How to drive more value from every customer

Read time: 6 mins

Marketing is a discipline fuelled by creativity, big ideas and brand building.

Yet one thing reigns supreme when proving your team’s success to the rest of your company.

Numbers.

And not just one, universally agreed number. According to the Data and Marketing Association, 167 metrics are being measured to prove effectiveness. 167.

With so many ways to assess the impact of your campaign, it can be difficult to know which numbers to double down on.  It’s unsurprising that 71% of B2C marketing execs see proving the value of their team’s efforts to the CEO, CFO, and the board as one of their biggest challenges.

Not only is the value of marketing getting tougher to prove, but the role of a marketer itself is evolving at lightning speed. 

Today’s marketers are expected to be jacks-of-all-trades, juggling a million and one different functions and tools — all while hitting those all-important KPIs.

Nearly a third of in-house retail marketers say they’re responsible for CX, CRM, digital marketing, branding, customer acquisition, and customer retention. 

That’s a lot of spinning plates.

And the soaring cost of digital ad channels is accelerating the problem. As marketers come under more pressure to hit those seemingly endless metrics, the common (and logical) response is to crank up spending across the board.

Marketing budgets have been increasing for four successive quarters, with 14% of companies upping their spending in Q1 2022 — the highest this figure’s been in eight years. 

Yet despite this rise, marketing budgets remain a small percentage of a company’s total revenue. In 2021, this hit a new low of a measly 6.4%.

It might feel like the odds are stacked against you. But there is a way you can drive more value from your marketing, keep your bosses happy and stop your ad costs spiralling out of control.

Interested? We thought you might be...

Out with the quick fixes, in with long-term brand building

During the infamously ‘unprecedented times’ we experienced in the pandemic, brands focused on one thing: survival.

Relying on sales and customer acquisition to stay afloat, marketers prioritised short-term tactics to generate quick results that stopped the board from panicking.

Now, you’re able to look at the bigger picture of your marketing efforts (and how they impact your business).

But alongside these long-term brand-building goals, you’re still feeling eyes across the business fixating on your numbers.

So what you need is a channel that helps you reach your most ambitious goals and delivers results that you can share in the boardroom with a sigh of relief, right?

A smarter approach to marketing

The good news is, your biggest catalyst of growth is right under your nose:

Your customers.

Because while you might think the solution to an ever-changing marketing landscape is investing in every new tool and dialling them up to their max, it’s actually much simpler.

Put your customers front and centre by taking an advocacy-first approach to your marketing strategy. Focus on nurturing customer love (and rewarding them for it), and you’ll set off an endless cycle of sustainable growth. 

A precision-engineered referral programme delivers an impressive ROI by harnessing the power of advocacy to acquire high-quality new customers that bring along their friends.

Best of all, you can drive value through every customer, whether they’re ready to refer or not. Here’s how.

Driving value from…

Referring customers (those telling friends about your brand)

If you’re delivering a great product and service, we’re betting you’ve already got customers gushing about your brand to friends and family.

But just imagine how much happier these customers will be if they’re being rewarded for these recommendations.

Nurture existing examples of brand advocacy programmes through unmissable referral incentives and VIP treatment, and these high-value customers will keep coming back (and bringing their friends).

With our tech integrations, you can even target content to drive referrals and expand your email database — all through the power of advocacy.

Non-referring customers (those who aren’t ready to refer you yet)

Truth be told, not every customer will be a die-hard brand advocate from the get-go. If you’ve bought a fancy face cream that promises to transform your skin in six weeks, you’re probably not going to recommend it straight after the first use.

That’s why it’s important to drive the next best action from customers who aren’t ready to refer.

Using our Propensity to Refer® algorithm, you can segment your customers based on how likely they are to recommend your brand to others.

To customers you know have a low likelihood of referring, you can show different content to prompt another action. This could be a newsletter sign-up, a discount on their next order, or an NPS survey.

Every time you drive these actions, your would-be referrers move one step closer to becoming your next best advocate.

Referred customers (those introduced by their friends)

Great news: customers who’ve been referred by someone they trust are naturally predisposed to liking your brand.

Even better, they’re five times more likely to go on to refer themselves, have an 11% higher AOV on their first order, and an 8% higher AOV on every repeat purchase.

Experiment throughout the referral journey and serve targeted content to encourage these high-value customers to refer, and you’ll rapidly expand your customer base and drive sales.

Other customers (everyone else)

Wishing you could get more bang for your budget on paid social?

Use your first-party referral data to build high-converting lookalike audiences that behave like your best customers (aka, your referrers).  

Our experiments with SPOKE and Nest Commerce show that referrer lookalike audiences have a 12% lower CPA, 30% higher ROAS, and a 100% higher click-through rate – without upping your paid social spend.

By feeding rich Referral Intelligence® into your other marketing channels in real-time, you’ll drastically increase their impact by pinpointing your current (and future) brand advocates.

Your customers are your most valuable marketers — it’s time to use them

You can assemble an Avengers-level team of superhero marketers, but at the end of the day, your happy customers sell your brand better than you can.

Because your customers aren’t thinking about metrics and KPIs. They just want to share the brands they love with the people they love.

Tap into this fanbase (while nurturing advocacy from your other customers), and you’ll drive more value from your marketing efforts while keeping your ad budgets under control.

If you’re ready to unleash the power of advocacy and revolutionise your entire marketing strategy, get in touch. This could be the start of your next biggest phase of growth.