What is a client base?
A client base is a company’s foundation of existing customers. A company’s client base drives its revenue and growth.
Customer success software helps companies increase customer contentment to expand their client base. The software lets customer success and sales teams create client profiles, track purchase histories, and predict future growth trends.
Best practices for building a client base
A client base serves as solid ground not just for maintaining revenue, but also for scaling. Some best practices companies should follow when building a client base are explained below.
- Create targeted marketing campaigns. Businesses need a clear idea of their target audience, i.e., the ideal customer they want to serve. Conducting customer research helps companies tailor the messaging in their ad campaigns and other marketing initiatives to attract new customers.
- Expand an online presence. Ad campaigns may spark curiosity about a company and its products, and cultivating a multi-channel presence improves the brand’s likability and nurtures new leads. Companies should consider creating active social media profiles to interact with current and potential clients, and think about maintaining an up-to-date and easy-to-use website.
- Provide exceptional customer service. If two companies offer the same products, customers will likely choose the one that offers thoughtful service and support. Companies can provide multiple contact methods – such as live chat, chatbots, call centers, and email – to make it easy for customers to get in touch. Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps companies manage customer data and interactions across platforms.
- Collect customer feedback. Collecting and analyzing customer feedback helps a company improve processes and products, which leads to increased customer satisfaction and decreased churn rates. When companies ask customers for their opinions, they show they care about their clients’ experiences. An organization can send out surveys or install a feedback widget on its website to make it easy for customers to rate their experience.
- Start a customer loyalty program. Many businesses offer loyalty programs to increase customer retention and maintain and expand their client base. Loyalty programs provide rewards and incentives to return customers. Brick-and-mortar stores often use scannable loyalty cards or a punch card system, and e-commerce companies have customers create an account for tracking points on purchases. Loyalty management software streamlines program management for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies.
Benefits of building a client base
While finding new leads is important, maintaining and nurturing a client base offers many advantages for small companies and enterprises. A well-maintained client base can:
- Encourage brand loyalty. Keeping a relationship with former and current clients boosts customer satisfaction and increases brand and product loyalty.
- Provide a source of feedback. A client base can provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of companies’ existing products or services, which can lead to improvements and growth. Companies can also give beta offers to existing clients to gain feedback before launching to their entire target market.
- Increase revenue. When a company spends time, effort, and funds to nurture its client base, customers buy additional products and services and tell their friends. Repeat customers and word-of-mouth advertising both increase profits.
Client base vs. customer base vs. target market
The terms client base and customer base are often used synonymously, with client base more common in service industries and customer base more common in product sales.
Sometimes the term client base is confused with target market. But the target market includes all potential clients, while a client base consists of those customers who have already purchased products or services from a company.
Learn how to predict a customer's likelihood to turn by understanding your churn risk.
Kelly Fiorini
Kelly Fiorini is a freelance writer for G2. After ten years as a teacher, Kelly now creates content for mostly B2B SaaS clients. In her free time, she’s usually reading, spilling coffee, walking her dogs, and trying to keep her plants alive. Kelly received her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Notre Dame and her Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Louisville.
