A frustrating turn of events for both marketers and business owners is that sales strategies that may have worked last year simply no longer apply today. A clue lies in the way we consume data, and with 26% of US adults always online, it’s time to focus attention on digital channels more than the age-old traditional methods.
For marketers who sharpened their teeth on the sales funnel, it’s time to get your head out of the pure conversion conversation, and rather focus on something a little more holistic: total customer experience.
Bye Bye Sales Funnel, Hello Sales Flywheel
The sales funnel is a method always ensures that customers are trickling in to accommodate for those who may be dropping out at the bottom of the business cycle. While this is a great way to attract customers and keep business operations running, it can also lead to burnout and market saturation.
For businesses, those are two words that could spell the end of their streak. Modern marketing techniques, however, consider the effect the sales process has on the client, and with the sales flywheel, the entire process is in a never-ending loop. A critical component of getting the loop to work is customer service and after-sale satisfaction. If an existing customer is constantly serviced and made to feel like they’re part of the brand, there is the potential for future and referral business.
Why The Flywheel Makes Sense
If there is only one component to consider in the entire sales and marketing process, it should be your bottom line. By increasing your customer retention efforts by 5%, you can improve your business profits by 25% to 95%, according to research. For the average business, this is a significant saving and a boost to profit margins.
Apart from saving physical cash, consumers also have an opportunity to spend their time a little more effectively as part of this calculation incorporates the sheer effort to attract new customers. This means there is a concerted effort into bettering the overall product and service delivery matrix. It also means that businesses can drill down into the big data element of their business and turn potential leads into actual sign-ups and bettering their chances of sales conversions, according to Santa Barbara advertising specialists.
What We’re Not Saying
While it may seem like the flywheel is only inwardly focused and there is no room to onboard new clients, this is simply not the case. It does, however, highlight the importance of looking after the existing customer base first before spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to attract new customers. It’s important to partner up with a marketing agency that understands the importance of creating value out of a current book, and how to ensure that the business doesn’t have a leaking bucket and customers are a once-off occurrence.
This could mean developing an extra product or service to ensure that the sales loop never quite finishes off, but always leaves room for future business.
Customer retention should be the new mantra for businesses as a more frugal and holistic approach to marketing forces business attention inwardly. A marketing agency that understands this significant shift in strategy will make a formidable ally in the war for the consumer dollar.