Businesses need loyal customers to thrive, but loyal customers don't just appear out of nowhere; they are earned through trust and an excellent customer experience. Aside from the quality of your products and services, a crucial part of the customer experience is the customer journey. From the first contact with a potential customer to conversion, a business must strive to provide the best customer experience.
The customer journey is long, and there are many points along the way where a business' efforts are most crucial. One of those moments is at the very beginning when the customer is made aware of your brand and the products you offer. Raising awareness regarding your brand is done by marketing, or digital marketing, as it is mostly done today. As a business owner, you're most likely aware that digital marketing is necessary to remain competitive in today's market. Read along if you're looking for digital marketing strategies that aim to improve customer experience.
Prioritize personalization
Bombarding your target audience with advertisements that are disconnected from their needs and preferences can only be bad for the customer experience. A study by Accenture has found that 91% of customers prefer brands that provide offers and recommendations relevant to them. This is why personalization is of utmost importance in digital marketing. To deliver your customers a personalized experience, you need to know what they want, need, and interest them. These things aren't hard to figure out considering the capabilities of modern technology, but this information is useless if not used correctly. Personalization can significantly enhance customer experience, strengthen loyalty, improve retention, and increase profit when done right. Here are some strategies you can use to achieve personalization.
It all starts with data
You can't personalize if you don't know your customers. If you don't have data, you can't know your customers, so start collecting. Data is so important in today's digitalized world that it's become its industry. Fortunately, collecting data has become quick and easy, given that almost everything you need to know about a customer can be taken from their online activity. Interviews, surveys, transactional tracking, forms, and social media monitoring are the most common ways of gathering data today.
Use the data wisely
You have the data. You have analyzed it and now understand your customers' needs, preferences, and interests. Don't make the mistake of misusing that data and ending up looking like a creep who sniffs around your customers' personal life. The key is relevancy, which is what personalization centres on. Only use relevant data between your business and your customers, and use it with great timing. Use too little data, and you'll struggle to personalize; use too much, and your customers will feel like you're stalking them.
Create smart content
Customers receive your offers and recommendations in content such as articles, emails, landing pages, or your website. Smart content is the parts of those content that adapt to a customer's history and interests. This means smart content transforms your marketing content into tailor-made pieces that feel more personal. You can use marketing and sales platforms such as HubSpot to create innovative content quickly.
Use AI-powered chatbots
Chatbots have been a staple of customer service for a long time now, and while today's conversational AI is overshadowing them, they're still capable tools, primarily when powered by AI Chatbots aren't a substitute for human customer representatives, but they can ask a series of questions to determine the users' needs and preferences, allowing them to provide a highly personalized experience.
Personalize emails
One of the primary reasons customers opt-out of emails is the absolute deluge of irrelevant news, offers, and recommendations they receive. To make your emails more fruitful and help keep your customers subscribed, it's vital that you only send personalized emails. Some sure-fire ways to do this are calling customers by their name and sending behavior triggers. Addressing recipients by name at just the right frequency is a nice touch that doesn't require much work. Meanwhile, behavior triggers ensure you're keeping track of where a customer is in their journey, helping you push emails relevant to what they're doing.
Get the most out of customer feedback
Ignoring customer feedback is a guaranteed way to destroy one's business. When you get customer feedback, always remember that your customers expect something to come out of it. As mentioned, personalization starts with data, and feedback is data. Use feedback to solve customer pain points and improve customer experience. Among the best ways to show that customers' feedback matters to the business is by promoting products and services they expressed
Use exit-intent pop-ups
The first time a user visits your website, they usually don't intend to make a purchase. They're only visiting canvas or learning more about your products and services most of the time. Statistically, only 1% of the first-time visitors to your website will make a purchase, but you can increase this figure. Exit-intent pop-ups are pop-ups that appear on the user's screen at the moment they attempt to leave the site. These pop-ups may ask users to subscribe to your mailing list, encourage them to try a demo, give a free guide, or present a customized offer. Depending on your business, there are plenty of exit intent pop-ups you can use.
Conclusion
Enhancing customer experience through digital marketing strategies mostly depends on personalization. Personalization is powerful, but it requires plenty of data and proper use of that data to take effect. So, aside from collecting more data, it's also worthwhile to diversify your data type. Using a third-party service for analyzing your brand is an excellent way of doing so.
