avoid betraying clients while growing
Brought to you by The Art Of Positioning Podcast
Growing your business should feel like a win.
More customers. More revenue. More reach.
Until something unsettling happens.
You tweak your messaging, introduce new services, or reposition your brand to attract fresh faces. At first, it seems like a smart move until you notice that your most loyal customers start pulling away.
They aren’t engaging like they used to. The referrals slow down. Longtime clients aren’t as responsive.
They don’t say it outright, but you can feel something’s off.
The business you built, the one they trusted, suddenly feels… different.
Not in a way that excites them, but in a way that makes them question if they still belong.
It happens all the time.
A business chases growth and, in the process, loses the very people who made it successful in the first place.
So, how do you expand without making your most valuable customers feel like an afterthought?
Let’s talk about it.
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Why does something as good as expanding your business or target audience feel like you’re betraying long-time clients who have been there from the beginning?
It’s like that sting of guilt when you hang out with your new friends and post on socials when you have barely seen your old pals in recent months or even years.
They don’t say it, but you feel them watching from the sidelines and thinking…
📸: GIPHY
Reaching a broader audience in reality feels similar and often means:
More confusion about what you stand for
More friction in your customer experience
More internal complexity that slows everything down
But the run can be smooth when you intentionally carry old clients along.
Take Estée Lauder, for example; the brand is known for catering to women 50+ and has sought younger consumers without ditching its luxury appeal.
Their recent beauty sleep ad expanded the messaging of an old product to target younger women, reframing it as a means of ‘duping’ beauty sleep.
Relatable. Because on some very busy days or nights, or times we ‘accidentally’ spent over-scrolling, we all wish we could look like we had 8 hours of sleep, even if it was just 4. 😒
Let’s go into the down-low of how you could achieve this like Estee Lauder did.
Badass Tip
🦘 Marketing
Layer your messaging instead of changing it so drastically that existing clients feel like outsiders. Think of it as adding new chapters to your brand story, not rewriting the entire book.
What this looks like in practice:
Segment your messaging: Your core clients should still see content that speaks to their needs, while newer audiences get adapted (but still true to what you represent) messaging that introduces them to your world without making long-time clients feel replaced.
Multi-layered campaigns: Instead of running a single broad campaign, create micro-campaigns tailored to different audience segments.
Use testimonials to bridge the gap: Feature success stories from long-time clients alongside newer ones to show continuity rather than a stark shift.
🦘 Sales
Don’t just add new services. Create paths between old and new.
What this looks like in practice:
Position new offers as an extension: Instead of presenting a new offer as something completely separate, frame it as the next step in their journey with you. For example, if you run a business consulting firm and add an online training program, position it as a way for existing clients to deepen their expertise rather than just attracting new, entry-level clients.
Navigate your clients’ journey: Make it clear how your different services connect. If long-time clients don’t see how they fit into your new offers, they’ll assume they don’t.
🦘 Customer service
Sometimes (naturally), when a business expands, customer service can become more automated, more impersonal, and less attentive to the clients who have been there the longest.
This could create a sense of displacement, like they’ve been downgraded from a valued client to just another name in your CRM.
If you’re automating more, make sure there’s still a direct human touchpoint for that personal interaction.
What this looks like in practice:
Proactive relationship management: Don’t wait for longtime clients to reach out or notice these changes themselves; have dedicated team members set up calendar reminders to check in and update them on changes ahead.
Create exclusive client tiers: Reward loyalty with special perks, whether that’s priority access to new services, personalized strategy calls, or locked-in pricing for those who’ve been with you from the start.
🦘 HR
Fill in the cultural gap that is created where longtime clients interact with a team that no longer reflects the brand they originally connected with.
What this looks like in practice:
Hire for expansion: Consider your extended target market and hire to match the language and culture. That way, your existing customers still have people on board who get how you’ve always worked with them, and new ones will be attracted.
Compulsory training for new hires: This isn’t just training about the company’s history and values, but also on early client relationships.
Mentorship between old and new employees: Pair newer employees with team members who have been with the business for years to maintain institutional knowledge.
📝 Expanding your service business doesn’t mean losing those who helped build it. You’re growing in a way that feels like a natural progression (evolving) rather than an abrupt shift (erasure).
You can make your business welcoming to new customers without making your current customers feel like an afterthought if you improve your messaging, structure your offerings with purpose, keep the customer experience personal, and make sure your team lives up to the brand's legacy.
Because growth should feel like an expansion of the world they have an experience with and trust, not a departure from it.
