How to drive profitable revenue for your business – now and in the future

Read time: 3 mins

Whether you’re re-forecasting for H2, watching your current spending, planning for 2024 or all three, chances are there’s not much wiggle room in your marketing budget.

So, you’d be forgiven for assuming that now’s not the time to invest in expanding your martech stack. 

Instead, you're probably focused on acquiring new customers and squeezing maximum value out of existing ones. Chances are, that's involved leaning on paid channels and price promotions. This approach might seem effective at first, but it risks falling into a vicious cycle of spending more to acquire customers than they bring in, making it harder and harder to deliver profitable revenue to your business.

The good news is, there is a way to drive sustainable results, hitting monthly targets while setting yourself up for long-term success.

Want to know how? Keep reading. 

Rising costs, dwindling returns 

In 2023, businesses rely on digital marketing more than ever. Today, Google, Meta, and Amazon account for 64% of total ad spend in the US.

And with marketers relying so heavily on these channels, soaring acquisition costs are making a serious dent in too-tight budgets.

Worst of all? This extra spend doesn’t guarantee extra profit.

Rather than delivering customers who stick around, costly digital ads are bringing in customers who ghost you after their first purchase, their lifetime value dwindling before your eyes. 

When tried-and-tested channels are testing your budget, it’s time to think about how you can rebalance your growth through both paid and organic channels.

Because when competition is tough and resources scarce, the biggest risk your business can take is standing still while letting your rivals storm ahead.

Meet your best marketers

For a truly sustainable way to acquire loyal, high-quality customers that don’t cost the earth, look no further than your existing squad of persuasive marketers: your brand fans.

While you might think your most valuable customers are those splashing out with your brand every month, high spend doesn’t necessarily equal high value.

The customers who are actually making the biggest contribution to your business’s growth are those eagerly raving about you to anyone who’ll listen.

Sure, one customer who spends a lot once a month is valuable.

But just think how much more valuable they’d be if they also introduced to your business their friends, colleagues and even a relative or two. 

Compared to those acquired through other channels, referred customers  spend 11% more on their first order and are 5x more likely to refer onwards

Because your brand advocates don’t only deliver value through their own spending. They’re also driving powerful, organic growth through their Extended Customer Revenue — that’s their individual revenue plus that of their referred friends.

Once you’ve identified these brand fans (with the help of an advanced Customer Advocacy Intelligence Platform), tracking and encouraging referrals is just the first step in unlocking their full potential.

First-party referral data, underpinned by generative AI, rapidly reveals your fast-growing networks of brand fans. Armed with those unique insights, you can segment, target and activate your most valuable customers across channels, including email, social and paid ads. Suddenly, a whole array of possibilities emerge for your marketing strategy: from loyalty and retention, to acquisition and customer experience. We’re talking sending personalised emails to referrers, targeting high-converting lookalike audiences on paid social, and so much more.

“That sounds great, but how will my busy team find the time and budget to set this up?”, we hear you ask…

Maximum impact, minimal resource 

By identifying, acquiring and nurturing your best customers through an advocacy-first strategy, you’ll drive sustainable,  organic growth that reduces your reliance on paid channels and transforms your customer economics.

Our advocacy experts will support you in setting up your Customer Advocacy Intelligence Platform – which requires integrating just a few tags into your ecommerce site – and provide best practice guidance and personalised insights for optimising your programme. 

The choice is yours: stick with what you know and get increasingly less bang for your buck, or shake up your strategy and grow a base of customers who spend more, return often and introduce their friends.

What will you choose?