7 Creative Ways to Thank Your Clients and Customers

thank-you-card-on-table-with-latte
Thanksgiving is a time we all stop and reflect on the things we’re grateful for. More than likely, your clients or customers are somewhere on that list (if they’re not, they should be—they’re the reason you’re in business). But, do your customers know just how much you appreciate their business? According to a small business study, 68% of customers leave cease doing business with a company because they feel that company is indifferent to them. As we spend time this week thinking and celebrating what we’re thankful for, here are seven creative ways you can say “thank you” to the clients and customers who are keeping your company in business:

1. Create a Loyalty Program or “VIP Membership” for your best customers.

This is something Robbie Baxter unpacks in her book, Membership Economy. Your rewards program doesn’t have to be complex. It can be as simple as offering customers an annual discount on their anniversary.

2. Make a donation to a cause you know your customers care about.

Reach out to a select set of valued customers and let them know you’d like to make a contribution in their honor to their favorite charity.

3. Listen to the suggestions customers provide and actually implement them.

There is no better way to communicate with a customer than to show them you were listening. Your customers are a great source of areas you can improve as a business. Reach out to customers and tell them how you’ve implemented their suggestions.

4. Give your loyal customers a discount or special promotional price, just because.

Sending a note telling a customer you’ve taken $50 off their December bill as a way of showing appreciation for their loyal and continued service is a great way to keep their business in the future.

5. Send customers your favorite business book that you know they’ll enjoy.

This is a great idea for B2B companies. This gesture offers customers insight into your company culture and opens the lines of communication for future discussion about the ideas that you use to help shape your products, services, or strategies.

6. Help teach customers something valuable that’s related to your industry or area of expertise.

Two huge benefits come from thanking customers this way — customers trust you, and they have a greater appreciation for your products. It’s the ultimate win-win.

7. Refer people you know to your customers’ businesses.

B2B businesses should make every effort to say thanks by sending business to their customers. Look for opportunities to refer your customers to other clients or link them to your network.  I’d love to know what some other creative ways you’ve let customers know how thankful you are in the past! As always, don’t hesitate to contact Green Apple today if you need some marketing guidance or assistance to go the extra mile for your clients and customers. 

5 Questions to Evaluate & Enhance Your Content Marketing

video editor working on a laptop

One of the primary purposes of content marketing, and no doubt one of its most compelling benefits has always been that it helps to connect what marketing is doing with what sales is doing. However, the trends that have led companies to focus on content marketing have also raised some very important questions from business development professionals, one of which being, “How do we not only connect our content marketing to our current sales process but also ultimately enhance our processes along the way?”

In this blog post, we’ll highlight five questions you can use to make sure your inbound marketing efforts are worth it.

Here are five questions to evaluate your efforts and enhance your content marketing campaigns moving forward:

  1. What are the biggest gaps in your current sales and marketing process? Everything you do when it comes to content marketing should enhance your current sales and marketing process. Do you need more leads? Does your sales team need resources to close more sales? Are leads going cold? Taking time to identify the biggest gaps in your sales or marketing processes will help you find ways to use content marketing to help you overcome them.

  2. What questions do people have in different stages of the buying cycle? The entire goal of content marketing is to address the questions your prospective customers have at the appropriate time. Spend time thinking through the journey a prospective customer takes from learning about your brand to becoming a customer. What questions are they asking throughout that process? What problem are they trying to solve?

  3. What type of content can you create to answer those questions and give your prospects confidence in your company? Providing content that addresses the specific needs of where a prospective customer is in the buying cycle is critical for success. For example, new prospective buyers might be looking for helpful information like eBooks or infographics. Prospective clients who are considering doing work with your business might need case studies or product spec sheets to make a decision.

  4. What would help your sales team promote your content marketing resources: email script, suggested social updates? By encouraging your team to use tools for cultivating relationships with current clients and leads, you’re able to essentially kill two birds with one stone — generate new leads & equip your sales team with resources to help them succeed.

