The term “install base marketing” comes from the industrial era when it referred to the number of machines of a certain manufacturer or brand installed in a particular region.

Let me explain with an example. If you are a software product company for invoicing / billing and your product integrates well with all the CRMs in the market, then your ‘install base marketing’ approach would target companies using CRM software like Oracle, SalesForce and even custom versions.

At times, given the niche, install base marketing could sometimes be the only way of retaining customers and getting new ones. But, are you engaging a dedicated installed base marketing strategy? If not, you could be losing out.

In this blog, I am sharing three ways that you can approach install base marketing.

How not to lose on install base marketing ?

The List

Finding gold in the list

This is the most conventional and old school method of installed base marketing. Target your existing and loyal customers for marketing and add value to the services.

Additionally, build a list, painstakingly, of existing install base users and then develop campaigns targeting them.

Leverage the App Store

Become Omnipresent

Imagine most of your technology users are chrome users also. It makes sense for you to make a chrome plugin or extension in association with your technology. By doing so, you add value to your exitsting customers and may also get new technology users just because of the plugin.

Similarly you may create android, iOS, Windows and SalesForce applications.

Some businesses just got built by virtue of being on such software marketplaces.

Custom Integrations

Last but certainly the best

This is a step forward from just following and creating extensions. You could proactively build custom integrations and keep solving customer problems. After all they are your best promoters.

I’ll explain this with an example too.

Being a HubSpot user this is the best example I can give. HubSpot has a huge customer base and it is a necessity for every SaaS company (related to Sales or Marketing) to be able to integrate with it. CRM and marketing automation software integrations will be a bonus to your customers and also prospective customers.

I have been in the B2B lead generation space for quite sometime now and the aforementioned methods are all you need to be able to leverage install base marketing properly, otherwise you are just leaving money on the table.

Do let me know if there are more methods which I can include to increase the effeciency of installed base marketing.