The Guide to Customer Marketing and its Role in Upgrades and Upsells with Nilesh Surana

Summary: <br> How to reach out to Nilesh Surana:<br> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nileshsurana/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nileshsurana" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a> <a href="https://customersuccessbox.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a><br> In today’s subscription economy, everyone is trying to fix the leaky bucket of customer churn. Unfortunately, current customer retention practices just aren’t cutting it.<br> In this episode, Nilesh Surana of <a href="https://customersuccessbox.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CustomerSuccessBox</a> shares his take on customer retention and explains why it’s better to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to solving problems your customers have with your products.<br> Keep reading to get his tips on the ideal customer marketing strategy for encouraging people to invest in upgrades and upsells, rather than your competition.<br> The Goal of Customer Marketing<br> The ultimate goal of customer marketing is to retain customers and help them drive the maximum value from your product. In fact, your recurring revenue should actually be more important than new sales. This is because companies that remain relevant to their current customers as those customers grow are much more likely to develop brand advocates and reduce churn.<br> When marketing to your existing, paying customers, you should aim to do the following:<br> <br> * Identify users who love your product and develop them into advocates/evangelists by providing recurring benefits. This means your product should provide value to customers at every stage, not just when they sign up for it.<br> * Retain Customers. Don’t take your current customers for granted. Just because someone is your highest paying customer doesn’t mean they’ll stick with your product for life. Higher paying customers actually need even more reinforcement of your product’s value because they are more likely to churn out than downgrade if your product loses relevance to their needs.<br> * Identify opportunities for upgrades and upsells. As your customers’ scale, you need to scale with them. This means being proactive in identifying the opportunities for remaining relevant to their evolving needs. Don’t wait until potential issues become actual problems. Utilize the data that’s available about your customers to determine what aspects of your product they aren’t using and how you can make those aspects more valuable.<br> <br> Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Marketing<br> In the past, and too often now, companies focus too much on new customer acquisition and not enough on their marketing to current customers. This is where the leaky bucket from earlier comes in. It doesn’t matter how many new customers you bring in to your business if they churn out through the holes in your company “bucket”.<br> To combat this churn, you’ll want to keep your current customers happy. Traditionally, customer happiness level was determined using net promoter scoring e.g. Would you recommend this product to anyone? Why or why not?. Rather than looking to your net promoter score (NPS), you should adopt the mantra,<br> “Why ask, when you can measure?”<br> This is because NPS is a lagging indicator of problems, not a leading indicator. You often won’t learn about issues before it’s too late.<br> Customer marketing is a journey, so don’t worry if you don’t see immediate results. A successful strategy involves regular experimentation and A/B testing, not just a single outreach effort.<br> Most Common Upsell Mistakes<br> As you begin to have a concentrated focus on customer marketing, it’s common to experience some pitfalls. To minimize these snags, avoid making the following mistakes.<br> <br> * Marketing team not aligned with sales. To have a successful customer nurturing strategy, it’s important to keep your marketing and sales teams ...