Customer Retention Marketing vs. Customer Acquisition Marketing

Your past customers are a huge asset to your business, so it’s crucial to maintain a strong relationship with your past and existing clients so they stay loyal.

And yet many small businesses spend most of their marketing dollars on finding new customers instead of nurturing the ones they already have. It’s an ongoing struggle as you think about your business goals.

Free download: Long-term relationships are key to your business’s success. Find out how to turn cold leads into long-term relationships.

Download the free From Lead to Loyalty guide.

Get It Now!

Not convinced? For many business owners, hard facts are worth more than anecdotes and assumptions. Read the customer retention and acquisition stats below to see the differences between the two.

Customer acquisition & retention marketing stats

• Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.
• Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%.
• The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
• One customer experience agency found loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering.
• U.S. companies lose $136.8 billion per year due to avoidable consumer switching.
• American Express found 33% of customers will consider switching companies after just one instance of poor customer service.

The data shows us that retaining customers is just as important as, if not more important than, acquiring new ones. So why do so many businesses focus mostly on acquisition and neglect marketing that keeps customers loyal?

Customer retention marketing opportunities

There’s an opportunity here to focus more on existing customers, rather than chasing down new ones. Switching up your strategy will help you get more value from your marketing budget and waste less time pursuing every potential lead you can find, whether or not they’re a good fit for your business.

The solution that’s proven to work is staying in touch on a regular basis. For some businesses with a very small number of high-value clients, that can be accomplished on a 1-on-1 basis. But for most businesses, maintaining that kind of personal outreach for every customer just isn’t realistic. That’s where digital marketing comes in.

By simply staying in touch using content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing, you can see success in multiple ways:

1. Staying in touch with your current customer base.
2. Reminding customers of upcoming events and seasonal tips.
3. Maintaining a professional appearance all the way to the inbox and beyond.
4. Taking advantage of opportunities to reach out to clients you have not talked to in years.
5. Getting more referrals sent your way.

We’ve put together a super informative (and free!) guide all about how long-term relationships and loyal customers benefit your business. It includes usable email templates, ways to have better conversations and follow up tips to help you stand out and stay in touch.

Customer retention marketing is essential to the success and growth of your business. If this free guide leaves you with more questions, our team is ready to answer them. In addition to content marketing, we can help grow your referral business and gather reviews, plus much more.