I love it when CEO’s and business owners ask me, “What do I need to do to get more customers using inbound digital marketing?” Okay. Maybe they don’t say those exact words. It may be more like, “I need a new website.” Or “I need SEO.” Or “How do I use social media?” Regardless of how the question is asked, the principal is the same. More and more business executives understand the significant value that inbound digital marketing brings to their bottom line.
Why? We live in a period of choice and options. Regardless of the type or size of business, from healthcare, to logistics, to manufacturing, aging services, retail and more, you are competing against other similar businesses for the same customer. For business leaders who understand today’s reality that customer choice and customer experience drive their business growth, they know that making it easy to do business with them is a necessity, not an afterthought.
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Customer Killing Culture
I venture to guess that every week you could share examples of poor customer experience. Perhaps you experienced the bad attitude of a waitress at a local restaurant. Or maybe you had to wait in line at the grocery store because there was only one checkout lane open and you only had a couple of items in your hands. Perhaps you called your healthcare provider and was put on hold or disconnected. Or better yet, you went to a website and couldn’t find a phone number for customer service.
Believe it or not every one of these examples happened to me in one week! These experiences are reminders that most businesses either are doing so well they don’t care about the customer experience, or they are more focused on their internal operational processes than making it easier for the customer. With fierce competition today, businesses can’t afford to create a customer killing culture.
Set the Right Goal
Exceeding your customer expectations is no longer the goal. Making it easy for your customers to do business with you is. Obviously there are many aspects, both online and offline to making the customer experience easy. The good news is, you can control many aspects of the customer multi-channel experience, including the online journey from their first impression to post purchase decision.
A customer experience survey by McKinsey surveyed 27,000 US consumers across 44 industries and found that companies that focus on providing a superior and low effort experience across their customer journeys – such as customer onboarding, account changes and problem resolution – realized positive business results, including a 10-15 percent increase in revenue growth and a 20 percent increase in customer satisfaction.
If that revenue growth isn’t enough to motivate you to engage in improving your customer experience, in Oracle’s Customer Experience Impact Report, the company cites research that found that 86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience.
Your business will grow with happy customers in unexpected ways as well. An American Express survey found that on average, happy customers tell an average of nine people about their experience.
Hopefully I’ve captured your attention and you understand that focusing on customer experience isn’t just a good idea, it’s critical. It’s essential that your inbound digital marketing strategy focus on building the positive online brand foundation you need to ensure you attract new visitors, capture leads, convert leads to sales and create new brand advocates.
4 E.A.S.Y. Inbound Digital Steps
E = Environment
If you are a brick and mortar business, you spend time ensuring your customers have a positive first impression from the moment they drive by with amazing signage to when they walk through your door and are greeted with a smile. From a clean spacious parking lot, to a spotless front door and pleasing entrance, care is taken to leave a favorable impression with your customer.
Thanks to the internet today, 60% of the buyer’s journey is complete before they even begin to talk with you. It is predicted that by 2020, according to a Customers 2020 report, that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. I encourage you to use the same lens to ensure potential and existing customers have a positive first impression of you on-line.
ð Does the messaging on your website speak to the visitor’s pain point in 10 seconds or less?
ð Is your website mobile responsive and easy to navigate?
ð Are your branding elements (logo, color, fonts) and voice (tone, messaging etc.) consistent across all channels?
ð Are you developing content that is helpful and answers the questions potential customers have at each stage of the buyer’s journey?
ð Have you identified personalization tactics along each stage of the buyer’s journey?
A = Access
There is nothing more frustrating when a potential customer can’t find you physical location or even your phone number to call you. Or if they do call you, no one answers or they are put on hold. In fact according to an American Express Service Report, being shuffled from person to person, waiting too long for a resolution, and having to continue following up are 3 of the top 5 reasons a customer would switch companies. How would you react if you were the customer? You’d move onto another option.
Your online potential customers react the same way. Online visitors are impatient and want immediate gratification and answers. If they don’t find the information they seek online with your business, they move onto the next option on the list. 97 percent of customers use online media when researching products or services in their local area including search engines, and internet directories, and one out of three smartphone users searches specifically for a business’s contact information on their phones. What are you doing to ensure your visitor has a frictionless experience?
ð Do you have a Google My Business account established?
ð Does your website meet SEO (Search Engine Optimization) performance measures so you will rank in the search engines?
ð Have you claimed and correctly set-up and optimized the appropriate off-page directory listings?
ð Do you make it easy on your website for people to find your contact information and reach you?
ð Do you use multichannel avenues to make it easy for customers that have a problem and need customer assistance to resolve it?
S = Standard
Like most high performing companies, you probably have some form of metric to measure the quality of your product or service. From ISO quality metrics in manufacturing to evidenced based clinical outcomes in healthcare, every industry has some measurement system to ensure the highest level of quality standards are being met to deliver a competitive product or service.
The experience a customer has with your business on or off-line has a far-reaching effect on not only their likelihood to return or spend more money with you, but their intention to spread positive or negative word-of-mouth about your business. According to Harvard Business Review, 81 percent of customers who had a hard time solving their problems were more likely to say something negative about the business. What standard methodology are you using in your inbound digital marketing program?
ð What is the quality of your online brand reputation?
ð Do you have a brand reputation management plan in place?
ð Do you actively share client testimonials and third party recognition consistently on-line?
ð Do you have a process for creating online employee brand advocates?
ð What KPI’s (key performance indicators) are you using to measurement the effectiveness of your digital strategy?
ð Do you have a plan for asking for positive reviews?
Y = Yield
With every other aspect of your business, from the production line, to the delivery of the product to your customer’s door, table or bedside to the exchange of information to ensure the customer understands what you want them to do next, you constantly take the time to evaluate every aspect of production and service delivery to identify opportunities to deliver high quality, at a lower cost in a more efficient manner. What continuous improvement processes do you have in place for your inbound digital program?
ð Do you have an annual content and digital audit performed to identify gaps and opportunities to improve your conversion results?
ð Is there a direct correlation between business goals and the inbound digital marketing goals and outcomes?
ð Do you have monthly strategic review sessions to discuss the data trends and make quick strategic adjustments?
ð Are inbound digital industry experts and trends followed to identify necessary changes in strategy?
ð Does your inbound digital team embrace a continuous improvement culture?
ð Do you identify opportunities to re-engage old customers and upsell additional products or services or reinforce your brand with educational information?
ð Are you continually testing new online tools and systems to streamline and automate processes?
Final Thoughts
The companies that value customer experience go above and beyond to make themselves easily accessible to the customer on the customer’s preferred channel and personalize the experience. Customer loyalty is built on making your customers’ lives easier. Your potential new or existing customers already experience ongoing friction in other areas of their daily lives. Are you giving them one more reason not to do business with you? How do you rate on the E.A.S.Y. scale with your inbound digital marketing program?
Need help figuring out how you rate on the E.A.S.Y. scale? Gain invaluable insight with a Digital Marketing Audit from Marketing Essentials!
