Elevating Your B2B Game: Proactive Customer Marketing Strategies To Start Today

By Payal Parikh, VP of Client Services at Heinz Marketing

Proactive customer marketing in the B2B space involves anticipating the needs of your clients and engaging them with thoughtful strategies. B2B marketers have a variety of customer marketing programs at their disposal to build and strengthen relationships with clients.

Here are some customer marketing programs that you can start utilizing right away. Remember, developing a comprehensive customer marketing strategy as a first step is key to success.

1. Customer Onboarding Workshops:

Conduct personalized onboarding workshops to ensure clients understand and effectively use your products or services. This reduces the learning curve, increases usability of the product, improves product satisfaction, and promotes product adoption.

2. Executive Business Reviews:

Schedule regular business reviews with key client stakeholders to discuss performance metrics, goals, and strategic alignment. This typically falls under customer success org but if you don’t have that function, start with account managers or even AEs. This demonstrates commitment towards client success, relationship building, aligns your offerings with client objectives, and identifies areas for improvement.

3. Customer Satisfaction Surveys:

Regularly send out VOC surveys to gather feedback on your products, services, and overall customer experience. This helps identify areas for improvement, gauges customer satisfaction, and demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement.

4. Renewal Programs:

Implement proactive renewal programs to engage with clients before their contracts expire, ensuring a smooth renewal process. This reduces churn, strengthens loyalty, and provides opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.

5. Ongoing Customer Education and Training:

Host exclusive webinars or workshops that provide valuable insights, industry trends, or best practices, tailored to your clients’ needs. This positions your brand as an industry thought leader, fosters education, and encourages engagement. Also increase product usage and ultimately stickiness of your product which helps reduce future churn.

6. Customer Advocacy Programs:

Encourage satisfied customers to become advocates for your brand by participating in case studies, testimonials, or even co-authoring content. Customer Advocacy builds credibility, provides social proof, and fosters a sense of community.

7. Referral Programs:

Encourage clients to refer other businesses or colleagues to your products or services through referral programs. You can tie this with the customer advocacy program that you are concurrently running. This generates new leads, leverages existing relationships, and builds a network of satisfied clients.

8. Strategic Partnerships:

Form strategic partnerships with other businesses that complement your offerings, providing added value to your clients. This expands your service ecosystem, enhances your value proposition, and creates new opportunities for collaboration.

The effectiveness of these programs may vary based on your industry, target audience, and specific business goals. I would combine several of these programs into a comprehensive customer marketing strategy. It will help you create a holistic approach to client engagement and retention in the B2B space.

We have worked with a lot of clients in the B2B space to develop their customer marketing strategy. Let us know if we can partner with you in your customer-led growth. Reach out to us for a free 30 min consultation! payal@heinzmarketing.com.