5 Unbeatable Tips to Improve Your Marketing and Customer Experience
Customers are faced with advertising sent to their mobile phones, displayed on social media ads, on web pages, in emailers, and so much more. How do we keep this busy group engaged while enhancing the customer experience?
It’s always the question businesses and communications and marketing teams face: what do our customers want and how do we give it to them? That answer is needed today more than ever.
Customers are inundated with information every day. They drown in a flood of communication from businesses on their various devices, channels, and platforms. So, where should you begin to improve your customer experience while using these opportunities for your small business to grow?
1. Don’t waste their time
Research by Responsys and YouGov revealed that the average customer spends 30 seconds or less browsing digital marketing content. This means that businesses only have 30 seconds to make an impact on a customer and to drive a single message home.
As a small business, you likely don’t have an intricate marketing strategy in place just yet, which is why you can take this opportunity to learn from other brands’ marketing mishaps. Take a look at your competitors, do thorough research, and find out what not to do, and in return, reveal which tactics will benefit your business and customer experience.
It’s also wise to consider your current marketing efforts and reflect on how you can cut through the noise in order to drive quality engagements with your busy customers, rather than simply an overabundance of ad exposure.
When in doubt, remember the old adage: quality over quantity.
2. Build trust
With customers facing an array of brand messages on multiple platforms, we know they’re looking for meaningful marketing messages they can trust, or they’ll simply scroll right past yours. And with trust in brands and media at an all-time low, your small business opportunities lie in building trust with your customers.
You’re at an advantage here.
As a small business, your customer isn’t all that familiar with your brand yet. There’s no baggage or prior marketing blunders to overcome. You have the opportunity to start afresh and create a positive brand impression through effective messaging.
It’s important to remember these three things when taking advantage of small business opportunities to build trust with your customers:
- Be consistent
With various messages across multiple platforms, cross-channel marketing gets tricky. It’s more important than ever to have a unified voice when communicating with your audience.
- Be personal
Customers want to feel like your brand is run by people who understand them, so be sure to use messaging that seems real, including offering things like two-way messaging. There’s nothing more real than being able to have a conversation with customers and answer their questions in real-time on a device that some customers check up to 85 times a day!
- Give them what they need
When you market a service or product to potential customers, make sure that it’s based on a need or interest they’ve expressed. Whether they’ve liked a product on your Facebook or Instagram page, added a product to their shopping cart, but then removed it — either way, the last thing your customers want to receive is marketing about something they don’t need.
Which leads us to our next point…
3. Invest in tracking and data analysis
Sit and think about this one for a bit: when last were you blown away by a brand’s marketing? And when last did you receive truly consistent and seamless messaging? From an email, to a confirmation SMS, or to a curated shopping cart suggested to you based on your previous purchases… when last did this stand out for you?
Consumers aren’t nitpicking. How your customer interacts with the various touch points your business offers should be a top priority for you. This shapes how they feel about your brand at that very moment and for as long as your business will be around.
Investing in the technology and expert manpower to track, monitor, and continuously analyse these consumer movements should be part of driving your overall sales success, as well as shaping your brand story or narrative.
Again, being a small business, you’re at an advantage to start sending data-driven marketing that is sure to succeed based on understanding what your customers do and what they want because you took the time to listen, understand, and respond to what they want. This is key to cutting through the noise and sending high-quality marketing messages to your customer.
4. Multiple channels? Use an omnichannel approach
MAGNA Advertising revealed in a comprehensive forecast that digital now makes up 51% of all ad spending in the US. Customers clearly spend a lot of time on their devices, presenting even more small business opportunities to improve your marketing success on the platforms that make the most sense for your business. Of course, more channels mean you need to pay extra attention to ensure they each work together to provide customers with a consistent experience.
Omnichannel communication is at the heart of this — creating a unified voice and consistent messaging to customers has never been more important.
Conduct research into whether Facebook or Instagram is more likely to broaden your reach, and consider if a more professional platform like LinkedIn or Hubspot is where you’ll more accurately reach your audience. It’s definitely worthwhile hiring a digital marketing specialist who can devise a comprehensive and relevant marketing plan to tie all of these platforms together cohesively.
5. Leverage the power of mobile-first tools
The findings by MAGNA Advertising also revealed that digital advertising on mobile devices accounts for roughly two-thirds of all digital ad spending, plus mobile now exceeds TV and generates twice the ad revenue seen from desktops.
This is good news for businesses whose customers are mobile-first, especially when we consider that the average person looks at their phone 80 times a day. Even though they spend a lot of time on their mobile phones, much of this attention is fragmented which presents another opportunity for your small business to cut through the noise.
Luckily, there are tools that are set up for short, concise messaging on mobile devices, like the tried and tested SMS. With an open rate of 98%, this is a sure fire way to market to your busy and distracted customers.
Clickatell offers an SMS platform that supports two-way messaging, and seamless integration into any platform, website, or app you use. Make sure to browse what the platform offers to find out how their service will optimize and activate your customer efforts.
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