The purpose of your marketing strategy is to generate leads for the sales team. There are four simple approaches that will help you do just that.
You can:
- Sell more product to your current customers
- Develop new products to sell to your current customers
- Find new customers to sell your existing product to
- Sell new products to new customers
Which is the best choice for you? If you have a large, loyal customer base selling more to them is certainly easier than finding new customers who have to get to know you.On the other hand, if you have saturated your current customer base it will be time for something new.
Regardless of the marketing strategy, you select, you need to be sure your marketing and sales direction are in sync. You have the best shot at success when the two pieces work together.
Sell More to Your Current Clients
This strategy works for a mature business with a fairly stable customer base. Salons, well-established life coaches, and personal trainers are good examples. Once they build a book of customers, they don’t have the bandwidth to add additional clients. Their revenue grows as they book additional sessions with the same clients.
Capacity constrained manufacturing companies with a few long-term contracts to fall into this group too.
Sell more with exceptional customer experiences
If your sales strategy relies on a loyal customer base then your marketing should focus on maintaining these long-term relationships. Want customers to keep coming back? You need to continue to wow them with great customer service, loyalty reward programs, and process improvements.
Make it easier for customers to do business with you. Investing in online scheduling, ordering and bill payment solutions will pay significant dividends as loyal customers notice the continuous improvements.
In this category, training for customer service employees is a marketing strategy. Making sure every member of your team is prepared to give each client an exceptional experience is sure to create loyalty.
Also, consider creating a loyalty program to reward customers for repeat purchases.
But what if you don’t have a big enough customer base or you have excess capacity. When you aren’t generating enough revenue from existing customers and products you might want to consider one of the next two sales models.
The first is built on a foundation of innovation and cross-selling, the other on prospecting. Which should you choose to increase your sales? Take a look at the business descriptions and find the one which best suits you.
Cross-Selling – Offering New Products to Current Customers
Do your customers know all the things you do? If clients love your product but go elsewhere for an accessory or another service, it may be they didn’t know you also offered that. Don’t assume your customers are familiar with every item in your broad product line. Significant increases can be achieved by simple cross-selling.
McDonald’s perfected the art of cross-selling when they taught their sales team to ask one simple question. “Do you want fries with that?” The simple product suggestion raised the average sale and their overall profit dramatically.
Sell more by cross-selling, bundling, and gathering more detailed customer information
When you want to increase what you sell to a customer who knows and loves you it helps if you can offer more than one product. It might require a little investment in innovation and new product development. Don’t stop with the launch of the new product. You need to let your customers know you can solve other problems.
You never want to be in a situation where a customer says, “I didn’t know you did that” as they explain why they bought from someone else.
Marketing strategies like cross-selling or bundling – like combining burger, fries and a drink in a meal deal – makes customers more likely to purchase the complete package from you.
For a business to business company, a periodic account review and a conversation about what is going on in their business may uncover more than a few unmet needs. Maybe they are planning on increasing their staff, moving to a new location or adding new products of their own. Be proactive and anticipate how business events create needs for some of your other products.
Find New CustomersFor Existing Products
Companies which sell software have essentially one product. After the initial purchase, renewals are fairly simple if the product does what is promised. In industries like this with a fairly narrow product line, the way to sell more is to find new customers.
Entice new customers to try your product with traditional brand building and product awareness
Supporting this sales strategy, traditional advertising and promotion vehicles can help you reach large numbers of new prospects. Billboards, direct mail and ad words (PPC) will help you spread the word. Offering incentives to encourage the first purchase such as free trials, coupons and giveaways can help shift browsers to buyers.
Proceed with Caution: New Products to New Customers
The new entrepreneur is often likely to say “I can do that” to any request from a potential customer. The problem is jumping from product to product (or service to service) will not create a sustainable business model in the long run.
Go back to the drawing board and define
If this is your current sales strategy, go back and research your customers and review your business model. This may be a great approach as you try to land those first few accounts, but eventually, you need to build a company and a reputation around something you excel at.
This is not just a problem for new companies, I have seen established businesses flounder as they try to be all things to all people.
Pick the Right Marketing Strategy for Your Business
How many customers do you have? How many do you want? Once you answer those questions it is easy to select the right growth strategy and sync it with a market plan to achieve your goals. Ready to move forward with your marketing strategy but don’t know how much it will cost? Download our marketing budget guide to get started today.
