Without customers, your brand isn’t worth much. Most large and small business owners have been conditioned to focus almost solely on acquiring more and more customers. And sure, there’s a time and place for that. But what good is a growing customer base if you’re losing the ones you already have?

The literal and figurative cost of acquiring new customers is steep – not unlike customer acquisition marketing itself. According to Marketing Profs, taking a new customer through the sales cycle will cost you more than five times what it typically takes to make a second sale to an existing customer.

Looking to expand your profit margins in 2018? Time to deepen and nurture your current relationships. Here’s how customer retention marketing strategies can help.

Sell More, Do Less

Five happy customers who each sing your praises to one friend are worth 100 potential clients waffling in your pipeline. In this way, retention marketing helps to reframe your approach with current customers. Done right, and you’ll turn them into free marketing and sales help.

Your current customers are also likely to be more responsive to your cross-promotional marketing efforts. When they know the quality of your goods and service, they’re less likely to hesitate in the face of an upsell or price increase.

Keep your name (and excellent service) in the brain’s current customers, and you might just insulate yourself from customer attrition due to competition, too.

Retention Marketing Basics

There’s only one way to get where you want to go: start where you are.

We recommend you begin with your brand voice. The more your internal goals and external communications align, the more likely customers are to actually listen. Make them clear, make them consistent, and just like your customers, make them current. Bonus points if you have a customer support lead weigh in on crucial marketing copy. They can help you make sure your messaging is airtight.

While you’re at it, why not give your most loyal customers the floor? Whether by testimonial or social media review, make sure you’re amplifying the voices of those you’ve impressed along the way. Keep your ear to the ground for truly compelling stories, and don’t stop shy of handing them the mic. (Literally, invite them to speak at your next hosted event or a conference you’re attending.)

Of course, there are still two groups aside from your happy customers that can’t be overlooked: the unhappy ones and the competition. Lose sight of the former, and you miss a valuable opportunity to learn how to improve your processes. Ignore the latter, and you’re out a chance to plug a potential customer leak.

The more you prioritize current customers in your content marketing and social media strategies, the more you’ll recognize ways to engage, stay in touch, and reach out with new opportunities.

Ultimately, stands to reason the more time and attention you pour into your current customer base, the fuller your sales – and leaner your marketing budget – will be.

Need help crafting an out-of-this-world marketing strategy? Get us on retainer.

Top 10 Fastest Growing Marketing and Ad Agencies in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro

Dallas, TX August 16, 2018 – Inc. magazine today ranked Globe Runner 4203 on its 37th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing, privately-owned companies.

Globe Runner achieved a three-year sales growth of 81%. The Addison based company joins a select number of digital marketing agencies recognized in this year’s list.

The Inc5000 represents independent small to mid-sized businesses with revenue and employee growth year after year. Notable companies in the Dallas Metroplex include Poo-Pouri, Studio Movie Grill, and Nothing Bundt Cakes.

“When I started Globe Runner in 2009, our mission was to help companies grow digitally,” said Globe Runner CEO Eric McGehearty. “We are growing today by continuing our mission of full-service digital, delivering results to clients.”

In January 2017, Globe Runner acquired Black Lab Creative allowing the internet marketing company to offer in-house design, creative, and printing solutions.

Recently, 2018 delivered two Addy awards (Bronze and Silver) to Globe Runner by the American Advertising Federation.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000

The 2018 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2014 to 2017. To qualify for the list, companies must have been founded and began generating revenue by March 31, 2014. They had to be based in the US, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2017. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2014 is $100,000; the minimum for 2016 is $2 million.

As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.’s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found on www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media:

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. Winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 18,000,000 today.  For more information, visit www.inc.com.

The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, this prestigious list of the nation’s most successful private companies has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. The Inc. 5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony is an annual event that celebrates their remarkable achievements. The event also offers informative workshops, celebrated keynote speakers, and evening functions.

All humans like to feel seen, valued, and dare I say, special. It’s one reason why targeting is such a huge part of effective marketing. Try to capture the attention of everyone, and you’re unlikely to impress anyone.

If you’ve been unknowingly – or willfully – gearing your web content toward an unspecified, broad audience, it’s time to get personal. Your CRO (conversion rate optimization) depends on it.

Think about it. Your target audience is bombarded daily with tens of thousands of ads that are all but screaming at them for a sliver of their fragmented attention. Successful brands know how to treat their websites like a handwritten love letter personally addressed to their ideal customers and clients.

Here’s how to break through the noise and capture the mind of your potential customer by personalizing your website.

