Iterative Marketing Podcast Episode 42: Deep Dive Into Grow And Give

This is the final episode in our Deep Dive podcast series, which explored the 5 customer journey states. Previous episodes examined See, Think and Do. This episode is all about the importance of personalized content for the end phase of the buying journey: Grow journey state and Give journey state.  We will discuss the goals, appropriate content, targeting methods, and measurement for the current customers that comprise the Grow and Give states.

In this episode, we discuss the Grow journey and the Give journey state…

Overview of Previous States (04:55 – 07:42)

• Find a high-level overview of all 5 journey states in Episode 16
  • A Deep Dive Into See State (Episode 23) – the audience is qualified, but not thinking about purchasing your product/service or changing vendors.
  • A Deep Dive Into Think State (Episode 27) –  the audience is qualified AND thinking about purchasing or changing vendors, BUT has no timeline or commitment to do so
  • A Deep Dive Into Do State (Episode 31) – the audience is qualified AND has a commitment to themselves or someone else to purchase within a specific period of time
  • Grow – the happy and loyal customer
  • Give – the happy and loyal customer who believes in your product or service so much they would refer a friend or family member
• Read Steve’s blog, “See – Think – Do: A Framework for Understanding Your Prospect’s State of Being” as a reference.

The Importance of Targeting Grow and Give (07:45 – 12:00)

• The first rule of many businesses is to retain current customers and build a loyal following. Yet, many companies focus solely on customer acquisition rather than customer retention — even though it can cost 7 times more to acquire new customers.  Oftentimes, companies stop nurturing their newly acquired customer after the sale. This is a huge mistake because the probability of selling to a current customer is higher than a new prospect. Plus, it’s cheaper.

The Goals For Grow and Give  (12:05 – 14:40)

• Goals For Grow: Reinforce the brand and its key message and create “stickiness” and increase revenue through upsells and cross-selling.
• Goals For Give: Give customers the tools and messaging to spread the word of our products/services by using language in alignment with our brand, and motivate them to do so.

Appropriate Content For Current Customers (14:45 – 26:15)

• The purpose of content for Grow:
  • Reinforce the brand’s personality and core values so that customers remember why they love our products or services. Examples include:
    • Mailchimp email newsletter
    • Zoho product suite blog post: Our Product Strategy: How Zoho Services Fit Together
    • Sony PR: Six things you didn’t know you could do with PlayStation VR.
• The purpose of content for Give:
  • Reinforce the brand’s personality and core values so that customers know how to talk about us and use the correct verbiage. Examples include:
    • Mailchimp email newsletter because it demonstrates product features while reinforcing that core brand philosophy
    • Nimble regularly asks its users to leave reviews on sites like G2Crowd
• Content and call to actions can differ between the Grow and Give states.

Targeting Methods for Current Customers (27:25 – 39:10)

• Email Marketing
• Direct Mail
• Mobile Messaging (SMS)
• CRM to target social media advertising (Facebook, Twitter)
• CRM to target web/mobile display advertising (AdRoll)
• Targeting current customers varies depending on the sales model.
  • Direct – easy because existing databases can be leveraged
  • Distributor – more complicated, but offer rebates, coupons and discount codes work well.  Warranty registrations are another good targeting method.
• When determining if a customer is in the Grow or Give state, we can detect these signals in our marketing automation and via retargeting based on the content they engage with on a website or social media.

Measuring Success (39:15 – 44:00)

• Grow
  • Attributable revenue from marketing activities
  • Churn rate
• Give
  • Referrals
  • Reviews

Summary (44:05 – 45:45)

• Current customers fall into one of two states – Grow or Give
  • Grow are those customers that have purchased your product and would choose to do so again
  • Give are those customers who have purchased your product and love your product so much they tell others about it
• The content we create to support our current customers should:
  • Reinforce brand personality and core value proposition
  • Make the ask clear and obvious
  • Create a sense of urgency, if possible
  • Reinforce the purchasing rationale so they can justify the emotional decision they made to themselves and others
• Targeting methods will be the same for both Grow and Give and are largely database driven
  • Ability to use your database depends on if you sell directly.
• Measurement
  • Grow
    • Attributable revenue from marketing activities
    • Churn rate
  • Give
    • Referrals
    • Reviews
    • Social advocacy

For more information on the charity in this episode, please visit Books for Africa.

The Iterative Marketing Podcast,  a production of Brilliant Metrics, ran from February 2016 to September 2017. Music by SeaStock Audio.

Learn more about Iterative Marketing and listen to other episodes on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.