  5. How can you give people a reason to stay interested in your business? Consistently providing prospects with quality content is a great way to keep them engaged during the buying process. Don’t think of what you want to tell prospects, think of what they want to know.

Are you ready to overcome the obstacles that keep a lot of companies from experiencing the benefit of an integrated inbound marketing and sales process?

Download our free resource Biz Dev’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to dig deeper into these questions and enhance your content marketing efforts for greater results.

4 Inbound Lead Nurturing Tips Every Biz Dev Pro Should Know

Tree growing and turning into an arrow shaped tree flying off


Inbound marketing has become the most effective way for businesses to generate leads in today’s digital age. However, there’s one essential element required to maximize the ROI of your inbound marketing efforts — lead nurturing.

Creating an effective campaign means thinking beyond generating a lead and considering what happens after someone submits their information to download your inbound marketing resource.

This is where lead nurturing comes in. Lead nurturing will help you qualify and develop the leads your campaign generates, moving them from early-stage leads to interested prospects who are a good fit for your product or service.

4 Inbound Lead Nurturing Tips Every Biz Dev Pro Should Know

But what’s the key to effective lead nurturing? Here are four tips you should know:

  1. (Pre)segmenting the leads you’ll generate.

Before you start writing emails and setting up your nurturing flows, first think about who the leads are you are likely to generate and how you should follow up with them. It’s possible that one nurturing track and one set of messages will work for
 all of the leads your campaign generates, but it’s more likely that you can segment those leads and nurture them in more targeted ways.

For example, if your business caters primarily to two specific industries, you may want to nurture each industry’s leads in different ways and with different content.

  1. Defining your goals and creating email content.

With your segments in mind, you are now ready to start writing the email content for your nurturing flows.

When deciding what kind of content you’ll use, it’s helpful to ask yourself what your ultimate goal is for each segment you plan to nurture. If your high level goal is to turn early leads into sales ready leads, what does that mean in practical terms? Do you have different goals for different segments? Once you’ve determined the goal for each nurturing flow, start mapping out your emails and your content.

  1. Nurturing through your website.

You’ve got your emails written and your automation flows in place. That’s great! But nurturing your leads shouldn’t stop at the inbox. Your leads are likely coming and going from many different parts of your website all the time. Maybe they directly type in your web address to get to your homepage or click a link on social media and end up back on your blog. Depending on the tools you use, you may be able to deliver targeted messages to these leads too.

  1. Determine when leads are ready for your sales team.

The machinery of your campaign is almost fully set up! To take things the final mile, give some thought to when and how you’ll pass leads to your sales team. How this process takes place varies widely from company to company. If you get a few leads, you may walk over to your sales folks and have a face to face discussion about each lead that comes in. If you get a large volume, it’s helpful to have an ongoing process in place.

3 Things Every Business Development Pro Should Know About Inbound Marketing

The number of brands committed to inbound marketing has grown significantly over the past few years, as marketers adapt to the changing reality of how people buy, but many business development professionals still have questions about how it can help them generate more leads and convert more customers. A few months ago, we provided a resource to help sales-people and business executives identify the various ways inbound marketing can enhance their efforts. In this blog, we’ll unpack three key takeaways from the resource that every business development professional should know. 3 Things Every Business Development Pro Should Know About Inbound Marketing Here are three things you should know if you’re considering how inbound marketing can help you grow your business.
  1. Small businesses who are willing to invest in inbound marketing have a significant opportunity to stand out from their competitors.
Although inbound marketing is more effective for small and mid-sized businesses, many are still relying on traditional outbound methods. In fact, the number of small businesses primarily focusing on outbound marketing is double the amount of those focusing on inbound. For brands who are willing to adopt this strategy, this provides a significant opportunity to stand out from amongst their competition.
  1. Inbound marketing helps you educate prospective clients on the unique benefits your company can offer.
Over 50% of brands that use inbound marketing as their primary lead source say prospects are at least somewhat knowledgeable about their company prior to speaking with sales. Less than half of outbound marketing-focused brands can say the same. The takeaway? Inbound marketing helps you educate prospective clients on the unique benefits your company can offer, effectively shortening the sales-cycle of outbound marketing tactics.
  1. Inbound marketing provides twice as many leads than almost any other source.
At least 40% of all referrals for B2B, B2C, and nonprofit brands come through inbound marketing channels, such as SEO, social media, or lead generation efforts. Outbound marketing tactics such as cold calling, advertising, and tradeshows only equate for 20% of referrals. Are you ready to grow your business with inbound marketing? To learn more about how inbound marketing can help you generate more leads and convert more customers, download our free resource “Is Inbound Marketing Worth It?” It will help you answer almost everything you need to know about using inbound marketing to effectively grow your business.

