How content marketing can strengthen customer retention strategies

A balanced business model is essential for any company. If your company can't retain customers, a strong sales team won't be of any benefit. If customers aren't retained, it doesn't make sense.

What is customer retention? Customer retention is the percentage of customers who use your product consistently over time. Other companies use churn rates to measure retention. The percentage of customers who leave within a certain time frame.

It is difficult to achieve customer success. While a company may invest time, energy, and resources in establishing a customer that is successful, it can also drain its business of the necessary resources needed to keep them going. The only way a company will succeed is if it can attract and retain customers at a cost that is less than the return on investment that the customer will make to your business. This cost is about 3-5x. These tips will help you increase customer retention.

First, Shopfiy has a video that explains how content marketing can help customers retain their business.

Quick Takeaways

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  Content marketing is essential to amplify your overall digital marketing strategy
  

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  Customer retention can be increased by providing consistent, quality content on all channels
  

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  Your website, social media and email marketing can all be used to retain customers.
  

Establish a healthy business model

We want to reduce our costs of acquiring customers. And for those customers we do acquire we want them to stay around and not become too costly to keep.

How can we do this? It is possible to reduce the cost of any process that involves employee time by identifying where content and tools can be used to replace it. This will allow your employees to work more efficiently, and your customers can learn and engage at their own pace.

We'll explain each step in the customer success journey, and then identify areas where we can exchange employee resources for content.

1. Customer Development

This is the basis for your customer success strategy. As you can see, it is very important. To understand your customers, create buyer personas. Is it a top executive? Are they a director? Is he or she someone who creates their own path?

These personas will vary depending on the size of your business. This exercise is designed to identify common buyers and group them together. This will allow you to segment your marketing efforts for them later. It is important that these personas are a perfect match for your product, company culture, and service support.

Although content should not directly affect this exercise or replace employee time, it is worth looking at how your buyers interact with your content. This will help you determine if your brand's relationship with them. We found that customers who were engaged with our content had a 41% lower renewal rate, were 33% less likely to be upsold, and a 24 percent higher monthly recurring revenue.

2. Acquisition of Customers

A simple Google search can be the beginning of most buyer journeys. A Google search is the best way for prospects to find your brand. This cost-effective way is not through AdWords. This can be achieved by creating amazing content that ranks high in search results.

This second step is about focusing on acquiring the right customer. Customers who aren't interested in your offerings will not only be harder to retain, but also less likely to use your products or services.

Source: Revchat

Do each other a favor by focusing on customers that fit your use case. Many companies make a mistake here. To close the deal, they promise features they don't provide or promises to sell future products that don't exist. This is where content can help you get out of your predicament. Create bottom-funnel material like whitepapers or case studies and stay true to what your company offers.

3. Customer Onboarding

Onboarding is when your customer uses your product for the first time after purchase. This is the most important stage for content to do some heavy lifting. After several onboarding experiences, it should be possible to anticipate your customers' needs and answer their questions. Your customers will find the answers they need easily at your destination.

Helpscout.com says:

Onboarding customers has a major impact on how long they use your product and whether they stop using it after a few months. If done well, it will set your customers up for success. It also clearly shows the value of your product. If it is not done well, customers will wonder why they signed up.

They are right. It is crucial to get the attention of your customers as soon as possible.

4. Initial Engagement + Support

This is the most crucial phase in a customer's journey. This is the first time the customer uses the product. This stage is crucial because it involves seamless transfer from implementation to account management. False-selling is likely to surface because the seeds of churn were planted earlier.

Clients should pay close attention at this stage. However, it is important to make sure that content is used as effectively as possible. You can monitor the success of clients and reach out to them with useful information.

5. Permanent Engagement + Retention

Once a customer has been successful, it is important to let them remember that they are not forgotten. You can keep them interested with content that caters to different stages of your buyer funnel.

Customers don't necessarily want whitepapers or case studies. Your customers will hopefully be interested enough in your content to sign up for your newsletter. This mix should reflect the content. You can increase this by focusing your efforts on different social media channels.

Source: Marketing charts

Take a bow

To ensure your business' longevity, customer retention is essential. Effective content marketing can increase the customer lifetime and brand loyalty. Now you know the big picture. Get started with your plan!

Are you looking for advice or help in using some of these marketing strategies? You are in luck! Marketing Insider Group has 35+ highly-skilled writers available to create content for your business. Get a consultation or check out our blog content.