1. Stick the landing (page) by personalizing it. Load your landing page up with unnecessary details, and you’re likely to lose a user’s interest, quickly. Repeat information they already know, same story. To get the conversions you’re after, you need personalized messaging. That’s what ultimately turns browsers into buyers. Keep your text, short, sweet, and with a personal beat. Try adding a personalized CTA to the bottom of your copy and see how it impacts your conversion rate optimization. Something as simple as “Greetings, Googler! We appreciate you searching for Dallas SEO Companies. Here’s a free case study to show our gratitude. Enjoy!”
2. Show some emotion. Emotions are the one thing we all have in common. They’ve evolved over eons to help us navigate the wilds of life. Today, the more you can relate on an emotional or personal level, the more likely you are to convert prospects into purchasers. Your messaging should center around positive sentiments that inspire confidence or evoke nostalgia. Show them you understand their pain points and tell them how you’ll swoop in to make the fix with the click of your CTA button. Here are some more examples of emotional marketing done well.
3. Make your content buyer-specific. Read: time to bust out your buyer personas. Before you ever sit down to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) pull out your personas and review their preferences. Pretend you’re writing to Erin Sanchez, young professional who loves cats, not 22 to 32-year-old females. It’ll help make your content more pointed and personal. While you’re at it, make sure the copy itself is broken up into bite-sized pieces that Erin, or any other reader, can easily take in. The larger your text blocks, the less likely she is to wade through them. Instead of straining her eyes, get to the point quickly, and make your ask as obvious as possible, as soon as possible.
4. Speak to them through videos. The importance of video marketing is present on a lot of fronts. None so much as its ability to increase your conversion rate optimization. Users are likely to spend loads more time on a website with video. Be it product videos or video blog content, including vids can improve a customer’s chances of buying by up to 64%-85%. It’s a no-brainer way to literally speak directly to your target audience in a highly personal way. In fact, we do it every week! In essence, the more visually you can show off your products or get customers comfortable with the folks who’ll be performing your services, the better. Have your CEO speak, or better yet, let them hear from the rest of your staff, so they get to know the everyday people behind the brand!
5. Provide local specials. What better way to connect than by addressing them on the home front? With geo-targeting, you can use available technology to post content that’s specific to the locales of your ideal consumer. While you’re at it, don’t forget to bring these changes directly to the hands of your customers. In other words, ensure all your content is mobile ready or be prepared to get left behind.

We live in a world where digital and personal are seemingly at odds. All the more reason to tailor-make your online spaces personalized. Not only will it help you stand out from the competition and improve your CRO, it’ll show you understand your customer, creating the long-term relationship that leads to brand loyalty.

Want some help writing your personals? Let us pen some compelling, personalized content to help you make contact!

The language-processing center is one of the most developed parts of the adult brain. It’s a highly advanced system that allows us to decipher meaning from pure silence. With little effort, black and white symbols take on all kinds of meaning.

1. Prioritize your keywords over your customers. If you’re too focused on creating a keyword driven content calendar or devoting too much space to talking about yourself, it’s time to shift focus. Remember that your audience is more interested in what you can do for them rather than the keyword(s) that brought them to your site. Sure, you absolutely need to sprinkle in some specific turns of phrase that will ping the search engines. But it’s more important to use your words to show and tell customers how you’ll bring value to their lives. Do so in a storied way that grabs their attention. A keyword or two may have gotten them there, but it’s the rest of your words that will make the sell.
2. Present a problem in an abstract way. All good stories need a little bit of tension. It adds interest and keeps readers engaged. Use the sections of your website to create mini-vignettes that bring your potential customer’s problem into focus. The quicker you do so, the more likely you are to hold their fragile and limited attention. The more crystalline your mission to address their pain points, the more likely you are to move them down the sales funnel.
3. Forget to push readers to take action. In life, and good writing, action is almost everything. Pretty words count for a lot, but they alone aren’t enough to close the deal. For that, you need to be explicit about what you want your reader to do next. Simple instructions like ‘click here’ are banal and diluted from overuse. Instead, try turning your CTAs (calls to action) into problem-solving hybrids like “start getting more web traffic” or “increase your Google ranking.” Make an action item out of the pillars that matter the most to your potential customers.
4. Hit them with a wall of words. Precise and concise is the name of the game here, folks. You may have a compelling backstory, but save it for your About Us page. When they first land on your website, you want to quickly move them through your most important offerings and on to the commitment portion of the evening. Create a labyrinth with your language, and you’ll lose them forever.
5. Make mindless headlines and hyperlinks. For the text you do have, be sure to break it up with thoughtful headlines that are at once compelling and descriptive. That way if they only skim your text, which, let’s face it, is highly likely, they’ll at least get the main takeaways out the gate. It’s ok to pepper some hyperlinks into the copy, too. But just like salt, too much or too little is a problem. Over link and the search engines that get grumpy. It implies that your content is unoriginal. Too few, and you might not be able to back up your words with the right level of authority.
6. Fail to let others speak. Few of us are really gifted at talking about ourselves. In fact, businesses do much better when they let at least a few other authors toot their horns in the form of compelling testimonials. The more past success you can show, the more future success you’re likely to have.

Still not sure how to use your words wisely? Let us do the talking for you! Our expert content marketers know how to write for both human and electronic readers to help you stand out.