How To Grow a Customer Contract With Marketing

Many small businesses are laser-focused on gaining new customers. This is certainly a linchpin part of marketing, but it is only one piece of a successful marketing strategy. Many small business owners neglect marketing outreach to their current customers, and that can be a big mistake. A well-oiled customer marketing strategy can actually increase contract size, duration, and client retention, often at less of a cost than net-new acquisition.

However, customer marketing is a different beast than outreach to potential customers, and you need to carefully pair your marketing efforts with other teams to successfully grow current customer accounts. JSL Marketing & Web Design got together and came up with these recommendations to help you grow your accounts with marketing.

Learn More About Customer Marketing!

Support Your Account Team

The customer service or client success team is one of the most valuable tools you have at your disposal when trying to grow a current account with marketing. If your business has the account team bandwidth to have recurring check-in calls with your client, you have a line of sight into the pain points, situation, and goals of your client. You need to align with that team and work to develop collateral to support common objections, questions, and requests for information from your clients.

Well-branded and informative collateral is a great resource for the account team to have at its disposal. These pieces of beautiful and informative content allow the account team to leave behind marketing collateral with the client for the best results. Sometimes, the spoken word can only go so far; well-written content can help inform and educate your clients about the benefits of your solutions to their problems.

We recommend…

• One-Sheeters
• New Product or Service Announcement
• FAQ Pages
• Written Case Studies

Air-Cover Your Top Accounts With Your Message

Many small businesses don’t continue to send marketing materials to their current customers, and that’s a mistake. Your current customers are much likelier to purchase than a net-new business, so continuing to market toward current customers is a great strategy.

Email marketing is a great way to continue to keep your current customers engaged, but other marketing tactics can be successful as well. LinkedIn Ads, encouraging your customers to follow you on social media, or printed mailers to the customer’s headquarters all have their place.

Oftentimes, small businesses are reluctant to use air cover messaging at a current account, as it’s viewed as a waste. This is a mistake, in our experience. Yes, you want to find the decision-makers at your top accounts for the best results. However, other customers at your top accounts can still help influence the decision-making process, so the greater their exposure to your brand messages, the better. Continuing to send emails, printed mailers, and ads to your current customers is in no way a waste of budget or effort. Keep your accounts engaged and aware, and continue to air-cover them with your advertising; your bottom line will thank you.

Use Other Top Accounts in Reviews

Customer testimonials are a surefire way to entice new customers, but they also are great for current customers as well. People, as a rule, don’t enjoy being sold to and are often always looking for social proof or evidence that your business is the real deal. Customer testimonials are a surefire way to demonstrate this.

Find your top accounts and encourage them to share their experience via a testimonial, whether it’s a written testimonial or a video. These testimonials then become a great piece of content to share with other customers, particularly those customers who are up for renewal or contemplating increasing their contract size.

We also recommend asking for client testimonials from the accounts you hope to grow. Getting feedback from some stakeholders at a customer account and documenting it in a customer testimonial can be a great resource when it comes time to push for a larger contract at that account.

Research Pain Points

Upselling or renewing a customer account isn’t simply an extension of a current contract. Savvy companies are constantly identifying and penetrating into different business units, locations, and services. Your account team will naturally be a great resource for uncovering these opportunities, but we also challenge you to research and understand the brand’s pain points as well.

Market research is a difficult subject to master, but if done right, you’ll understand your customer’s situation, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats well enough to utilize this information in your marketing. Maybe you’ll uncover that one of your top accounts is prioritizing working with vendors that meet some compliance guidelines. This could be a great opportunity to highlight your compliance with said guidelines in your email marketing outreach to the client.

Maybe you’ll learn that your top account is looking to implement a new system or process in the future, and you can start developing web content for the account team to leave behind with the client for further education. The more your marketing team understands the specifics of what your top accounts need, the better you can tailor your marketing to the customer in question.

Grow With JSL

Running a small business is hard. If keeping the lights on and the business running is preventing you from growing your marketing presence, turn to an award-winning Dallas marketing agency to help out!

We offer…

• Brand Development
• SEO
• Paid Media
• Email Marketing
• Videography
• Content Marketing

Our process is simple; we treat each client as a unique and specific business with specific needs. Our marketing strategies are never cookie-cutter or off-the-shelf. By working with you to understand your unique needs and goals, we’re able to more effectively use your strengths to help you grow. What works well in one industry or context will not always work in others, and that research into your specific situation allows us to treat you as an unrepeatable business.

Contact Us Now for a Free Consultation