What is a customer base and how do you manage it?

A customer base is much more than just a list of contacts, it’s the heart of your sales strategy. 🩶

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, freelancer or head of a sales team, properly managing and developing your customer base can mean the difference between business growth and stagnation.

Yes, you read that right, stagnation… Every company wants to keep growing, doesn’t it?

That’s why, in this article, we explain everything you need to maximize your value to boost your performance. 🚀

Fasten your seatbelts, here we go! (Reading time: about 4 minutes).

What is a customer base?

It’s all the current and potential customers of a company. It’s not just a list of names, like entering the Cannes Film Festival 📋. It’s a whole strategy for understanding who your customers are, how they interact with your company, and what the value is for your business. 👀

Inside, you’ll find:

• 1️⃣ Your existing customers (who generate regular income).
• 2️⃣ Prospects (who represent growth opportunities).
• 3️⃣ Customers in need of reactivation (those who have not been engaged recently).

There are several segmentation criteria, including :

• 💸 Sales generated.
• 📆 Purchase frequency.
• 💭 Product preferences.
• ✨ Potential to become brand ambassadors.

Why make a customer base?

First of all, it helps you prioritize your resources. Let me explain. By identifying 🔎 your most profitable (or high-potential) customers, you’ll be able to focus your efforts on them, and not waste time on less strategic ones. 👀

But that’s not all: it can be a superb loyalty lever!

Okay, but how? 🤔

Well, by analyzing your customers’ behaviors and habits, you can develop tailored offers, anticipate their needs and strengthen their engagement. 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼

The result: satisfied, more loyal customers, who are often more profitable in the long term. ✨

How do you build up a customer base?

It’s all very well knowing the definition, but where do you start? 🤯

Between defining personas, identifying nugget segments and developing your contact base, you don’t know where to start, do you? 👀

Don’t worry, we’re here to guide you! ⬇️

1) How do you define them?

First of all, we need to define who your customers are, and to do that we’re going to use a persona.

To create it, you’ll need all the following information:

• 🌎 Demographic data: age, gender, location, profession.
• 🛍️ Buying behavior: frequency, average basket, types of products/services purchased.
• 🎯 Objectives and challenges: what are their needs, what problems are they looking to solve with your offerings?

Based on this data, create between 2 and 4 personas. Each persona should include:

• 💬 Fictional first name and a short biography to humanize the profile.
• 💪🏼 Their goals.
• ✋🏼 Their obstacles.
• 🌟 Their expectations.

The result? You’ll get a clear 👁️‍🗨️ picture of your different types of customers and what motivates them. 💪🏼

But that’s not all! Not all customers are at the same level in terms of potential or profitability. So here are a few golden rules: ⤵

• Analyze customer value ⭢ check purchase frequency, sales generated, loyalty.
• Spot opportunities ⭢ some customers or prospects may have strong growth potential (even if they’re still not very active).
• Use an analysis tool (we’ll spoil the rest of the article for you) 🤫.

2) How do you develop a customer base?

Here, we’ll look at 3 types of complementary levers: networking, inbound marketing and social selling.

1️⃣ Networking.

We’ll be looking to establish professional relationships in order to find new business opportunities. To do this, you can :

• 🟣 Participate in professional events (trade shows, conferences, meet-ups).
• 🟣 Join business networks (entrepreneur clubs, chambers of commerce).
• 🟣 Keep in touch with your network (former customers, partners, colleagues).
• 🟣 Leverage referrals (encourage satisfied customers to talk about you via discounts or benefits).

2️⃣ Inbound marketing.

We want to attract customers naturally, with quality content. To achieve this, you can :

• Create high-value content (blog posts, guides, case studies).
• Optimize your SEO (identify keywords and optimize your site).
• Use lead magnets (free e-books, webinars, newsletters).
• Automate your communication (personalized email sequences).

3️⃣ Social selling.

We want to leverage professional social networks, like LinkedIn, to identify, engage and convert prospects. Here are a few tips:

• 🔵 Optimize your profile (clear, professional and attractive).
• 🔵 Share relevant content (posts, articles and case studies if relevant).
• 🔵 Join groups and forums (discussions, replies).
• 🔵 Using automation tools (like Waalaxy, to facilitate automated prospecting).

