Every year, companies spend billions of dollars on marketing to build their customers’ list and to retain the customers they have. Thanks to the technology we have today, B2Bs have access to data about other companies and their behavior and they can target companies that need a specific product or service, however, not all companies improve the effectiveness of their marketing communication by maximizing the potential of their existent client list.
The new marketing tools we have access to should allow businesses to maximize their marketing effectiveness but most B2B companies focus on getting new clients instead of maximizing their existing client list. Maximizing customer acquisition and retention is not enough, you have to maximize the potential of your existing client list by investing in marketing directed to the customers that are more likely to buy more from you if you want to improve your customer profitability.
Why Is It So Hard To Maximize The Potential Of Your Existent Client List?
A common mistake for B2Bs is that they focus on short-term gain instead of focusing on long-term gain and their marketing investments reflect this mistake. Instead of focusing on achieving and retaining clients that are profitable, B2Bs focus on cheap clients that generate sales immediately, however, on the long run, these clients spend less money than those who require more effort.
When analyzing their marketing performance, B2Bs evaluate the customer acquisition rate and the customer retention rate but this technique can be detrimental to some companies because people tend to overlook the actual results. When analyzing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts you have to look at everything and that includes who and what they buy.
How Can You Maximize The Potential Of Your Existing Client List?
When analyzing the performance of your marketing strategy, look beyond the number of clients you acquired and/or retained and analyze the cost-effectiveness and the cost benefit. The value of your clients is more important than the number of your clients, especially on long-term.
There are different types of clients and, in order to maximize your client list, you have to understand their behavior. In the first category, we have clients that are easy to acquire and retain. The second category includes clients that are not very easy to acquire but that are very easy to retain. The third category includes clients that are easy to acquire and but not that easy to retain and the last category includes clients that are hard to acquire and, as you probably guessed, hard to retain. You might be tempted to direct your marketing efforts towards those who are easy to acquire and to retain, however, these clients are not always the most profitable clients. The most profitable clients are those who are hard to acquire and easy to retain. And the next category that will generate profit for your company is the group of clients that are hard to acquire and hard to retain.
What does that mean for your B2B? It means that you have to focus your marketing efforts on these specific clients, to learn about them, to study their purchasing habits, and to create products that will help their company.
You might think that focusing on the first category is best but it really isn’t since those clients won’t generate as much profit as the categories mentioned above. If you want to maximize the potential of your existing client list, focus on these two categories and develop products or services for them and adjust your marketing strategy to make sure that your marketing efforts appeal to them. Learn why they decided to choose your company and focus on showing them that you can continue to support their company.