By: Jamie Williams, Chief Customer Officer & Co-Founder of The CLV Group
We’re thrilled to be celebrating our third birthday at The CLV Group!! Nobody is kidding when they say entrepreneurship is a journey of blood, sweat and tears; however, the rewarding feeling of helping our clients is so worth it. This year we are celebrating 300% year-on-year growth with brands in the Sports, Media, Entertainment and Technology sector, 200% employee growth and the successful release of our inaugural Fan Relationship Index report.
That said, while I could describe the pride I take in what we deliver to clients all day, I want to flip things around and instead share how we are living out the mission we depict for our clients within our own business. Simply put, in order to grow The CLV Group practices, tools and people we must revolve everything around our customers, their external customer relationships, their internal teams and take our own advice — focus on customer lifetime value, through our people.
We define CLV as such: customer lifetime value is how much money a customer will bring to your brand throughout their entire time as a paying customer.
(Ie. CLV = Average Order Value*Purchase Frequency*Average Customer Lifetime)
Seems simple and perhaps even obvious, right? The key to CLV is the emphasis on the customer…ironically, it’s in the name yet many businesses seem to put them last. When most marketers think of lifetime value they think of brand loyalty or brand attachment. From a brand perspective, in order to create that relationship with a customer it takes more than a few emails and ads served to gain the customer’s connection. It takes unique experiences, the ability to actively listen and passion…qualities both entrepreneurial and customer-focused businesses alike possess.
Reflecting on the past three years of The CLV Group, I wanted to breakdown the key principles of lifetime value we have chosen to focus on which have led to our growth:
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We build trust through being the biggest champions of our clients (passion) – we want to see THEM win. While so many take a stance that technology is the key to business growth – we believe it’s actually people, strategic thinking and collaboration across an enterprise which makes any technology platform successful.
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We pay attention to the signals we get from our customers (listening) and we personalize the experience accordingly. This approach humanizes the experience our customers have come to expect which is different from traditional data and technology companies who do not lead with value. We recognize how our partnership directly impacts their personal success.
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Our hiring strategy is directly connected to the needs of our customers and what we see as an opportunity to support them and their growth, even if they don’t see it themselves (unique experiences).
The truth is, our industry too often falls victim to chasing the shiny object and therefore acquisition, instead of retention, tends to be the focus. Instead, we advocate that our clients focus on the long-term, not the short-term, goals. In turn, we do the same, and that makes for long-lasting relationships all around.