I’ve spent over 15 years helping companies transform their marketing strategies to better connect with their customers. In that time, I’ve found that marketing is a lot of things: invigorating, fast-paced, unpredictable and constantly changing. Yet for all these frenetic qualities, it has one single, stabilizing tenet at its core — in the end, marketing is all about human connection.
What Is the D3 Methodology?
The D3 Methodology is an elegant, holistic framework composed of three disciplines designed to help sales and marketing teams drive consistent growth in their companies. It helps clients seize the greatest revenue potential from every stop along their customer journey — from awareness to education to evaluation — by examining exactly how and why customers engage with brands.
I could go on for days about the D3 Methodology. Fortunately, there are tons of resources for breaking the framework down for a variety of learning styles, including an eBook, webinar, podcast or a ten-minute explainer video if you’re short on time.
If you’re even shorter on time, here’s a basic breakdown of the three disciplines:
- Demand Creation involves building awareness to drive lead and account acquisition.
- Demand Management encompasses scoring, nurturing and routing would-be buyers to turn leads into customers.
- Demand Expansion focuses on improving onboarding and retention to expand customer lifetime value and open new advocacy opportunities.
Demand Expansion — The Overlooked Sidekick
When it comes to growth, organizations typically have two options. They can acquire new customers, or they can build revenue from their existing base. Yet, even though 90% of a customer’s lifetime value is realized after their initial purchase, companies still tend to focus on acquisition rather than retention. I sometimes even joke that Demand Expansion is treated as the overlooked little sibling or the fifth Beatle of marketing strategy.
Organic growth that comes from winning over new customers might sound more exciting than simply hanging onto buyers who have already been won over. But the D3 Methodology measures Demand Expansion with equal importance as Creation and Management. The first two phases are critical to revealing revenue growth potential because they uncover the basic truths surrounding their efforts: who is engaging with what. In the last and often overlooked phase, we use that information to find out why they’re engaging.
The Five Best Practices of Demand Expansion
Because Demand Expansion gets less time in the spotlight than the other two disciplines, it can be hard to know which practices yield the best results. To help you out, I’ve identified five best practices for achieving the fullest revenue potential using Demand Expansion, which I have developed over my years of working with clients.
Best Practice #1: Reach Operational Level of Maturity in the First Two Disciplines
First, it’s important to know that the D3 Methodology is a cumulative process of adoption — that is, it’s not an à la carte menu.
Creation and Management serve as the foundation for Expansion. In the first two phases, you learn how to nurture and communicate to the point where it becomes second nature. In many ways, the buyer-seller relationship is just like interpersonal relationships. After all, when you first encounter a person you’d like to be friends with, you don’t start the conversation with an invitation to meet again every Thursday for the next three months. Creation and Management are all about learning how to read your potential buyer’s behavior and craft your messaging to align with their preferences. Without that solid base beneath you, any Demand Expansion efforts are ineffective and wasteful.
Don’t know where your organization stands along the demand generation maturity curve? Take this 10-minute assessment to find out. If you’ve reached an operational level in Creation and Management, you’re well positioned to craft a strong Expansion strategy.
Best Practice #2: Focus on Retention
To successfully drive the most revenue from your existing customer base, you need to view retention on the same level of importance as acquisition.
Take the time to examine the lifetime value of your customers. Find out which ones have brought your organization the most return; then use those accounts as a guide to better understand why certain customers stay with you instead of your competition. What are the customers with the highest lifetime value saying when you reach out to them? Are they asking for other services or products that you can provide? Look at the overall ROI of your existing customers and use your established relationships to dig deeper into their preferences and behavior. If you’ve built up a trusting relationship during the Creation and Management stages, your customers should be willing and happy to share their feelings with you.
Best Practice #3: Get to Know Customers Intimately
During the first two phases, your customers are typically segmented in your database to help you target your messaging to specific groups and understand their collective wants and needs. But once someone becomes a customer, you must start marketing to the individual. The data points in your records are a fantastic starting point for narrowing your focus to create a model of your ideal customer — or buyer persona. At the end of the day, however, it’s the human connections that will give you the clearest view of that persona bringing the most value to your organization.
These connections don’t just help you maintain lasting buyer-seller relationships; they can also open opportunities for new revenue. Many people switch positions in their industry, often taking their business connections with them. I always encourage marketers to go to industry events, talk to salespeople and build digital connections on sites like LinkedIn so they can maintain the relationships they’ve spent so much time building. You never know where one of your connections might end up.
Best Practice #4: Align Communications With Your Customers
Acquiring new clients is all about awareness. Once they’ve purchased, there’s no need to continue pushing the same content and touchpoints on them. Demand Expansion draws focus away from awareness toward education and evaluation. You’ve done the hard work of establishing a transactional language — now is when you begin to meet customers where they are by truly listening, not just hearing. This reflects that you’re genuinely invested in the growth of their business and are willing (even pleased) to help them succeed.
Conduct surveys to get feedback or start conversations with clients to find out what your brand can enhance. I’ve found that some marketing folks are hesitant to spark discussions with clients, but as I said — it’s all about human connections. Be confident knowing that you’ve earned the right to ask how you can help to improve the customer journey from the people who know best.
Best Practice #5: Establish a Long-term Strategic Relationship
Selecting a suitable vendor usually comes down to containing cost rather than building revenue. A strategic relationship with a client, on the other hand, means there’s a vested interest in helping them grow their businesses. By positioning your business in strategic partnerships, you can become an indispensable cog in their strategy for growth.
Look at the other products you have that might align with their other needs and keep an eye out for other pain points. Even if your business can’t address every challenge, you can still point them to other products or services that can help, further establishing your brand as a knowledgeable industry leader.
Without Demand Expansion, businesses could be letting existing customers slip through the cracks, even as they work to bring in new customers. After all, as the old saying goes: “It’s cheaper to keep ‘em.” In today’s customer-centric world, the top-performing companies are the ones who can position themselves in strategic relationships that continue delivering value long after the initial purchase. Plus, with many professionals moving from company to company, it’s common to bring past partners with them and create more opportunities for their new organizations. Because although online reviews of a product or service can be informative, they don’t hold a candle to the power of word-of-mouth referrals and advocacy from people you know and trust.
Leveraging the Power of BDO Digital
Modern marketing organizations are under intense pressure from across the organization. You must not only continuously generate highly qualified leads for Sales in a dynamic, fast-paced, and extremely competitive marketplace, but you must also meet the demands as a growth driver for the organization. Oh, and you’re also expected to support internal communications, events, and other projects that don’t tie back to revenue as the requests pile up. BDO Digital can help you innovate your modern workplace to create a seamless customer experience. Learn how.
Randy Latimer serves as Strategic Marketing Advisor for BDO Digital, supporting a variety of clients with using the D3 Methodology to meet their business goals. He’s provided thought leadership and marketing strategies to organizations across industries, and he has a deep passion for helping B2B and B2C businesses connect with their customers and realize their greatest potential for growth.
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