The customer experience has become ever-more important to the success and growth of modern business, as the ways and means that customers interact with brands change. It’s vital to take advantage of such powerful information and modern technology as your customers do, as they determine what to buy, who from, and when.
The success of your business can depend on the experience your customers have with you, and by focusing on our five steps you will be able to drive new customer acquisition whilst getting your customers to work for you.
1: Generate Awareness
The first step of every customer journey is that they are made aware of something.
Every customer journey begins when they are made aware of something. This might be of a product, service, location or a problem that they have.
The biggest thing to remember about adverts & awareness is that it is not purely their job to get sales. Their job is to set an expectation which interests your users and tempts them to your website or to pick up the phone.
Your adverts have an important role to play, but they are not the whole story. Their job is to generate awareness and tempt people to take that first step.
2: Research & Find-ability
The second step is researching. Does “it” live up to expectations, and what options are available.
The second step that almost everyone takes after they discover something new is they do some research about it. If they hear about a new product then they will look it up, what other businesses offer it and find out if it lives up to its expectation.
The other huge point to note is that people will research other options. This can include other businesses nearby and other products that do the same sort of thing or have the same type of result.
It is absolutely essential that your establishment is clearly visible when any of these research searches are made. You need to be one of the top options for your business name, for the location and for the nature of what you do. If you’re not, then you won’t be considered, and if you’re not considered then you won’t be contacted.
3: Reputation
The third step is having your reputation & credibility checked, weighed & measured.
The reputation of any business is critical to growth and success. We’ve all avoided that 3* hotel with low-rated reviews, that restaurant that has a string of negative reviews or that business that has slow delivery or products that break easily.
This is a snapshot view that new customers get of your establishment – and 87% of consumers now check for reviews or credibility before making a purchasing decision.
Now, it’s not just about getting positive reviews and actively growing your reputation (although that is hugely important). It’s also about how your reputation measures up compared to your competitors because as we covered in the last section, you are being weighed and measured vs them.
You need to pay attention to your digital reputation, respond to negative reviews, collect positive reviews and look to develop. Additionally, your feedback enables you to learn about your business from the customer’s side. Use this feedback to improve.
4: Conversion
Step four is your digital business’s ability to turn visitors into leads/sales.
Improving points of conversion on your website, in your marketing and with your business genuinely has the ability to exponentially increase your leads, bookings & sales.
The job of conversion isn’t simply a “book now” or “contact us” button. A great businessperson appreciates that a “conversion” should be viewed as getting the user to complete a goal – the next goal in their journey. By systematically helping your users to complete goal after goal, you prompt them to complete the big one, your business/commercial objective (AKA, booking with you).
In our experience, businesses that focus on the journey of their customers as a whole grow faster, get more leads & sales with a lower no-show rate on meetings and cart abandonment during checkouts.
5:Advocacy
The final step is generating free awareness through ongoing conversation with past customers.
Customers don’t vanish after they’ve bought from you. They still exist, and they still have a lot of potential value. Advocacy is about reminding them that you exist, showing them new products, genuinely useful information or upcoming events and encouraging them to engage with your business again.
It is all too common that a business will stop communicating with their past customers, and more often than not, those past customers will forget about you. They have busy lives and lots to do – they’re not sitting there thinking about your place all day.
There are a multitude of techniques to re-engage and remind customers from email marketing, social media, remarketing/retargeting campaigns and more. There are lots of affordable & powerful options to re-engage past visitors/customers, and a huge amount of value in doing so.
Conclusion
As a marketing and design agency working with some of the most innovative brands in their respective industries, we relish the chance to gain an understanding of all the parts that make up great businesses and it’s success, and apply our five points of focus to their key business challenges. We have vast experience devising and executing full-scale and small-scale digital marketing campaigns that work hand-in-hand with your website and other marketing channels to maximise the success of your entire growth strategy.
Read more about our digital marketing services or Contact us to discuss your design and marketing challenges with one of our experts.
