Key Takeaways
- Increasing marketing budgets isn’t always the answer; increasing customer value is.
- Focus on retention, engagement, and shared value to deepen relationships with existing customers.
- Sustainable growth comes from aligning teams, simplifying customer experiences, and measuring what truly matters.
Over the past nine months, I’ve been supporting a financial services client on an ambitious mission to exponentially scale digital customer acquisition. I’m not talking some modest 20% or even 2x growth, but some really exponential growth! That level of ambition is exciting, but it also highlights a truth many growth teams face, which is that the budget rarely matches the aspiration.
Every Progress Counts
In this case, progress came, but not very easily, as there were numerous blockers along the entire onboarding journey. Within the first few months of tackling those issues, we successfully cut cost per acquisition by over 50% by sharpening segmentation and targeting, improving messaging, and deploying an overall more effective channel mix. We also plugged multiple leaks in the onboarding process and built a full-funnel visibility framework that now allows the team to track performance from impression to conversion.
This is the approach I always encourage, and what sits at the heart of my “more value marketing” value proposition – you may not have all the marketing and growth resources you would like, but how can you make what you do have work better and go farther?
The Customer Value Conversation
Back to the story. Even though we had seen strong signs of progress and results, the discomfort around scaling growth spend to achieve more results remained. Even though it was clear that these results were now being driven at a significantly lower cost.
It became clear very quickly, however, that the issue wasn’t the inefficiency (or reduction thereof), but that their digital customers had historically been low value. For years, growth had been defined by volume and the number of new customers acquired, rather than the value those customers generated.
This is actually quite a common challenge. When acquisition is the main metric of success, businesses often end up attracting the wrong type of customers. These customers tend to be the ones who may convert quickly but contribute little over time.
Making The Shift: Quality Over Quantity
Because I had seen this happen quite a bit over the course of my career and consulting work, one of the things I made clear from the outset was that this engagement had to be about more than just acquiring new customers. It had to extend to increasing customer value and retention. Because ultimately, the price you can afford to pay for growth depends on the value you can extract from each customer relationship.
If your business faces similar tensions where you want to achieve high growth targets, but have to contend with lean budgets and rising acquisition costs, the solution isn’t to cut your growth marketing spend. It’s to increase customer value. Here’s how to do just that.
7 Practical Ways To Increase Customer Value
1. Know Your Real Customers
Not everyone who clicks your ad or fills a form is a valuable customer. Look at your existing base and ask, who brings the most revenue? Who stays the longest? Build your future acquisition strategy around these insights. It’s key to segment your customers not just by demographics but by value, and use metrics like lifetime value (LTV) and retention rate, not just sign-up volume.
2. Make the First Experience Simple
Onboarding is typically where customer intent meets friction. Even a few unnecessary steps can drop conversion and damage brand trust. Review your onboarding flow end-to-end, remove barriers, automate repetitive steps, and personalize early interactions. The first impression must feel seamless and not transactional, and this applies whether your business is digital or offline.
3. Don’t Just Acquire Customers, Engage Them
Acquisition may be what fills the funnel, but retention is what fuels the business. It’s been demonstrated that investing in loyal customers is a smart business move, as such customers tend to be consistently more profitable than newly acquired ones. It’s, therefore, important to design your operations and business model for sustained customer engagement. Offer post-purchase support, rewards, and meaningful content. The goal is to make your customers stay because they see value, which makes it tougher for the competition to win them.
4. Lead With Value, Not Discounts
Discount-heavy acquisition strategies tend to attract low-commitment customers who are just in for what they can immediately get. Rather, shift the conversation from “cheap” to “valuable” by offering insights, convenience, or exclusivity that aligns with customer aspirations. Customers who connect emotionally with your value proposition are far more durable than those chasing the next promo.
5. Measure What Actually Makes A Difference
Many teams are drowning in dashboards, but there’s barely any insight coming from them. Metrics like clicks and impressions might create comfort, but you need a whole lot more to get clarity. Prioritize metrics that highlight performance and results, such as lifetime value, churn rate, retention cost, and customer satisfaction. Then close the loop by feeding these insights back into acquisition and product decisions.
6. Get Everyone On The Same Page
One of the biggest threats to your business is a team that works in silos. When product, marketing, and operations run separate playbooks, growth becomes way harder to achieve. To fix this, introduce shared objectives, such as OKRs, that connect departmental goals to customer value outcomes. In order to achieve business success, growth must feel like a coordinated effort, and not a competition for resources.
7. Listen to Your Customers
Data tells you what happened, but customer feedback tells you why. This makes it vital to make feedback loops an integral part of your growth process. Use surveys, reviews, and social insights to understand emerging needs. Acting on this intelligence not only improves satisfaction but also increases share of wallet.
Conclusion
If your acquisition feels expensive, your customer value is likely too low. The worst part is that increasing budgets without improving value won’t make it better; it only accelerates inefficiency. The goal should be to create meaningful relationships with customers, as sustainable growth happens when each customer relationship becomes more meaningful, more profitable, and more enduring.
Before you cut your marketing spend or chase the next campaign trend, step back and ask – How much value are we actually creating per customer?
If your organization is looking to increase customer value or optimize acquisition efficiency, I’d be happy to help. Reach out, and let’s explore how we can collaborate to build a growth system that truly impacts the bottom line.