Why do you think good customer service may be important for a business? Most would agree that good customer service boosts client retention, strengthens company culture, or promotes business growth. And all of these would be correct answers that are supported by the market data. According to Bain and Company, repeat customers spend almost 67% more over time than first-time customers. But there is one more factor that some businesses miss, and to their detriment: customer service is the foundation of customer marketing. And in the world of B2B sales, customer marketing programs are often the edge you need to beat out your competitors.

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Customer marketing isn’t just good for growth; it’s mission-critical for long-term, sustainable business. But it’s also one of the biggest challenges businesses face. A Salesforce report showed CMOs consistently cite building consumer trust as a top-five challenge in marketing. And to make matters more complicated, almost 90% of customers cite trust as vital when making business changes—such as incorporating new practices or tools into their operations. The best companies know the importance of customers in business extends beyond the initial sale. Assuming proper implementation of customer marketing strategies, the influence of brand advocates is likely to extend beyond the acquisition of a single new customer. The fact is, when you focus on developing customer relationships, your potential for business growth expands exponentially.

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If you don’t have a customer marketing program, you’re falling short on a valuable area of customer service and leaving revenue on the table. You’re also neglecting the most vital component of business survival. But it’s not enough to simply have a strategy; you need to understand the value of customer marketing and how to form a strategy that works. Orca has the tools you need to do both of those things. 

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Why the Customer Is Important To Marketing

To understand why customer marketing is important, you need to know what motivates consumer buying habits. What is the most important thing to customers when they’re considering a purchase? It’s not about how good the advertising is, or how convincing the salespeople are. Surprisingly, it’s not even the numbers that are most important. The data is clear: according to Nielsen, consumers trust the opinions of other consumers above everything else. Forbes also emphasizes the importance of the customer in marketing, stating that “it’s more than the opinions of your customers; it’s also social proof that other consumers need to move forward with your brand and produce conversions.”

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What is the importance of customers in a business? In B2B, your current consumers are the best salespeople you could possibly recruit. Whether a consumer is scouting for themselves or on the behalf of an organization, your leads are far more likely to listen to your current users than anything else. Creating customer advocates should be a core competency for any B2B business. More than that, though, you need to know how to best leverage your customer advocates for your business..

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What Is a Customer-based Marketing Strategy?

Customer-based marketing strategies focus on amplifying the positive feelings your customer advocates have for your brand. It’s not just about collecting positive, and sometimes negative testimonials. Successful customer advocates can become an extension of the business because of their trust and even passion for your offering. Advocacy comes in all shapes and sizes so be grateful for what comes of your customer relationships. The customer-based marketing strategy you have in place will allow for the greatest impact from all customer advocates.

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Customer marketing plays a vital role in B2B, but businesses often fail to maximize its potential. Most of the time, failure in customer marketing comes from the logistics. Coordinating all of the moving parts is hard, and it’s impossible without the right tools. Customer marketing plans tend to drop the ball on data collection and tracking, coordination, and burning out their customer advocates with too many reference requests. Business lacking the proper tools or management strategies will inevitably fall into one of these ruts:

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• Struggling with scheduling headaches when trying to set up reference calls between customer advocates and potential customers
• Using the same customers for reference calls so often that they burn out
• Storing positive customer feedback in a place that’s not easily accessible, making it hard to reference in real time when trying to close a sale

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If you don’t have the structure to support your customer marketing plans, it doesn't matter how good your consumer feedback is, or even how strong your customer advocates are—your plans will fall flat. That’s value in having a program like Orca at your side: a simple, fully-integrated customer management solution that synergizes with your existing operations.

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How Do You Start a Customer Marketing Program? The First Step Is Orca

Many businesses know the value of customer marketing, but fumble on the logistics of customer marketing programs. It’s not easy to manage client relationships, scheduling reference calls, and planning for customer appearances at events. You need an all-in-one solution that stores your data, helps you track that data, and easily integrates into your marketing workflow. You need Orca.

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With Orca’s, you’re able to organize your customer marketing program in a place that’s easily accessible when you need it. And because our application is 100% native to Salesforce, Orca is both at the fingertips of your salespeople and the heart of your operations. There’s no need to have multiple applications to run a single marketing plan, and there’s certainly no need to struggle with balancing all the moving parts of customer marketing.

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Don’t waste time boiling the ocean; work with Orca instead. Visit our website now to book a demo.

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