3) How do you convert prospects?

Conversion is one of the most important steps in managing a customer base. To succeed, you need to implement strategies that meet their expectations, without forgetting the move to action. 💥

To do this, you can use promotional offers, let me explain. ⬇️

By offering a discount, you’ll create a sense of urgency in your prospects!

For example, a 15% discount on a first purchase, valid for a limited period. This will motivate the prospect to grab this offer quickly. 👀

Then you have webinars, which are very effective for Saas companies. 🎥
Here, we’ll educate prospects by clearly showing them the benefits of the product. 👀

For example, if your target is sales managers, you’re going to do a webinar on “How to structure a customer base to double your results”. 🤯

Which software to manage a customer base?

Nowadays, using Excel to manage a customer portfolio is a complex task. That’s why we’ve developed dedicated software to analyze, structure and fully exploit your customer database!

I won’t say anymore, let’s discover these solutions together. 👀

1) CRM for centralized customer data

First of all, let’s stop talking in acronyms. A CRM stands for Customer RelationShip Management, in other words, a tool for centralizing and structuring information about your customers.

With it, you’ll be able to record and organize data such as :

• Customer contact details.
• Purchase history.
• Customer preferences.
• Past communications (emails, calls, appointments).

But that’s not all, you’ll also be able to segment your customer base according to criteria you define, such as loyal customers, inactive or hot prospects.

Finally, you can schedule reminders, send targeted email campaigns or plan reminders, all efficiently and automatically. 🪄

There are a multitude of CRMs on the market, so it’s up to you to choose the one best suited to your needs. 😇

2) Prospecting tool to create or develop a customer base

We mentioned the prospecting tool earlier in this article! Among other things, it allows you to:

• 🔎 Identify new prospects.
• 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼 Engage them effectively.
• 💬 Centralize information to turn them into customers.

For this, we recommend Waalaxy, which helps you identify the right contacts and then launch automated outreach campaigns, combining, for example, LinkedIn and In mails messages, with scheduled follow-ups! ✈️

Using it, you can extract your prospect database as a CSV file, then integrate it into a CRM for centralized management.

Why? 🤔

Well, to easily update information, such as adding new prospects, categorizing according to sales cycle, or updating existing data.

If you want to use Waalaxy to develop your customer base, go here! ⬇️

Would you like a recap?

As you can see, every customer and every prospect is an opportunity to create value and build a lasting relationship.

Personalization, listening and analysis are the 3 golden rules ⭐️ to transform your contacts into trusted partners.

Finally, a customer base can’t be measured by numbers alone. 🔢

A satisfied customer today is the best ambassador for tomorrow. 🚀

What are the 3 steps to analyzing your customer base?

Customer base analysis is based on 3 principles:

• 1️⃣ Segment your customer base: classify your customers according to precise criteria.
• 2️⃣ Measure profitability: evaluate the profitability of each segment.
• 3️⃣ Identify actions to be taken: retain profitable customers, follow-up on inactive customers.

By doing this, you’ll have a clear, structured view of your customer base. 👀

How do you structure a customer base?

Having a customer base is great, but having a tidy customer base is better! 👀 Here’s our advice:

• 🔵 Define clear categories (categories of importance, life cycle, sectors or segments).
• 🟣 Create detailed customer records (full contact details, purchasing history and behavior, specific preferences).
• 🔵 Set up tracking KPIs (lead conversion rate, average value per customer, time since last interaction.

What’s a customer base manager?

It’s a professional or dedicated tool used to monitor and optimize a company’s customer relationships. Let’s find out the differences! ⬇️

1️⃣ The role of the human manager.

His main objective is to establish and maintain a solid relationship with customers. His missions are :

• Analyze the customer base.
• Ensure customer follow-up.
• Retain existing customers.
• Cross-sell.

2️⃣ The role of a management tool (CRM type).

These tools automate certain tasks and offer a complete view of interactions with each customer:

• Track purchase and interaction history.
• Prioritize customers according to their potential or commitment.
• Automate follow-ups and loyalty campaigns.

You know everything there is to know about the customer base. See you soon! 🌟