2 min read

How to turn customers into promoters

Mark Parent October 15, 2015 4:14:14 PM EDT

It is commonly accepted that it costs businesses about seven times more to attract a new customer than it does to retain an existing one.

So what does this mean? Keeping your customers happy is good for business!"

Using the following techniques in your marketing and website design efforts can help any business to generate leads and nurture them into customers who then become strong promoters of your brand.

Personalized web pages

Start with personalized website pages. When a customer lands on your site, you could greet them by name in the header. Or, you could include a personalized message thanking them for their business. Today's new websites can add data-driven personalization that based on information in your database, or other particulars like IP address, device type, area of the county, or the visitor's buyer persona.

Easily-accessible content

Guess what? Customers like content, too. But since they’re already giving you business, why keep your content locked up behind landing pages where they can’t easily access it? Try having your marketing department personalize your landing page forms so customers can bypass entering information (which you already have) and download content directly.

Customer delight campaigns

Think about ways to implement customer delight campaigns. Just like with lead nurturing campaigns, you can share relevant content based on a customer’s interests and actions taken on your site. The only difference is you’re not trying to sell them anything -- your only goal is to make them happy.

7 simple steps

Your entire organization can adopt the ongoing strategy of delighting customers by following these simple steps:

1. Delight employees: Delight your employees, and they will delight your customers.

2. Educate employees: Develop team principles that aim to solve problems for the customer.

3. Empower employees: Make sure every employee knows customers at a buyer persona level so they really understand who they’re trying to delight.

4. Listen: Listen pre-sale and post-sale. It’s all about collecting data about the customer's experience so you can improve, innovate, and better educate your employees.

5. Ask questions: Go exploring with customers. Ask questions to learn more about their problems. (Open-ended questions are the best.) Be sure to collect all of the responses.

6. Help and educate: The businesses that are the best educators will be the most successful. It’s a pre-sale and post-sale activity. Employees should create content just for customers.

7. Follow up: Always make sure you follow up with customers to ensure you’ve solved their problems. Every interaction warrants some type of follow-up.

Bonus tip: Remember humanity

One major aspect brands forget to do in their communications, especially in the ‘Delighting Customers’ stage is humanity. A simple ‘Hi Bob/Betty’ isn’t enough to connect to today’s consumer. Speak to their pain points and sound like a friend, not a robot.

Creating great content is the key to attracting and engaging your customers. Get your free copy of our eGuide, Content Marketing for Marketers, to learn more about how you can develop the content that your audience will love to consume.