No matter how businesses and their customers change over time, there is one truth that remains constant. The relationship you build with your customers is the foundation on which your business succeeds or fails.
Admittedly, customer satisfaction may have been easier to achieve in times past when your interactions with customers were face-to-face and immediate. Generally speaking, humans depend largely on visual cues like those provided in body language to determine what someone else is thinking and feeling.
Digital business, however, does not afford you the luxury of deciphering customer satisfaction via body language. Therefore, effective digital marketing involves understanding the customer experience in more inventive ways.
What are your customers revealing about their level of satisfaction?
Why Understanding Customer Experience is Important
Why is understanding the customer experience important? Simply put, if you do not understand it, you cannot improve upon it. Sir Isaiah Berlin, the renowned philosopher and observer of the human condition, is quoted as saying: "To understand is to perceive patterns."
This perception of patterns is the key to effective digital marketing. Because you cannot rely on visual cues to inform you about the way your customer is experiencing his or her interaction with your brand, you must rely on the data you collect to point you in the right direction.
Fortunately, with digital marketing, practically everything is measurable! Therefore, you have access to a great reservoir of information about your customers to use to your advantage. That being said, how can you steer the customer experience in the right direction? What can you do to stay firmly in the driver's seat?
Here are some digital marketing tips to increase customer engagement and satisfaction:
1) Make your website memorable.
Your website is often the first contact point for your customer. Make a good first impression by having a responsive web design that provides a great customer experience from any device your customer chooses to use.
Ensure that your web pages load quickly to help keep customers engaged. No one likes to be kept waiting. Give attention to the look and feel of your site. If it is not easy to navigate or if it is not attractive, customers will not hang around long enough to see the gems it can offer.
Small Business Trends' "How to Get More Customer Engagement on Your Website" offers these additional suggestions for bumping customer engagement up a notch:
- Add a chat box: Customers appreciate a fast response. Chat enables real-time communication and lets your customers know you are there for them.
- Use internal links: If a customer is interested in one page of your site, do not hesitate to direct him or her to another. Make sure that the content to which you link is relevant and that it adds real value for your customer. Such care is appreciated.
- Provide a FAQ page: This is another fine way to give customers answers to their questions right away, and it represents your commitment to their satisfaction.
2) Solicit customer feedback.
Use surveys, enable comments, and ask for reviews of your products and services. The more input you receive, the better able you will be to address customer pain points, anticipate customer needs, and align future marketing initiatives and product offerings with the things which customers rate as important. With technology today, it has actually become easier than ever to solicit feedback regardless of where the individual is within the sales cycle.
When your customers see that you are heeding the lessons learned from their feedback, their relationship with your company becomes a partnership of sorts. When you invest in customer satisfaction, your customers will invest in your company.
What about negative feedback your customers provide? It, too, is helpful. Hubspot's "The Benefits of Customer Feedback, According to Experts" notes:
"Their (dissatisfied customers) feedback about their situation also helps you learn their pain points and identify possible areas for improvement in your operations.
Opening a dialogue with these customers and using their feedback to make changes helps you increase customer loyalty, as 83% of customers agree that they feel more loyal to brands that respond to and resolve their complaints."
3) Harness the power of social media.
Social media marketing allows you to put your message directly in the hands of your target audience. Using social media keeps your brand front and center in their minds.
However, while it is easy to think of social media as just another platform with which to get your marketing message across, social media provides much more than that for the savvy digital marketer. In effect, social media allows you to eavesdrop on your customers, all the while gathering information that can illuminate a path forward for your products and services.
The immediacy of social media allows you to keep a finger on the pulse of your customers and discern trends and patterns early on. This gives you a distinct competitive advantage and helps you optimize your campaigns to be more appealing and improve the customer experience.
Revving Up Your Digital Marketing Engine
The success of your business is built upon the satisfaction of your customers. Improve the customer experience by making adjustments to your website, soliciting and acting upon customer feedback, and using social media to both remind customers of your brand and gain insight into the minds of your target audience.
Drive the customer experience by using excellent digital marketing techniques.
Of course, there are many more digital marketing tools that you can use to improve the customer experience. Contact us for more helpful digital marketing tips. We will partner with you to rev up your digital marketing campaigns and keep your customers engaged and satisfied.
Written By: David Carpenter
