Get a few business for company owners together at a coffee shop, watering hole, or in some other casual setting, and at any given moment, a lively discussion on increasing “market share” is bound to pop up.
As in, “What are you doing to generate new leads?” Or, “Our new TV commercial has people talking!” And let’s not forget, “Any ideas on how I can increase my page-one presence on Google?”
When business owners aren’t talking about hiring, operations, or buy-and-sell agreements, marketing is often the topic of choice. But when it is, too often the conversation revolves around only half of the marketing equation, i.e., market share. The other half, and the one that often does not get the attention it deserves, is customer share.
This blog is being partially driven by the former University of Hartford marketing adjunct professor in me, and yet during my time instructing graduate and under-graduate students alike, I’m quite certain I learned at least as much as I imparted. And when it came to everyday marketing practice, we spent a lot of time on defining “customer share” and all that it entails.
To grow customer share is to generate additional revenues from people who have already done business with you for lots of good reasons, including that by marketing to people already pre-disposed to do business with you, “customer share” marketing efforts typically generate a higher ROI than does “market share” marketing and advertising.
There are myriad ways to engage previous and existing customers through your company marketing program, all based a single premise: welcome them back with open arms and give them multiple reasons and opportunities to do business with you again.
These include:
- Ongoing sales-focused emails and e-Blasts
- Periodic customer newsletters, print and electronic
- Flyers and other direct mail sales tools
- Customer appreciation sales events
- Customer referral programs
- Customer-of-the-month or similar means of putting individual customers front and center on your website, in e-Newsletters, etc.
- Engage them on social media
There’s an old saying and modern song title that, when slightly twisted, hint at why you should pay current and past customers extra special attention, i.e., “Dance with the one you brought to the party.” The “why” factor is simple – there’s intrinsic value in who and what you know, enough so that you don’t constantly need to be looking for people to replace them.
Granted, that metaphor only goes so far, but it if helps you remember the importance of what building customer share is all about, then – yes, you guessed it – my work here is done. At least until our next blog.