4 Ways to Measure Inbound Marketing Beyond Leads

measure inbound marketing


Measuring your results is important in every area of marketing. However, it can be difficult to know how to calculate the ROI of tactics such as inbound marketing when you’re used to managing traditional marketing campaigns.  

The good news is that you can measure your effectiveness at any given point throughout the campaign or at its conclusion by tracking various metrics along the way. You also have the ability to monitor, measure, and manage almost every aspect of your campaign, including landing pages, emails, blog posts, social messages, keywords, pay-per-click advertising, and other sources that are contributing traffic to your campaign.

Ultimately, the success of an inbound marketing campaign is based on the number of leads that were generated, but it’s good to know what metrics influence that final number.

4 Ways to Measure Inbound Marketing Beyond Leads

When evaluating your inbound marketing campaign, here are just a few questions that should be asked to see how your promotion channels did overall in the campaign:

  • Which emails did the best at bringing people into the campaign? 

  • What blog topics led to the greatest number of conversions? 

  • How did PPC compare to Social? 

  • Overall, what channels are most effective in this campaign? 


Inbound campaigns are an impressive feat once you have all channels firing toward the same end goal. The trick is to keep your campaigns focused and powerful. At the conclusion of your campaign, you can measure your efforts and evaluate everything from your offer to your promotional channels. This will give you an opportunity to analyze and optimize your marketing efforts like never before.

5 Ways to Equip Your Sales Team with Content Marketing

Equip your sales team
A common frustration among content marketers is seeing their well-crafted content being ignored by sales reps. Depending on who you ask, the estimates for how much content goes unused by sales vary from 60% to 90%. So how do you get sales to get on board with content and leverage the content you’re producing? Many times, salespeople see the primary function of these pieces as lead generation tools. However, by encouraging your team to use them as tools for cultivating relationships with current clients and leads, you’re able to essentially kill two birds with one stone: generate new leads & equip your sales team with resources to help them succeed. 5 Ways to Equip Your Sales Team with Content Marketing Here are five ways your sales team can use the resources you generate from content marketing to cultivate relationships, shorten the sales cycle, and close more leads:
  1. Send the downloadable content to a decision maker who has stalled in the buying process. This is a legitimate opportunity to see if you can get things moving forward again.
  2. Blast the downloadable content to your existing clients to remind them that you are still there. Everyone likes to know that others are looking out for them.
  3. Print the downloadable content out in color and include that with seminar or workshop materials. Give them something of value that doesn’t ask them for a signature at the end.
  4. Include it as part of your follow-up to a conference call or onsite meeting when appropriate. Again, this is another way you can separate yourself from the competition and interact with the prospect in ways that benefits them and you.
  5. Use downloadable content to add credibility to your product or service. Independent research, case studies, and white papers remind the prospect of what you discussed and can be used to affirm your position. You’re also helping your internal champion “sell” you to all the people involved in the decision process.
Take Your Content Marketing & Biz Dev Efforts to the Next Level Content marketing does more than help you generate new leads — it can also drive the success of your sales team. If you invest in content marketing, be sure to develop a process for equipping your sales team with the resources you create and encouraging them to share the content. If you want to learn more about how to integrate your content marketing and business development efforts to maximize ROI in both areas, don’t miss our latest eBook Biz Dev’s Guide to Inbound Marketing.