Is Growth from Customer Marketing a Myth?

This Tuesday, inspired by a video from?LinkedIn's B2B Institute Research, I pondered the strategy of Customer Marketing and what impact it has on growth.

Recently, while scrolling through LinkedIn, I fell into a rabbit hole that is the LinkedIn B2B Institute research, which I often dig into and reference in my work. I came across a video discussing the 5 Principles of B2B Marketing.

A warning for those of you that prefer content youth, this is almost 5 years old (GASP!), so this isn’t the cutting’ist of cutting-edge work, but 30 minutes in my ears pricked up as they discussed the topic of customer marketing, specifically answering the question - do brands grow by targeting existing customers?

Of course, what I am about to say varies depending on what products and services you are marketing and selling, but I’ve always believed marketing to existing customers makes sense in terms of maintaining loyalty, lowering churn, and, of course, laying a path for sales.

As we all know (and sing with me), acquiring a new customer is WAY more resource-intensive than selling something to an existing customer, where you have built brand and product trust.

However, LinkedIn's data makes a strong case that we should reconsider customer marketing as a default part of our strategy, especially if we are focused on growth. Customer marketing might not be bullshit, but it seems to be one of those truisms we should test before blindly assuming we need to put this into our plan.

For example, we believe that customer marketing reduces churn. The research disputes that and makes some great points, in that marketing does not have its hands on the levers that control churn.

No amount of marketing will solve issues with the product or customer service that might drive a customer to change, and as they also point out, most churn is not something any of the team, whether in sales, service or marketing can do anything about. It’s a natural process attributed to external forces like budget, and people moves, changes of need, or company strategy.

Companies don’t churn because of things marketing can control, like awareness or brand trust.

We can debate some of this; clearly, brand and comms play a role in loyalty and advocacy. Perhaps more interesting, especially as we normally make a commercial case for customer marketing being resource efficient, was that the research found that increased wallet share might be a myth.

Yes, selling to existing companies is cheaper, but the research found that customers often have spent all they can on what they already have, or as the LinkedIn chaps say, “spending what they can and buying what they need,” and there is no upside opportunity.

The research concluded that if you want growth, you are better off investing in new logo acquisition.

I’m not suggesting we chuck out customer marketing, but it seems worth considering how much we invest rather than assuming we need a customer marketing strategy.

This might be more of a job for account management, sales, and product, and our marketing focusing on ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) in new audiences and prospects may add more value to the business.

Here is the video; this segment on customer marketing starts after 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Fancy more of this sort of thing in your inbox? Visit Rockstar CMO , and susbscribe to our free newsletter and podcast.