Customer Base Definition
Simply put, a customer base is the group of most loyal and engaged customers that a business has.
They are the group of people who will repeatedly buy your products or services and provide the highest amount of financial value to your company.
A customer base is different from your ideal customer profiles.
An ideal customer profile will give you a fictionalized person who you want to target and explain why they fit best with your brand, but your customer base is the real people who actively buy from you today.
While there certainly should be some overlap, the two different terms serve different goals in your marketing tactics.
A customer base is essential to your brand. They provide consistent, regular support to your brand in the form of revenue.
Whether it’s because they love your products, understand your message, or like being a part of your brand community, these people are loyal and are unlikely to leave your brand for a competitor.
The larger your customer base is, the more revenue you can expect from them.
That allows you to forecast a base number of sales for the month or quarter and gives you an opportunity to find more potential customers to add to your base.
What are the Different Types of Customer Base?
While a customer base definition largely covers your most loyal and engaged customers, there are a few different types of customer bases that you should understand.
Loyal Customers
Loyal customers are those who have proven over time their dedication to your brand, products, and services.
They have been consistently buying for over a year and should make up a significant portion of your customer base.
Pleasing these customers is an important part of maintaining their loyalty and ensuring that they never have a reason to want to leave your brand for a competitor.
Recurring Revenue
If your brand is more on the services side of things, then your loyal customers come in the form of recurring revenue.
These customers have memberships, subscriptions, or paid access to your services or platforms.
This recurring revenue from customers is what makes up the bulk of your revenue and depends on the active use of your services by subscribed customers.
Common Customers
Finally, the rest of your customer base is filled with common customers.
These are the rest of your customers who maybe haven’t been buying long enough to be called a loyal customer or who have only purchased an item once or twice.
The goal of all brands should be to convert these common customers into loyal customers who become advocates for your brand and grow your core customer base.
How Do You Determine Your Customer Base?
Now that you understand the customer base definition and the different components that make one up, let’s take a look at how you can determine who is a part of your customer base and who has yet to be converted into a loyal customer.
1. Look at Your Current Client Base
If you have a roster of current clients, that’s a perfect place to begin.
Check to see how long your clients have been customers of your business and see what the average cost of a retainer is.
That will help you know who is a loyal customer and how much that customer is worth to your brand.
2. Consider Their Current Habits
Look at the behaviors and habits of your loyal customers.
Do they read your content? Do they shop on your eCommerce site or browse new products?
Knowing the current habits of your loyal customers can help you determine how one goes from a regular customer to a dedicated advocate of your brand.
3. Identify Their Goals
What is the goal of your current customers? What do they want that your products or services can help them get?
Knowing the answers to these questions can help you to identify what the goals are of your loyal customers and what information can be used to help convert a common customer into a loyal one.
4. Identify Their Fears
Knowing the fears or pain points of your customers is another way to determine who is loyal and who is a common customer.
What would drive them to search for your products or services, and what might draw them away from your brand?
When you understand the reasoning behind customer behavior, you can use that to help power your strategies.
5. Identify How They Make Their Buying Decisions
Finally, it helps to know how a customer would make a buying decision with your brand.
What was the final piece of content, advertisement, or demo that convinced them to give you a try?
When you identify that piece of information, you can use it to target common customers and convince them to give you a try.
How Do You Increase a Customer Base?
Your customer base should provide a large portion of your revenue and ensure that your business is meeting revenue goals.
Increasing your customer base is essential to maintaining a healthy and functioning workplace, meaning that strategies that work to convert customers into loyal customers are important for your brand.
Here are a few top strategies to consider.
#1: Ask Them to Sign Up For Your Newsletter
A newsletter is a great way to communicate information to a wide group of people.
If you can convince a common customer to sign up for news alerts from your brand, you can help guide them along the path to loyalty with content, offers, and exclusive perks.
#2: Increase Your Customer Base by Asking for Feedback
Customers depend on word-of-mouth and the opinions of others to help make their decisions. That’s why reviews and referrals are so important.
Ask your most loyal customers to leave feedback on your site or other sites like Google, so common customers can see why being a part of your brand community is a big deal.
#3: Keep Up and Maintain Excellent Customer Support and Service
If a customer has a bad experience with your support or service teams, they are unlikely to want to return to purchase again, much less become loyal customers.
Strong customer support and service teams can ease the way from a common customer to a loyal customer by providing important human touchpoints.
#4: Update Your Website Content to Stay Fresh
No one wants to be a loyal customer to a stale brand.
By updating the content and offers on your website, you can help convince a customer that your brand has something valuable to offer.
This can also help guide them along the buyer’s journey by providing important content during their exploration of your site.
#5: Promote Your Business on Social Media Networks
Promoting your business on different social media platforms allows you to expand your reach and target a much wider audience who can then become part of your customer base.
You can also highlight your brand’s voice and find opportunities to connect one-on-one with different individual customers.
#6: Invest in Content Marketing
Content marketing is a great way to explain to customers the benefits of your brand.
By providing the right content at the right time to the right customers, you can help convert them to a common customer and guide them to return until they are a loyal customer.
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