Accelerate Revenue Growth with 3 Vital Demand Expansion Strategies

All too frequently, companies focus on demand generation and overlook demand expansion, even though it’s a critical element of revenue growth. Demand generation isn’t exactly a buzzword, but it’s what people tend to focus on because they need numbers to show investors, leadership or their boards. 

What is Demand Expansion?

Simply put, demand expansion is the process of improving the customer experience to increase the lifetime value of each account. Companies can use a wide variety of strategies to expand demand, including improving onboarding and customer service, strengthening customer loyalty and cross-selling, among others. 

Where many companies focus heavily on organic growth and finding new clients, demand generation takes a backseat. However, demand generation is vital, making up one of three legs of BDO Digital’s D3 Methodology—the other two are demand management and demand expansion. 

When discussing demand expansion with clients, I often liken it to finding money in the couch or in the pocket of a jacket you haven’t worn in a while. Organizations already have access to these customers but aren’t taking full advantage of how these customers can aid their bottom lines. 

Intimate Knowledge of Customer Journey Drives Demand Expansion

For demand expansion to truly work, you need a deep understanding of your customer’s journey. With that in mind, it’s absolutely worth your time and energy to devote time to mapping out the customer journey in great detail. However, doing so requires accurate, up-to-date CRM data. 

You’ve probably heard the garbage in, garbage out discussion as it relates to good and bad data. While good data is essential to demand generation, prospects are more likely to be forgiving of mistargeted communications than customers who have relationships with your company.  

What this means for demand expansion is that accurate CRM data is critical for effective customer communications. Consider these potential scenarios: 

Bad Data Frequently Seeds Mistrust

If people are not marked “customers” in your CRM, they may receive marketing and sales materials. While not the end of the world, it shows that the different arms of your business are not talking, makes people feel more like a number than a valued customer, and erodes trust in your organization and operations. 

Incomplete Data Often Leaves Money on the Table

If customers can gain value from multiple business units or departments, but your CRM data doesn’t indicate this, you may not be serving them to the fullest degree. What’s more, when customer data is siloed in specific departments, your company misses out on the ability to cross-sell or upsell them on additional products or services. 

Outdated Data Can Lead to Poor Customer Experiences

Regardless of who your customers are working with, outdated or incorrect data can lead to delays in answering questions or resolving issues. If you don’t have a holistic view of the customer history, it’s challenging to address their specific needs in a timely, efficient manner.  

Customers who have less than optimal experiences are more likely to jump ship. So when you can use your CRM to improve customer experience, you’re better able to drive demand expansion. 

Strategies for Demand Expansion 

Understanding the value of demand expansion is one thing. Knowing how to leverage it successfully for your company is another. Here are three ways we help customers drive demand expansion. 

1. Develop Surveys and Feedback Loops 

One of the best ways to get valuable information from your customers is to ask them. While you should be able to gather good quantitative data from your CRM and marketing platform, qualitative data also plays an important role. 

• Survey customers at various touch points, including before they purchase, immediately after purchasing, and after they leave to find critical drivers at each point. 
• Create multiple opportunities to gather feedback, especially during engagements with your team. 

2. Map Out Your Customer Journey and Develop Customer Personas 

Using valuable data gathered from surveys and usage patterns, you’ll be able to build personas that offer insights into customer experiences at each stage, including information like: 

• Critical demographic information 
• Symptoms customers experience that indicate a deeper problem 
• Pain points that keep them up at night 
• Purchasing behaviors that identify when they’re most likely to buy 
• Trigger points that indicate communication drop-offs and risk of churn 
• Specific touchpoints that present opportunities to improve retention 
• Relevant topics and questions

When you know what they feel and experience every step of the way, you can more effectively communicate with them, no matter where they are—and that degree of customer intimacy and personalized communications open opportunity floodgates. 

3. Activate Account Scoring 

Where many organizations score leads, account scoring is helpful for demand expansion activities, especially for Account-based Marketing (ABM) efforts. Successfully leveraging account scoring might include identifying what matters to account success, tracking the number of trouble tickets submitted and evaluating customer service interactions. From there, you can build models to score each account.

Demand Expansion Requires Intentional Marketing 

In today’s world, one thing is sure: maximizing revenue generation requires shifting part of your focus from demand generation to demand expansion. Doing so requires deep customer intimacy at every stage of the customer journey so you can personalize communications and tailor experiences to customer preferences and needs. 

As you consider the activities you need to become more customer-centric, know that this is an area where BDO Digital has deep experience. Contact us to learn how we can help you with demand expansion.