You have an amazing company run by your talented team of professionals…
And your team has made it possible for you to generate a long list of leads…
But how do you make sure your company can turn these leads into actual customers? Retain them long term? And in doing so creating a positive ‘raving fan’ community?
Many companies these days make the mistake of marketing to generate leads and attract attention, however, they’re missing the biggest point. Lead generation doesn’t stop with attention and attraction, in fact, it’s only the beginning of it. Some marketers assume that having a long list of prospects is enough to keep the company afloat, but what they don’t know is that without proper planning or solid marketing efforts, this list won’t be lengthy for too long. It will simply be a list of people who once took an interest in your company’s brand.
And no company that’s eager for success will allow that to happen. Given that you’re reading this, we can bet that you are, too! So today, we’ll show you the many strategies you can try this year or even this month to re-purpose that list of leads you have and turn it into a marketing tool that converts prospects to paying customers and eventually, brand advocates that literally want to share your brand story.
Know your customers’ expectations
To understand your customers’ expectations is to get to know the source of their frustrations.
To work around this, you have to get to know your customers better. And when we say better, we’re not suggesting for you to know what their gender is, their age range, and their mother’s maiden name. You must be able to understand what they’re truly looking for in a product or service like yours, what their budgets are, and what their pain points are likely to be. We call these – important decision making criteria ‘real customer truths,’ that we as a brand need to solve for them.
When you incorporate those aspects into your marketing plan, you begin to mold a new relationship with your customer. You’re crossing the line that most companies don’t cross; you’re becoming their friend rather than their provider. And once your customers recognise this, they trust you better, they naturally become fans of your brand. From there word of mouth begins with family and friends and then all of a sudden, BOOM you have yourself a real and organic referral marketing loop. This phenomenon then creates a ripple effect of referrals that no money can buy.
Keep your customers happy and improve your Customer Retention. Regardless of your industry or plan of action, your customer retention rate is a good indicator of how happy your customers are and therefore how likely they are to stay with you.
Implement automation in customer communication
Relying on automation systems to handle some of the tasks that you or your marketing team normally do is one of the best ways to keep your customers happy and updated with everything they need. Setting up an email nurture and automation campaign properly in the first instance definitely does take some time at the outset, but once completed this should free up you and your marketing team from much of the heavy lifting for constant up-sell, cross-sell and referral sequence that can grow your bottom line. The main reason why many companies have outsourced their communication and monitoring tasks to automation software is that everything can be done in a few clicks and because it allows for 24x7x365 open communication with your customers, cutting waiting times to a significant amount and leaving no questions unanswered.
The beauty of this system is that as part of the email sequence you create you can definitely slip in your referral activation campaign whilst kicking back and managing the other parts of your business. Plus when you think about it, when you have a tried and proven email sequence that just works whilst offering constant value to your customers this creates customer retention by default because of the digital best practice user experience you are providing.
Craft your own communication calendar
Making communication a priority is one of the most crucial aspects of every business that can be easily overlooked. But why is keeping in touch so important when the customer can simply call a hotline or leave a message or an email? So while those traditional methods of communication are effective in their own ways, posting content to regularly remind your customers of your products and services are just as important. Because when you post content regularly and promote events that can further strengthen that communication, you allow your company to tap into the information that is not readily available to you and you’re able to market to a wider set of audiences with each topic you introduce. And it’s important not to post the same types of content over and over again because redundancy only gives your audience a reason to develop some kind of doubt, which every trustworthy company would like to avoid.
The tip when creating your content calendar should be evenly split between talking about the following buckets of stories 1) Entertain & Inspire, 2) Educate and add value, 3) Convince Me – Now you can talk about your business, testimonials, new products & services etc.
Constantly push for adding useful elements to your funnel
Every marketing team needs a funnel included in their marketing strategy. This funnel represents the first steps a company must make to accomplish the goal of generating leads and turning them into valuable returning customers. While an initial funnel can include steps such as awareness, interest, evaluation, and action, other steps such as referrals, brand loyalty, and customer retention (from prospect to customer). With the use of this specific funnel, every process involved in marketing compliments the next one with bigger goals and better results.
Utilise the “element of surprise” – Move Hearts & Minds and Watch Your Business Soar
The neatest trick in the book of the greatest marketers is knowing how to move their customers’ emotions. While emotions seem to be the last thing in anyone’s mind when crafting an effective marketing plan, they’re crucial in the building blocks of every successful campaign. While every marketer has a standard idea of how to carry out a simple promotion, the experienced marketer can disguise a marketing pitch behind a story, a song, and even an exciting surprise. The element of surprise has been a very good motivator and source of positive reactions. Whether it’s a surprise premium gift, an unexpected prize, bonus content, or anything that incites surprise related or completely unrelated to the promotion. Once other customers have heard of this surprise, brand attention will increase and more prospects will follow. And once these surprises become something your customers are thrilled about, they will keep coming back, creating an instant customer retention flow that the company can immensely profit from.
Implementing these strategies into your marketing efforts can easily provide drastic changes with the way you retain your customers over time. When you show them your willingness to engage, communicate, do business with them, and serve them with consistently good products and services, your brand will never have to worry about lacking prospects and customers at every given time. Improve your chances of a larger number of prospects and referrals when you follow the best referral marketing strategies on our blog today!