Strategic advice

Before you invest money into efforts to attract new customers, consider who your ideal client is and then target potential customers with the same attributes. The importance of this model customer goes beyond just the amount they spend on a single sale—it can also include their speed of payment, potential for repeat business, and offer of consistent sales that will better help you forecast revenue.

Modeling an ideal customer starts with analyzing your own internal data around metrics like:

• Purchase history
• Contract length
• Payment patterns
• Customer service interactions
• Lifetime value

Tabulating this information helps identify which clients are the most consistent and have the highest customer lifetime value. It also enables you to create profiles and segments that refine your targeting strategy for customer growth. Industry reports, market analyses, third-party benchmarking studies, and other forms of external research can also help verify whether your most profitable customers reflect broader market demand or represent a niche segment.

The combination of internal customer data with external research can enable you to more precisely refine your model customer profile. Truist works with growth-stage and established businesses to interpret this data, align acquisition efforts with long-term revenue goals, and create grounded expansion strategies.

Trust is a key factor in transforming a one-time customer into a loyal customer. A recent survey reveals that consumers are 1.7 times more likely to make repeat purchases from brands they trust.^{Disclosure 2} Trust doesn’t just come from providing your service or product, however. Customers and potential customers want to feel like you care about their success and satisfaction.

You can build trust by getting ahead of any mistakes you make. What does “getting ahead” mean when making amends for errors, and not error prevention, is your focus? It means replacing an unplanned, reactive approach with an active one that primes your staff to deal with unexpected mishaps in an organized, efficient manner—and leaves customers feeling valued. Some examples of getting ahead of mistakes are:

• Proactively apologizing for service disruptions like outages and delays
• Sending early, clear, and specific messages when something goes wrong
• Providing up-front remedies like credit or replacements to minimize confrontation
• Following up after a fix to see if additional aid is needed, and to show you care

Whether you use these or other methods, the key point is that being transparent about process faults and improvements is a time-honored way to build the trust that attracts and retains customers.

When it comes to growing your customer base, strengthening loyalty connects closely with increasing trust. Trust grows your customer base by communicating dependability and responsiveness. Strong customer loyalty strategies accomplish that growth by focusing on improving customer experience through identifying and implementing exceptional experiences that connect with your customers on a personal level.

Even in the early stage of the business lifecycle, it’s important to strengthen bonds with existing customers as quickly as possible. Simple, consistent gestures can go a long way to reinforce loyalty and encourage repeat business. Some relatively inexpensive but appreciated actions to help accomplish this are:

• Checking in with customers shortly after a purchase
• Sending how-to videos that help get maximum value from your product
• Asking satisfied customers to write a review
• Offering early access to new products, services, or promotions
• Providing personalized recommendations based on past purchases
• Sending a handwritten thank-you note or personalized email for major orders
• Creating a referral incentive program that rewards loyal customers for introducing new business

Companies should focus on delivering seamless, personalized, and memorable experiences across all touch points. This includes investing in customer service, streamlining processes, and ensuring that every interaction adds value to the customer.

For example, pet retailer Chewy invested heavily in digital infrastructure to create personalized customer engagement that would boost recurring purchases. Its Autoship subscription program—which enables seamless reordering, customized recommendations, and proactive communication—supercharged customer loyalty and became a cornerstone of its growth strategy. Recent earnings reports indicate Autoship has spurred a year-over-year increase in active customers and a net sales per customer increase of 3.7%,^{Disclosure 3} and now accounts for 83% of Chewy’s net sales.^{Disclosure 4}

At a certain point, an expanding client base may require an expansion in your digital management tool set. As you accumulate more customers, their data becomes fragmented across too many departments to be effectively managed using spreadsheets—complicating your ability to identify opportunities for expansion.

Investing in systems that can merge, collate, and smartly segment client data can help ensure your data flows smoothly between departments, is easily retrievable, and is coordinated in a way that fosters clear, actionable insights. CRM platforms, marketing automation tools, analytics software, and integrated data systems can enable your company to:

• Target prospective clients with greater precision
• Identify and map patterns in repeat purchasing behavior
• Segment customers according to lifetime value and engagement
• Implement more effective acquisition and reengagement campaigns
• Track performance metrics that enable ongoing improvement

To realize these benefits, you may need to purchase software subscriptions, upgrade hardware, enhance cybersecurity protections, enact cross-departmental systems integration, or work with relationship managers to implement new platforms. But while these upgrades can help your company more effectively scale its customer acquisition and retention efforts, the price tag on each can require smartly structured capital solutions that enable growth without cutting into cash flow.

Truist works with growth-stage and established companies to evaluate the expected return on these investments and provide financing solutions—whether through equipment financing, term loans, or lines of credit—that support sustainable customer growth. By aligning technology investments with long-term strategy, businesses can build a stronger infrastructure for attracting, serving, and retaining customers in a competitive market.