When business owners are launching their new businesses, marketing to and acquiring clients are their top goals. Once the number of repeat customers starts to grow and revenues become higher, it’s crucial to surprise those old customers with new offers. Relying on the same products and services means resting on your laurels. In today's business world, it usually results in a decrease in both sales and revenues. Marketing new services to existing clients demands some soft skills and effective strategies. Let’s learn something about them.
Define the unique selling proposition (USP)
The first important thing here is to define the unique selling proposition, i.e. the special feature that will attract your existing clients to go for new services. To cut a long story short, let’s take banks. These companies track the behavior and loyalty levels of their clients. As a result, they often offer a new loan to people who are already paying a loan. What’s supposed to sell this new one is a lower interest rate.
Instead of paying the annual rate of 10%, clients might be offered the interest rate of, say, 7%. On the one hand, this bank shows appreciation for loyalty. On the other hand, the client gets better conditions. So, make sure you analyze your most valuable clients to see what kind of services they might need. Special discounts for annual memberships paid at once or additional services for the price they’re already paying are only some of the options here.
Offer insight into the service
Once you’ve decided what service or element you’re going to offer to your clients, let them try and test it. By getting an insight into your services, clients will be nudged to use and/or buy it. If they cannot personally use these enhanced services or get tangible devices, it will be more difficult to convince them that they could benefit from it. It should be understood that in most cases, introducing new services to existing clients means that sooner or later they will be expected to pay for them. But if they are given enough time to check how those services work and see their benefits, they will be happy to pay for them.
Optimize the website for promotion
Since your website is the central online hub of your business, you should use it to promote those new services. The main place for this promotion is the homepage. This is where you should place a banner or add a new section where you can invite the registered/existing clients to see what you’ve prepared for them. Make sure to highlight the benefits as soon as possible in this particular copy to grasp your clients’ attention as soon as possible. It will make them read the entire offer.
What’s more, keep in mind mobile and tablet visitors of your website so adapt both the new services and this website offer to them. According to this master's degree in service design, the number of ways how people use the Internet is more diverse than ever before. So, when marketing new services to existing clients, it’s important to adapt their content and form to different devices.
Rely on email for distribution
For most businesses, existing clients are at the same time the users who have registered to the business website. When preparing new services, using this asset can make a huge difference. First and foremost, you can ask your clients about their satisfaction with your services. In the same email, add several questions on the ways that could improve the quality of these services.
If you’ve already devised some potential services or additions to the existing ones, don’t hesitate to include some of them in these emails. That way, you’ll acquire more information about the potential implementation of these services. Once you’ve defined what services you’re going to market, email is a valuable tool for sending direct offers and instructions to specific clients, as well.
Boost social media engagement
Promoting your new services via social media will yield a two-fold benefit. The first people who are going to find out about these offers are your existing clients and loyal followers. Sometimes, you’ll go with two types of new services. One group will be reserved for VIP-clients and these are usually sent via direct messages. The other type of service will aim at all your customers. Social media are a perfect option for this second group.
If you decide to use this strategy, think about engaging influencer marketing, as well. When your existing clients see that an influential person or persons from the niche market your services, they might be more open to using them.
Successful business management includes both generating new leads and retaining existing clients. The marketing tips above will be useful in achieving this goal and ensuring steady growth while offering new services all the time.
Authored by guest contributor Jennifer Hahn Masterson, who is the Lead Content Strategist at Spread the Word Solutions, holding an MA degree in business communication. She is always doing her best to help her clients find their place in the ever so competitive business arena, insisting on long-term sustainability rather than on some questionable get-rich-fast scheme. You can check her out on LinkedIn.