower Customers and Encourage Brand Evangelism

Happy and loyal customers have a deeper emotional connection with your brand and are a potential gold mine of readily available and very effective marketing resources.

Everybody has access to social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and can easily share their positive experiences with your brand. Word of mouth can increase your brand’s visibility across a much larger audience with the exact needs of your existing user base, such as colleagues, clients, and friends working in the same industry.

Recent data indicates that more than 70 percent of individuals are more likely to purchase a product or service based on social media referrals, and a staggering 90 percent believe that recommendations from friends are reliable and trustworthy. According to social proof theory, people who do not know what to do in a particular situation will look at and copy what others are doing, making customer evangelism a powerful tool that can significantly impact your bottom line.

You can incentivize positive reviews and recommendations by offering referral programs or simply starting a conversation online and inviting customers to share their ideas and insights. By actively participating in the discussion, you can immediately address negative feedback and pivot the customer’s experience in the right direction – turning a potentially scathing review into a positive one.

Improving your post-sales marketing strategy requires a lot of adjustments to your established customer journey. These minor tweaks can significantly impact your bottom line by increasing retention rates and customer spending through upsells and cross-sells. It also improves demand generation and brand visibility through positive customer feedback.