Every start-up should get, retain and grow customers. There are top two ways to grow the base of existing customers: get the current customers to shell out more money, or inspire them to refer more customers to the company. Both have been explained below.

1. Inspire the Current Customers to Shell Out More Money

In the beginning; ensure that the customers are satisfied with the service, product, price and performance. Then you must sell them more products, inspire them for service up gradation or prolong their contracts. These functions are important in the long-term. Hence, you should test them for at least a few criteria during the process of customer validation. Some of the fundamental approaches for growing customers include:

• Cross-selling programs: Inspire the buyers for a product to purchase adjacent products. For example, you can inspire the buyers of toner cartridges for buying pencils, paper and other stationery products.

• Up-selling programs. Such programs include processes like promotion and purchase of quality higher-end products. According to the representative of a Digital Marketing Company in Australia, persuading the customers to purchase the cases of toner in place of single cartridges, or fax machines and other machines for office works in addition with the toner could be a good marketing tactics.

2. Get Customers to Refer More Customers to the Organisation

Customer referrals are the one of the most honest sources of lead generation. There are many different tactics and tools for viral marketing that can help you gain more customers.

Viral marketing stimulates customer referrals from other satisfied customers. Below mentioned are the six most powerful techniques for viral marketing that you should consider:

• Inspire the customers to “like” the service or product on Facebook page. Offer customers free trial or discount offers for sharing with friends.

• Enable the customers to mail their friends utilising their address books for creating the mailing lists.

• Promote contests along with incentives to inspire “liking”, Tweeting and other viral functions.

• Highlight upon social-networking action buttons upon the website for making the viral efforts easy.

• Encourage the bloggers for writing about the product and offer them rewards for doing so.