5 Customer-Centric Tactics To Grow Your Startup ♟
Startups as a narrative have continuously transformed from what was predominantly brick and mortar to a technology-driven concept, making it possible for thousands of startups and businesses to get off the ground. The adoption of technology has changed how we do business, making it easier and cheaper for more entrepreneurs to enter the market.
While the availability and adoption of technology to drive the growth of any business are like the next best thing since sliced bread, some startups would rather adopt a traditional approach by adopting outdated playbooks and strategies to acquire new customers.
Therefore, we need to adapt to the current buyer landscape, which we call "customer-centric", putting the customers' needs first before ours.
In this article, I will walk you through five customer-centric tactics based on my experience in the B2B software space that will help you drive awareness, increase affinity towards your company and therefore drive more qualified pipeline and hopefully more sales.
One thing is for sure, it’s much easier to convert inbound prospects that already trust and buy into what you do!
Adjusting To Stay Relevant
Darwin's survival of the fittest holds even in the business world. Startups not heeding to the warning signs by adopting technology to their process will only be left behind to bite the dust.
What marketing was ten years ago is nothing like it is today, as technology's massive role in marketing has led to a paradigm shift. Long gone are the days where marketing is centered solely on your brand or product.
Now, the customers are at the center of it all, and they are well equipped with access to free information, product reviews, social media, niche communities, and word of mouth. Customers are now fully in control and no longer want to be sold to in an annoying way through cold calling, email spam, LinkedIn spam, or gated content.
One way to stay relevant in today's business is to prioritize your customer's needs first before your company by making it customer-centric.
Evangelize The Problem
"People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it" — Simon Sinek
If there is a word that best describes your customers, it would be "selfish" because they are more concerned about how your product or service will solve their pain point.
Driving that wheel of customer-centricity rests on the shoulders of the solution your company is providing. Your bigger purpose is your why, and it is how you resonate emotionally with your customers..
Five Customer-Centric Tactics
A customer-centric marketing approach is how your brand can make that emotional connection with your customers. We will be taking a deep dive into how you can strategically execute it below.
1. Start A Podcast
Don't they say content is king?
But many will tell you, there are too many podcasts, and it doesn't provide any ROI. Ask yourself, how many blogs and white papers are out there?
How many subscribers do you have?
Do they convert?
Do they engage?
How many of your white papers and eBooks have turned into customers?
In my opinion, podcasting is the new business development and pre-community-building tool. It provides an authentic environment for conversations with your ideal audience that you may never have had with a blog or white paper, which is by default the go-to content strategy for the last ten years.
If you start a podcast with the right KPIs in mind and it ties into your business goals, you are much more likely to see the value.
Some examples would be inviting your ideal customers, and industry thought leaders to understand their problems better. The insights you gather from these interviews will provide great educational content for you and your audience while positioning you as an authority in your niche.
2. Build A Community
"Whoever gets closer to the customer wins." — Bernadette Jiwa
What he means, and many will agree, is that being closer to your customer is now a competitive advantage.
But the B2B SaaS market is extremely noisy.
As a startup getting close to your customer is one of the most valuable exercises you can focus your time on, and therefore having a community is one way of scaling that which in turn will help you build loyalty, thought leadership, word of mouth, and brand awareness.
And as your community members become your trusted source of insider knowledge, they help you better understand their world and challenges with qualitative insights at scale.
Because you have gone above and beyond to invest in your customers' which most of your competitors will neglect, this will position you as a leader in your field, helping to position and differentiate early on, creating super fans and evangelists of your category and company.
In recent years, community is not just for larger companies. Smaller communities are popping up all over due to the explosion in community platforms and community design programs suited for any business size.
Lastly, I would add that community is becoming an opportunity to increase your company's evaluation.
Here are just a few examples of some large acquisitions based purely on the value of the audience.
Github acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion
Indie Hackers acquired by Stripe
Outreach acquired by Sales Hacker
Bevvy acquired by CMX
3. Embrace Social Media
Most business owners still do not realize the unequaled advantage social media avails their business. Social media platforms are beyond posting your company updates or your blog posts.
There is more to it than you can even imagine!
i. These platforms can be utilized to build you and your company as a thought leader at a much lower cost than any other media channel at a much higher velocity.
ii. Social media can be used to form genuine relationships with your target audience that form the foundation for possible business relationships in the long run.
iii. With a content strategy in place, these platforms can be used to educate, inform and enlighten your target audience, building that trust and affinity to make you the go-to person or company when they are ready to buy.
iv. Social media platforms also allow you to build, control and own your narrative that can be leveraged at any time rather than relying on PR in the hopes of getting your story picked up, and even if it does, these articles usually have a very short shelf life which limits your reach and impact.
4. Ditch The Trade Show Booth!
As a startup, you might think you have to be at these popular who's who events. While buying an expensive booth and SWAG at an event or trade show may seem like a smart move, they are in most cases not at all an effective ROI as the leads generated are mostly unqualified, you hardly have any brand awareness. You could have probably made a much bigger ROI in digital marketing.
And just because everyone is doing it shouldn't be a reason to follow suit. See my article on best practices.
Here is an alternative approach to attending popular industry events.
Instead of buying an expensive booth, rent out a suite at a hotel somewhere close to the event and turn it into a video and audio content marketing opportunity by inviting influencers, thought leaders, or prospects to do a video interview which can then be repurposed into a podcast, social video, blog post, newsletter takeaways of the event and you get to build authentic relationships at the same time further strengthening your community and making yourself look like a trusted advisor by sheer means of association.
5. Product-led Growth
Product-led growth models are rapidly becoming common in the B2B SaaS market. PLG is an end user-focused growth marketing technique that relies on the product as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
PLG as a marketing model is an effective way to reduce any friction for end-users to trial your product or service without talking to a salesperson. SaaS companies such as Slack, Notion, Asana, DocuSign, HelloSign, and co maximize these models to outsell their competition.
According to Productled.Org, free trials remain the most popular product-led growth strategy as 47% of businesses acquire new customers through a free trial, while only 17% use a freemium model. Over time, with a great self-service onboarding experience and providing your customers are a good fit, both freemium and free trial users will become paying customers.
If PLG is something you are not ready for yet, you can offer something of value for free. It could be a splinter offer of your main solution or a tool. It could also be an amazing piece of content or a report that is not gated on your website.