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‘Customer-centric’ no longer just refers to a marketing strategy—it’s a whole economy. It’s a way of thinking.
Customer expectations and demands on enterprises have never been so high, or so personal—especially for SaaS companies who are at the forefront of both the modern wave of technology and the new customer-centricity business model. Seemingly every customer believes they have the power to bend the business world to their exact needs. To acknowledge that customers want better service isn’t enough. The digital transformation of business, and the resulting rise of the customer-centered economy, must inform every action your customer success team takes. Now more than ever, winbacks, upsells, renewals, referrals, and feedback cannot be passive items on a checklist. They must stand as opportunities for connection, chances to demonstrate how your company knows what each and every customer deserves.
In order to implement a customer-centered approach, your success team must adopt a new way of thinking when it comes to the marketing strategies they implement. To help get the change started at your enterprise, we’ve put together five customer-centric marketing strategies for SaaS companies that deliver real ROI.
The Top 5 Customer-Centric Marketing Strategies for SaaS Companies
Think of the strategies below as practical ways to implement your new customer-centric philosophy. It’s like pledging to get yourself in shape and then deciding on the specific exercise routine that will help you reach your goals. Except, this isn’t some six-week burst of energy. This is your new way of thinking about the future of your enterprise. These strategies are your new everyday reality, with your customer foremost in your thoughts at all times.
These are the top five customer-centric marketing strategies that deliver on ROI for SaaS companies:
- Create a visible customer journey
- Talk as often as you can
- Let your customers speak for you
- Engage your entire company in customer-centricity
- Don’t let your expertise blind you to your customer’s experience
#1 Create a Visible Customer Journey
Making each and every customer segment the subject of a personalized communication effort takes immense organization. Your team needs a way to have a birds-eye view of each strand of every individual customer’s journey. You need health scores, usage rates, and customer status updates that are digestible in real time so you can swiftly react to each opportunity to build a healthier and more robust relationship with your customers.
We’re not talking about closing your eyes and chanting here, folks; we’re talking about a practical, modular software solution that gives you visibility into individual customer journeys. The best customer success software will offer graphical representations of all of your enterprise’s customer accounts, product lines, and channel partners. This ensures that your team can quickly and seamlessly pull all data on any customer at any given time—and in a format that offers next steps and actionable recommendations. The time savings alone for your customer success team can have a positive impact on your enterprise’s ROI.
#2 Talk to Your Customers as Often as You Can
The digital transformation of business has made SaaS the success it is today. But that ease of access to the digital world has given customers the ability to quickly shift from one platform to another with little downtime or repercussion. Increasing customer retention and stemming the churn rate of subscription-based enterprises has become vital for lasting growth.
The best way to keep a customer on board is to keep them engaged. The best way to do that is through communication. Talk to your customers every way and any way you know how. Automated communications, sending surveys, hosting webinars, and communicating through your website are all valuable avenues into your customers’ thoughts—and frustrations.
Just be sure to keep it brief and well-timed; for instance, a survey when they are signing into or off of your service. Get the information you need to make sure you get a return on investment from your onboarding process without disrupting your customer’s day.
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#3 Let Your Customers Speak for You
The marketing industry’s research consistently proves that Word-of-Mouth Marketing, or WOMM, is far more powerful and dynamic than any advertising campaign your enterprise can contrive. People simply trust their friends and colleagues more than they do a third-party source.
One of the most affordable and quickest ways to start that word-of-mouth chain reaction is to build forums, digital spaces, and social media platforms where customers can meet, chat, and share with each other their experiences with your products and services. Link all of these spaces from your customer support and product features pages, and let your customers start speaking for you. Their real-world experience with your offerings can help newly onboarded customers achieve peak adoption rates, and long-time customers find the value in an upsell.
#4 Engage Your Entire Company in Customer-Centricity Marketing Strategies
As we said at the top, customer-centric marketing strategies for SaaS companies need to become a way of thinking, not just of working. That means engaging everyone at your enterprise in the customer success process. There’s no interaction too small, no task too unimportant that it can’t be improved by ready access to customer information.
Customer-centered enterprises build themselves around their customers by sharing the data of one team with every team. That kind of all-in attitude requires cross-organizational technology that allows every person at your organization to get to know your customers. While customer data management platforms may require an investment up front, they deliver on the ROI front by making sure no customer is at risk of churning unsubscribes from your products and services without a strategic opportunity for your customer success team to keep them onboard or win them back.
#5 Don’t Let Your Expertise Blind You to Your Customer’s Experience
You know your product better than your customer ever will. Embracing the philosophy of the customer-centered economy, however, means having to look beyond your own understanding of and love for your product and services. This is not your world after all—it’s your customers’.
Use every opportunity you have to spell out in simple terms exactly why your service will fit your customer’s lifestyle and exceed expectations. In the end, customer success hinges on creating a product designed for a market ready to adopt it.
The Best Customer-Centric Marketing Strategies
The best customer-centric marketing strategies for SaaS enterprises that deliver ROI stem from a whole-company approach. Every member of your customer success team should have access to every piece of information you know about your customer. They need to be able to visually plot every customer’s journey through your system, and be ready to respond to the next opportunity for interaction.
Every customer expects, and deserves, to feel like your entire operation is dedicated to solving their problem. In practical terms, the digital transformation of business has given them the option to move through SaaS companies with ease. You must grab their attention whenever the opportunity arises, and you have to do it by showing you understand their view of the world.