Improving Customer Engagement

In this high-tech day and age, marketing is more and more about personalization and the voice of your customer. It’s about improving the user experience throughout all of the points in which your customer has contact with your company. Watch this episode (or read the post below) to learn the key moments you have to make a great impression on your client to get more repeat sales and referrals. Visit www.Fordify.tv to binge watch the entire season of Fordify!

 

Now you’ve probably seen direct mail postcards where your name was printed in a different font or a color, and obviously, it wasn’t personal. Well, that’s just bad automation.

Or maybe you’ve seen an email that came in with the name bracket and comma, or maybe someone else’s name, and then your name below that. Again, bad automation. That’s not improving the customer experience.

So I’m going to ask you, “What are the touch points that you’re using to promote your products and services?” Well, the common ones that everybody’s probably using nowadays are:

  • Website
  • Social media
  • In person
  • Email marketing
  • Surveys
  • Direct mail
  • Trade shows

You’re probably using a grouping of traditional marketing elements and digital marketing elements. In today’s fast-paced environment, your customers are bombarded from every direction with some type of marketing. There’s so much noise out there that you need to really look at how you can improve the customer experience.

The best way to do that is to get to know your customers and their preferences. Where do they come from? What do they do? Who are they? What do they want? And most importantly, how do they want it?

Now once you know that, then you can use that data to design unique experiences to improve your target marketing. I’ve got a few ideas of what you can do to improve the customer experience.

  1. Look at your website statistics

Now a lot of people haven’t even looked at their statistics in years. Go look at your Google Analytics or whatever program you’re using, and I want you to look for things like average stay on your website. What pages do they look at? Do they bounce? That means do they come in and do they leave right away. The basics of Google Analytics will help you get those metrics.

Now you could spend all day on Analytics. I don’t want you to get in analysis paralysis. Look for the key metrics. They’re going to help you understand, “What are your customers doing now?”

  1. Research your purchase history

I want you to look at your current client base and see, “What’s the average transaction? How often do they purchase? Do they come back for repeat sales and referral sales?” Now, if you’ve got a type of product that doesn’t really lend itself to repeat sales, then you should be getting referrals.

  1. Survey your staff

See what type of questions they regularly get from clients, and see how you could answer some of those questions in the sales process. After all, the user experience includes everything before the sale, during the sale, and then after the sale. Your staff is going to be a great resource for gathering that information.

  1. Survey your customers

Then of course, you can survey your customers. Use the net promotor scale. Ask, “How likely is it you would refer us to a friend or colleague?” You need to know your satisfaction score. A lot of people think they’re really all about customer service, but maybe they have long hold times or they’re not really taking care of the customer.

  1. Use customer engagement software

I’m not going to endorse any one particular software now, but you need to consider all the data being amassed from your website, social media, and mobile devices. That data is now getting aggregated with companies to help you understand your customer and then provide them with targeted messages.

For example, if you’re in the grocery store, you can walk down the aisle, and you can get push notifications with coupons to your phone. If you’re driving by something, you can have nearby sales pop up on your phone in your car. I mean the future’s changing really, really fast.

So the purpose of this is really to have you look at what type of experience you are offering, and then making sure that you’re doing proper automation to improve the user experience. The key is to personalize it. Personalize the experience, don’t just automate it.

Now in future episodes, we’re going to dive deeper into both retail experiences and digital marketing automation solutions. But for now remember when your customer’s engaged, you’re going to get more sales, you’re going to get more referrals, you’re going to get more reviews, and you’re going to be able to identify brand advocates.

Here’s your action step for this week’s episode: Step back from your business. Take a closer look at your customer profiles. Review all of your marketing messages, traditional and online. Review your analytics and your sales data. And then when you’ve gathered all that up I want you to look for at least three ways that you can improve and personalize the user experience. When you have them, share your 3 ways in the comments below and I’ll give you feedback.

Sep 13, 2017

Author: Ford Saeks, Business Growth Specialist, Keynote Speaker, Author and Consultant. Helping you find, attract, and keep your customers. Find out more about Ford

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