5 Ways to Leverage Customers to Grow Your Business

Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase your profits by up to 95%, and the success rate of selling to an existing customer is up to 1,400% higher than selling to someone new.

This makes it pretty clear that leveraging existing customers to get more customers is a great growth strategy.

There are a few ways I’ve done this successfully, and I’m going to share my top 5 with you on the show today. Hopefully it inspires you to grow your business even more effectively in the coming months!

The first way may sound obvious, but it’s referrals.

You’d be surprised how many so-called "obvious" ways to grow are overlooked because they’re so simple.

Asking for referrals is easy enough to do, but there can be a lot of anxiety tied to it. You might not know how to do it or have a process for it, or it just might not be top of mind so you go through the motions and you serve your customers really well and just forget to ask for the referral.

I grew my business on referrals for the first five years and pretty steadily have grown due to referrals even after introducing paid and organic marketing strategies into my business. I've also helped hundreds of my clients develop unique referral programs for their own businesses, designing the processes around them to fit their brand.

When I first started consulting, I would include a cost savings preview on my invoices that read, “if you would like your invoice to reflect this discount, please send me the name and email of a person you think could benefit from these services.”

A lot of people did this!

The next way to grow only from your existing customer base is by upselling or cross-selling offers.

The theory here is that if they bought once, they’d buy again. So, either sell them something they haven't yet bought from you or leverage them for market research to figure out what else they might need that you could sell them and then sell that not only to them but to others as well.

Let's say you're a website designer. You typically sell website refreshes, but you found some great partners and are excited to offer website maintenance as well. Now, clients who invested $5,000 on a new website with you will invest an additional $500 a month in maintenance fees with you.

Or, perhaps, you never used to include copyrighting as a service in your website refresh projects but now that's something they can add-on to their purchase.

Or, maybe you introduce a landing page bundle for offers they may launch throughout the year with pre-done templates they can DIY that are optimized for conversions.

There’s a lot you can play with in this category, so get creative with it!

Next is one of my favorites because it introduces a recurring revenue stream. I’m going to call this one the loyalty/membership model.

I'm going to use Amazon Prime as the epitome of success in this category since their membership model is also their loyalty program - and people pay for it.

You can do the same thing.

If you own a fitness studio, you can use punch cards or monthly memberships. If you sell coaching, you can sell access to an ongoing support group or monthly mastermind calls for past customers. If you’re a graphic designer, you can sell DIY plug-and-play bundles or social media packs.

You can keep loyalty and membership models separate or you can blend them together in really creative ways. This one is fun to think about and can create some really unique offers for the market you're in!

Another seemingly obvious one? Affiliate programs.

Any software you use to support your customers, you can absolutely resell as an affiliate for a percentage kickback. You can also create affiliate programs with people who offer services that you don't offer or even be an affiliate or white label for services, like an agency model in the services space.

You can also create affiliate programs for your offers or become an affiliate or white label for another person's business.

One example of this is a soap maker that I coached for years who created a custom bar they would wholesale that was only available in this one specific shop. This allowed them to sell at higher volumes and create something that felt really special.

When I had my group coaching program, I offered an affiliate payout to anyone who brought a friend or colleague into the program. I made thousands of dollars this way with minimal effort.

If you’re a course creator,? you could become an affiliate for a learning management system like Kajabi as well as email marketing systems like MailerLite, calendaring systems like Calendly, graphic design tools like Canva, and whatever other software you would use with your customers that you already like and would recommend.

There's one more way to leverage your existing customers to grow that I'll share, and it's a bit of an anomaly. I haven't heard anyone talk about this like I think about it.

It’s customer-generated content.

When your customers create and share content on your behalf, it reduces your marketing time and increases your credibility as a brand. It’s one of the most overlooked ways to grow, and even when I see it being done I feel like it's only for a short burst of time like in conjunction with a giveaway, contest, event, or launch.

The rise of influencer marketing has made this such a popular way to grow and not enough brands are leveraging this! This is perfect for any kind of visual brand, especially in the products space, but it truly can be for anyone.

One of my clients who designs clothing for a living shares a lot of beautiful photos from her customers in costumes, wedding dresses, and outfits she creates for them.

If you’re a marriage coach, you can ask clients to send photos of them and their partner on a date. If you’re a wellness practitioner, you can use stories or photos of customers cooking healthy meals at home or their kids trying new foods.

You can also have customers submit blog articles so you don’t need to write them. You can have them share opportunities to generate content with their network to turn one blog into five — all with unique perspectives.

The bottom line is, there are countless ways to grow you probably have yet to explore simply because you never stopped to think about it, and my hope is that today's episode got you thinking about it.

I'm going to leave you with one simple question that I ask my clients a lot.

If you could only get new customers from your existing customer base from here on out, what would you be doing differently?

Go do that next.