Each company has its definition of growth, but most adhere to a few fundamental principles: hire the best people, offer superior customer service, and use targeted marketing.
These fundamental elements can help you acquire the clients that your business wants. Once you have these customers, how can you attract more of them?
By understanding your customers’ goals and analyzing your successful interactions with them, you can improve your marketing efforts and replicate your favorite and best customers.
How do you go about doing that? We’ll break it down to a few crucial steps.
Find out where your audience hangs out and define who they are
You must first define your best customers to be able to replicate them. You can do this by using the data you already have about them.
Consider the following:
What are the industries in which they work?
What is the role of this person in your organization?
What are the pain points that your product or company helps to address?
What can you learn from their engagement and attitude data (feelings, motivations, and opinions towards a brand, product, or customer experience)?
Which ones bring you the most revenue?
Look for patterns and themes in the data you have collected.
These patterns and themes provide an accurate data-driven image of your best customers and your most similar best customers. You must send specific messages at the right moment and place to reach these best prospects.
AI can be used to crunch data and create predictive audience models
Many companies don’t know how to scale data collection. Automated approaches can help you build up digital intelligence about your customers.
Many companies use AI to determine the best option to take with their audience. Artificial intelligence allows them to create simulation models, customize purchasing processes, and make predictions using machine-learning technologies. AI, for example, can recommend products based on previous purchases, page views, and inquiries.
Many people think they don’t possess the data necessary to use AI, but they have it. There are ways to reduce the concern that your data is of poor quality.
Many manufacturers, for example, have data silos within their organization. It’s only a matter of connecting and crunching the data to determine your best customers–and assessing the quality and volume of output.
Cloning your best next customers begins with data crunching and then moves to audience models. These models come in many forms, but ideally, you will use a model that predicts audience behavior. These data-driven models identify your best clients through leading (predictive indicators) such as:
Products that customers buy together
Customer lifetime value (CLV): The total worth of a client to an organization throughout their relationship
Promotion engagement: Discounts, rebates, etc.
You will also use the usual data points when building these models. These include demographics and psychographics, as well as channel and website engagement.
You can use the AI tool to crunch data faster using machine learning and send audience suggestions automatically to other platforms (marketing automation, Google Ads, social platforms, etc.). But also in different business areas, such as your sales CRM and customer service tool.
Marketers can also use predictive audiences to find similar customers in their database and make meaningful product recommendations.
Marketers can use predictive audiences at any level of engagement to identify who may unsubscribe to their email or ad channels. They can then adjust their communications to prevent unsubscribes before they happen, saving valuable dollars and touchpoints.
Using tools such as SalesforceEinstein is helpful because it helps you crunch data faster than your brain and hands could process the data. Target these types of customer acquisition and existing customer growth.
Equip your team with data so they can ‘digitally track’ clones
After the data has been gathered and a complete picture of your ideal customer is created, your internal teams – those most in contact with your customers, such as Marketing, Sales, and Service – can use this information to create campaigns or touch points for your customers. This will allow them to find and target your next best wave of customers, increase their wallet share, and delight your existing customer base.
Your next best customer may be right in your backyard!
Use the example of a heavy-duty truck manufacturer and seller. It is looking for businesses that purchase trucking parts online so their marketers or salespeople may follow up with an email. It’s unrealistic for salespeople to look through every contact in a company database of 3,000 people, collecting and comparing data to create models. The data collected by the salespeople can instead be fed into a tool that uses AI to help them narrow down their list of contacts. Creating a more specific segment can ensure your message will resonate better. Compared to “batch-and-blast” messaging that may lead to disengagement from your brand and channels, this method allows you to create a more focused piece.
Beware of buying and using lists from third parties, as privacy laws and regulations are becoming more strict, affecting how companies can track and use their data. These lists are often purchased by companies in the hopes of a rapid increase of “ideal” clients in their database. These lists can cause problems.
It’s common for “verified” contacts to be unreachable soon after purchase. People change jobs, their names, and more.
It’s important to note that the recipient has not indicated a desire to receive your communications. This puts you in danger of being charged with CANSPAM or other regulatory issues.
These people are also likely to opt-out and have a negative impression of your brand. This will not make them new (or repeat customers).