Most marketing departments spend 80 percent of their budgets to acquire new customers and only 20 percent to retain current ones. As the acquisition-focused landscape becomes increasingly crowded with newsjacking headlines and keyword stuffing, it?s important to recognize and value what?s actually driving your organization: your customers.
A brand that allocates more toward understanding, communicating with and learning from customers will see the benefits tenfold.
Redirecting your resources to customer retention can mean anything from simple customer swag packages to dedicated support-team development to a full-fledged customer-advocacy program. Regardless of the tactic, every customer-retention program has the same goal: Develop loyal customers who will, in turn, advocate for your brand. Customers who are advocating have a big impact. In fact, 74 percent of consumers identify word-of-mouth marketing as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions, and word of mouth improves marketing effectiveness by 54 percent.
Brands that ignore the importance of the relationship with happy, passionate customers are missing a lucrative and reliable opportunity. On social media, 58 percent of consumers ask family, friends and colleagues for their opinions about brands.
Facebook?s recent announcement that it will favor personal posts over those from brand pages in its News Feed is a strong indicator that the future success of any organization is through word-of-mouth marketing?happy ...