Customer Advocacy: A Critical Aspect of SaaS Marketing

Jerusha Songate on May 26, 2021

Customer advocacy means putting the wants and needs of your customers first.

Although it sounds like an obvious thing companies would have as part of their ethos, it’s actually a larger organizational shift from prioritizing what’s best for a company over what’s best for the customer. 

And when used for marketing purposes, an amazing outcome of customer advocacy is the transformation of customers into advocates for your brand. These individuals often provide the most compelling testimonials and social validation. 

Baremetrics provides the analytics tools you need to gain real-time insights about your customers, their businesses, and how they use your product.  Start a free trial today. 

Customer Advocacy for Subscription Businesses 

Many businesses today are operating on a subscription model to maximize recurring revenue.

Before subscription models became popular, companies would sell their software as a Perpetual Software License. This is a license that authorizes your client or customer to use your licensed software indefinitely with a single payment.

This business model eventually became obsolete due to the evolution of both software and the SaaS industry. After all,

  • Software requires upgrading and constant improvement to remain useful to customers. This costs lots of money.
  • Selling your software as one version to one user at a time greatly limits your revenue scale and sources for feedback

Most digital businesses now use subscription models because they involve lower upfront fees and offer better scalability. With this scalability comes the challenge of retaining those customers by providing excellent customer service. 

By implementing a standard of customer advocacy in their support offerings, companies can better ensure the growth of long-term relationships with their customers and reduce churn over time. 

Specialized tools like People Insights can help! By creating data-rich profiles of every customer, companies can provide better support experiences by understanding who they’re talking to, as well as their unique journey with your product. 

Try People Insights free for 2 weeks as part of the Baremetrics toolkit. Sign up today

Customer Advocacy and Growth

Customer advocacy should be a focus in any marketing strategy because it helps prevent churn- AKA customers are more likely to stick around when they get effective service when they need it. And having a strong customer base is the basis of any growth plan. 

When tracking growth progress, SaaS companies look at metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue. MRR is a popular metric that reflects all of your recurring revenue in a monthly amount.

Knowing your business’s MRR means knowing its health and vitality. MRR and other metrics can inform your sales strategy, hiring needs, growth opportunities, and more. 

Baremetrics allows you to view your MRR in real-time, as well as forecast and plan for the future of your company with ease. 

Sign up for your free Baremetrics 14-day trial and protect your ongoing revenue by creating a beneficial relationship to both the parties i.e., you and your customer.

Customer Advocacy and Customer Lifetime Value

Turning happy customers into your advocates for your brand is a sure way of increasing recurring revenue and creating customer lifetime value. When customers experience great service with your product and even greater customer service, it triggers happy thoughts.

Compared to generic brand marketing, customer advocacy marketing increases the likelihood of someone purchasing your product or service.

When customers are delighted with your product, they become your best brand advocates as they can exert influence in their own social networks. They also make sure to share their positive experiences through word of mouth, videos, other social media platforms, and so on. This decreases customer retention and attracts new customers.

Recommended reading: How We Increased Customer Loyalty by 125% in 6 hours!

Use Baremetrics to Do Better Customer Advocacy 

Currently, there is probably a ton of newsletters, advertisements, and emails coming to your mailbox. There are so many new brands and subscription businesses in the digital marketing world vying and competing for your attention. With so many choices laid out in front of you, it becomes increasingly difficult to make the right choice.

So who do customers rely on?

Firstly, customers will research a product or service beforehand. Customers are more inclined to buy and rule in favor of a product if there is someone who can vouch for it.

This creates brand loyalty, shifting the true power from the company into the hands of the customers.

This is why business heads insist on the importance of marketing, branding, and branding consistency.

Baremetrics does all the heavy lifting for you and gives you the right insights that you need to create a great customer advocacy program. It empowers you to understand the health of your business today to better plan for the future. 

Sign up for a  free 14-day trial of Baremetrics to drive revenue growth and create long-standing relationships with your customers. 

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Jerusha Songate

Jerusha has a strong interest in SaaS and finding new business opportunities. She writes for Baremetrics as part of her passion for business journalism.