Create Customer Experiences

Deciphering modern marketing techniques

Content, inbound, and experiential marketing are all a buzz in the marketing industry, but from a local perspective they either haven’t reached, or it haven’t stuck with the folks at the ground floor. We are talking about the small businesses that employ nearly half the private sector and serve all of our communities. These businesses are barber shops, pizza restaurants, and construction companies that make up the foundation of local businesses. Small business owners have long understood the power of a great customer experience; the reason you go to the same place to get your haircut or grab your morning coffee. However, there seem to be many small businesses who don’t use the digital tools at their fingertips to implement new marketing methods and bring the customer experience online.

“Best way to sell something: Don’t sell anything. Earn the awareness, respect, and trust of those who might buy.” Rand Fishkin, Co-founder, Moz

Here’s how to do it:

The first step for a small business to create digital customers is to provide a compelling website experience. A correctly constructed website will result in someone stumbling on your site, either organically or from paid search ads — also known as a form of inbound marketing. These methods of bringing people to your site are often referred to as search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). Once they open the door to your digital home, you get the opportunity to tell your visitor what you do, why they should come purchase from you, and how they can do it, all in the 7 seconds of attention span that most humans have. If you do not accomplish this, you will notice high bounce rates from your analytics service (bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site after visiting one page). Every bounce could be a lost sale and goes to show that your website experience wasn’t good enough to evolve a visitor into a customer. (Ouch)

Once you have a website that delights, make sure you have content that starts the customer experience off right. Begin building a relationship with these folks with inspiring, informational, or entertaining content. It builds credibility with you and your business and shows that you genuinely care about the customer experience.

“Content marketing is the only marketing left.” — Seth Godin

This content thing can take many forms. Business-to-business companies often offer up a services guide or handy pdf to provide value to their visitors. If done well, these quick freebies help the customer understand their problem and possible solutions much better. Some of this content may look like a checklist of things before choosing a service provider, or a video inside the process to create a more informed buyer.

The business to consumer experience can begin similarly with shorter form content like checklists and pdf guides. However, bite-sized videos and audio have the potential for becoming hugely popular. Customer facing content can range from the process of making a pizza to a funny video about your razors.

These first two steps are necessary for bringing customers in contact with your product or service. Next is the monetary transaction that comes with a client experience. The transaction, above all, creates the loyal customer. Your product or service must be an even better part of the journey of the client than their visit to the website or content they received in preparation for the purchase. If you have demonstrated that you care about the customer in the earlier stages of the journey, this part should come easily for you. However, falling short on delivering the product or service will alienate the customer, no matter how good the previous experience.

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” — Jeff Bezos

Finally, and possibly the most overlooked part of experiential marketing is to providing consistent value to your customers. Whether they ordered a salad and a soda yesterday or got the family sized pizza two years ago, keeping engaged with people on social media is how you connect with them past the point of sale. Nowadays, you are a resource for your customer and must continually be there for them. While staying attentive to your past, present, and future customers sounds like a daunting task, just responding to a customer’s comment on Facebook does wonders for ensuring you build brand loyalty with them.

Next time you think about your marketing, keep in mind your buyer’s journey. Acknowledge your customers’ needs every step of the way and make sure you delight them with great content. The power of digital marketing allows us to reach more people than ever before, give our customers better experiences than ever before, and create bigger brands than ever before, so why wouldn’t you?

Additional attribution: Robert Rose, Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing