If you want a successful online business, you need to make sure your customers are in love with your business, not just closing the sale.
The goal of marketing is to make potential customers aware of a company’s products or services and to encourage them to buy them.
With a small business, getting the word out can be challenging due to less visibility and lack of resources (like budget or time). However, there are key strategies that can help you scale your small business’ marketing efforts:
1. Recognize the value of word of mouth marketing
A great word of mouth is a priceless asset for any small business. The most effective and reliable type of marketing for many businesses is word of mouth marketing.
What is word of mouth? It is the act of sharing information about a product or service with other people. This can be done in person, through social media, or online reviews.
How does it increase customer loyalty? When customers have a good experience with a product or service, they are more likely to tell their friends and family about it. This can lead to more customers for the business, and increased customer loyalty.
What does it have to do with making your customers fall in love with you? When customers share their positive experiences with others, it can make potential customers more likely to try the product or service. This can lead to more customers, and customers who are more loyal to the business.
To create an effective influencer marketing strategy, first identify your potential influencers and what qualities they share with your brand. Then, come up with a story that is both interesting and relevant to your audience, and make sure to share it across all your channels. By doing so, you relate back to the qualities that make your brand unique and authentic, thus increasing your chances of success.
Word of mouth marketing, or WOMM, is defined by the WOMMA as any business action that earns a customer recommendation. WOMM is about harnessing the power of people to build brand awareness and create loyal customers.
When you use WOMM to increase the value of your sales and analyze your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, you will have a winning combination that your competition will likely not be able to beat.
How do you make customers fall in love with your brand? By making them happy and satisfied. Customers who are happy with your brand are much more likely to tell their family and friends about it, and they’ll be more loyal to your brand.
Creating a loyalty program that turns customers into brand ambassadors is a great way to get more customers. These ambassadors are devoted to your brand and will happily spread the word to others, increasing your customer base.
2. Start before they’re even customers
In order to make your customers fall in love with you, you need to be careful and plan ahead.
These three steps will help you develop a strong relationship with your customers before you even meet them.
Know who your ideal customers are
The best way to give your customers and prospects what they want is to first find out what that is.
It is essential to begin with a set of profiles that accurately depict your ideal customers and clients.
Getting to know the basic demographics, fears, desires and needs of each segment of your market is essential to building a loyal customer base. Ideal customer profiles can help you with this.
One way to improve your targeting is to create detailed profiles of your ideal customers. This will help you identify which potential customers are a better fit for your brand.
Completing profiles for your clients will also help you to weed out those who will be more likely to cause problems. This will minimize the number of complaints you have to take care of in the end, and make your customers happier overall.
If you want to create and attract a loyal audience, you should start by defining your ideal customers.
It is important to understand what your customers want and need in order to give it to them in the simplest way possible. The more information you have about your customers, the more helpful it will be.
Qualify your leads
After you create profiles of your ideal customers, you’ll want to put a system in place to determine whether or not they are leads that you want to pursue.
What I mean by that is a lead that is really serious about their need for what you do or provide and is ready to buy, not necessarily right this second, but soon.
A qualified lead is someone who meets your company’s criteria and has both the resources and the desire to work with you or one of your competitors.
The process of qualifying leads helps you to identify which leads will still be there as loyal customers a year from now. Consider your customer engagement as a “long-term investment.”
If you are a business that sells to other businesses, it is important to make the health of your target customers a priority. Companies that are growing are more likely to continue growing with you and give you their repeat business.
You want people who are ready and willing to solve the problem you address with your product and service.
Design your customer’s experience
You want your qualified leads to have a great experience so they become loyal customers. The only way to make sure this happens is to plan your customer’s journey ahead of time.
It is often helpful for marketers to create a visual diagram of their process in a graphic format.
A customer journey map can help you not only with website design and customer service but also with content marketing and SEO.
This exercise is very beneficial if you want to expand your company and make your customers happy.
This means figuring out which customers are more likely to cause issues and which will be the most valuable to your business.
3. Manage customer expectations
If the customer didn’t get what he or she wanted, it’s either because you didn’t think of what they wanted or because something outside of your control got in the way.
You can solve this problem by managing expectations.
First step
The best way to find out what the customer expects is to ask them directly. Talk to them, and ask questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. This will give you the best understanding of customer perception.
Open-ended questions are those that require something more than just a simple “yes” or “no” in response. Some examples of questions you could use for customer feedback in managing expectations are:
- Where does what I do/sell fit into your overall goals?
- What kinds of results do you expect?
- What else has to happen in your life or business in order to meet your goals?
- What’s your ideal timeframe?
Make sure to listen to what your customers are saying as this feedback will help you improve their experience.
Second step
It is important to be honest and thorough with new customers or clients regarding all terms before purchase. This will help manage their expectations.
You should be transparent with your customers and give them all the information they need. Keep in mind that what is important to them might not be as important to you. Therefore, you should try to see things from their perspective to make sure they are satisfied.
Another crucial technique is to under-promise and over-deliver.
It’s easy to feel like you have to do everything possible to make the sale happen, especially when you’re new to small business ownership or consulting. However, this can often lead to burnout, so it’s important to find a healthy balance.
Third step
Communicate well and often with the client or customer.
Often, a situation becomes negative because the customers do not have the necessary information to make a decision.
Keep in mind that they cannot see what is going on behind the scenes. They are not aware of the amount of time and effort you put into your work. They are not familiar with the process of creating and providing a product or service.
They grow more anxious with each passing day that they don’t hear from you.
Even if things are going well from your perspective, the customer may be growing more anxious by the day. If you deliver as promised, they may not be thrilled, and could even be a little angry.
You will have to put in a lot more effort to keep their business and convince them to come back multiple times. The task of helping them develop brand loyalty and love for your brand will be much harder.
It is important to stay in touch with your customers and to communicate with them in the manner that they expect and have been promised. This is especially important when they have complaints or questions about service.
4. Know your audience
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that everyone is your potential buyer.
Although bigger companies can target a broader audience, they will only be successful if they can find a way to specialize in a smaller group.
Niche markets are the most promising for small businesses. To develop a niche and appeal to buyers within the niche, you need to understand what their specific pain points are, what problems they face, what would trigger them to make a purchase, and what their priorities are.
What convincing factors will make them buy your product? What will the successful purchase look like? Having this knowledge will assist you in creating messages that are relatable and persuasive for your solution.
First, think about the types of customers you already have and who you would like to work with. then, create a buyer persona to help you understand your ideal client better.
5. Emphasize your value proposition
If there is no difference between you and your competition, there is no reason why a potential customer would want to work with you instead of them.
Your value proposition is what will make you stand out from the competition and convince potential customers that you’re the best choice.
How can you convey that you’re the best at what you do? Making a strong argument is the key.
6. Stay focused on singular goals and objectives
There are many different areas you can explore if you are interested in marketing.
It can be tempting to try to do everything at once and create a complicated machine, in the hope that you have everything covered. It can be easy to take on too much.
What is the biggest obstacle in your marketing that is preventing your growth?
Choose one key area to focus on and set a performance goal related to it. Then, use your resources to carry out activities and strategies that will help you reach that goal.
Once you have made significant progress toward your goal, you can either continue working hard to achieve it or shift your focus to another goal.
7. Capitalize on short-term plays
When you are starting out, it is not important to see a return on investment immediately. However, as you grow, it becomes increasingly vital to see ROI sooner.
This will help you get the money and resources you need to invest in big projects, long-term goals, and more stable growth patterns.
If you’re looking for immediate results from your primary initiatives, tactics that take time to build, like SEO, aren’t the way to go. You can start there if you have the resources available, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
If people are searching specifically for your product on Google, you may find that paid ads will give you a short-term return on investment.
8. Double-down on what works
After you have started your projects and tried out some ideas, check the data to see the results.
This can help you learn about what is effective. As you expand your business, it is a good idea to focus more on ways to make money that have already been proven to work.
9. Understand the power of existing customers
It is five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. Therefore, you should not stop marketing once a purchase is made.
Your opportunities for repeat purchasing, upselling, and cross-selling come from your existing customers. Because they have already made a purchase, they already know, like, and trust you.
If you give customers a good experience, they will want to do business with you again in the future.
Even if the customer is only making a one-time purchase and there is no opportunity for an upsell, you should still aim to delight them. Good word of mouth is a powerful and free way to promote your business.
10. Use free promotional tools
When it comes to free promotional tools, it’s important to keep in mind that since you’ve committed to a limited goal and scope, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on them.
Use promotional tools that are free whenever possible, and only consider paid options if you are confident they will bring significant improvements to your existing operations or performance.
11. Create a website to own your online presence
A professional-looking website is an important asset for small businesses.
This is where you introduce yourself, your product, your location, and how a customer can contact you.
Your website is your own little space on the internet that you control. It will always be there for you, unlike other platforms which may come and go. Your website can generate traffic on its own, in addition to being a place to direct traffic from your advertising and other marketing initiatives.
Your website has the potential to be a 24-7 salesperson if you know how to convert traffic into leads.
Start marketing your business today
If you’re a small business owner trying to figure out how effective your marketing efforts are, digital marketing is a good way to go. You can track how many leads or sales you’re getting as a result of your online activity, and see how your brand is doing in terms of awareness and reputation.
Digital marketing is not only useful for promoting your products or services, but also for optimizing your online assets, which is critical to your business’ overall success.
If you want to build an online presence for your business, it may take some time, but every step you take will make a big difference.