Build Customer Value for Your Clients

Branding 101: Through strong branding, we build a base of customers who will keep coming back year after year. However, the truth of the fact is: all these branding and marketing tactics usually end up with a one-time sale, only benefiting a short-term revenue. To truly achieve the objective, you, as the online marketing guru in your client's eye, have to help your client build true customer value. Consider too, that each campaign requires more involvement from the end recipient. And thankfully, there are benchmarks which you can use to help your client measure each of these forms - Revenue, Loyalty, and Advocacy.

Revenue:Rewarding customers that have spent the most money with your client. These customers who spend with your client are also likely to be loyal to them.

Benchmark: Total revenue per email address, customer ID, etc.

Loyalty:How many of your client's customers es repeated business. If your clients customers are loyal, they are also more likely to be advocates of your client's brand. The keyword here is recurring.

Return visitors, frequent posters, content providers

Advocacy:Think Apple and Steve Jobs. Apple has done an excellent job of making brand advocates of their customers by listening to their customers and developing products that are truly innovative as well as addressing customer concerns promptly.

Forward to a friend, purchase gifts for others, referrals, participates in surveys.

We've often gotten requests from our clients for conducting a viral or grassroots marketing program, which, if successful, can be one of the most powerful and successful campaigns to build their brand and gain loyalty with new potential customers. However, the problem is that many clients do not have a sense of how loyal or engaged their customers are today. The first step we needed to take is truly understanding how invested our client's customers were in their brand.

So how do you go about building customer value?

There is always a customer value cycle that takes place in every business and the steps are similar, almost identical, whereas the timeframe per step is unique to each company. The key is to consistently gauge which stage prospects are in the customer value cycle.

1. Introduction
2. Build your value and trust
3. Show them you care
4. Show them their value (engage them)
5. Thank them
6. Help them spread the word
7. Thank them and Reward them

We'll role-play a little and use one of our real-life experiences to see how each of these steps can be achieved. We'll be working with our client, "MISO" who sells health/lifestyle products.

Introduction: The first greeting

A customer does a search for “massage chair” on any of the major search engines and stumbles upon Miso's website. (If you've previously done up your client's website as well, you would've taken other factors such as usability, accessibility and desirability into consideration.) Looking through the site, the customer finds it is easy-to-navigate, search by product type, budget, and gifts for various audience groups. The prospect doesn’t buy anything yet, but wants to subscribe to your ‘specials’ email so she puts in her email address and clicks subscribe.

Build your value: Defining and segmenting the prospect

After receiving an email to confirmation and reassuring her that her data is safe, she is taken to a web page asking her if she would like to provide additional information - interests, birthday (day and month only), etc. MISO begins to segment the new subscriber to a new prospect list where she receives relevant emails based on these preferences (future emails drive her to update her preferences).

Show them you care: Putting the prospect first

This should echo why they signed up, what they get for being a part of the MISO brand. Listen to their preferences and likes/dislikes.

Advice:

1. Send several emails over the next few weeks (or months, based on their preferences) testing offers based on preferences and online behavior (opens, clicks, and web user-path behavior). Be relevant and listen.
2. After this trial period, adjust your program; if someone only opens every third email, scale back the frequency of your email.

Thank you: And really mean it

Now is the time to be humble and transparent. Sincerely tell your customers “thank you.” Tell subscribers, prospects, and customers how great they are. Tell them who won and without each customer’s involvement in the campaign that company would languish. Give the winner commission of sales, a gift card, or any other ingenious reward you might concoct.

Help them spread the word: Making evangelists

After running a successful campaign and loyalty is at a peak, ask your customers to help spread the word and share the brand with their friends and family. This is for MISO and to help build MISO's database—take advantage of it.

1. Institute a referral campaign, sign up friends, send an email to a significant other as a gift idea, etc.
2. Show your value in a honest, transparent and real manner.

Thank them and reward them: Go the extra mile

After the customers have done something for MISO, take the time to thank them again, and for the new subscribers/prospects, the process begins again. Let them know how much you care by giving them a special discount, offer to access unique content, or a members-only party.

Building Relationships

The key to long-term success is based on focusing on building solid relationships with customers and letting people participate and contribute to your client's company. For companies focusing on short-term goals and strategies, they are accomplishing only one thing, creating a customer who cares about one thing…the price. Don’t let your client's customers to be sales hounds. What you may not realize is customers have a much greater value to a company when they are not just looked at as sales numbers. By focusing on advocacy, loyalty and revenue you can build a very profitable customer base. There is value in each of these, so measure them independently as well as a total.

The term “Brand Advocate” is ideal for these long-term customers. Not only will these customers come to your client's products year after year, but they will also be the most influential marketers for the company. They are walking, talking billboards for brands. Once these steps are in place, your own value to your client grows that much more over time. And now with the online medium, you can help your client execute this far more effectively and less costly. Sell the process to your client, and reap the benefits for the long-term.