mThe Internet is full of blogs from companies and individuals.
So, how can you ensure your blog stands out and builds a loyal audience?
An infographic (below) from Media Update explores some keys to blogging success.
Specifically, it looks at four essential pillars of a great blog: consistency, creativity, information, and uniqueness.
https://cutt.ly/Y2isarm
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven many businesses to permanently embrace a hybrid model, with workers splitting their time between home and the office.
While this transition has had many benefits for employees, it's also led to fresh stresses as they seek to establish boundaries between work and home, find effective ways to collaborate, and ensure they aren't missing out on key pieces of information.
An infographic (below) from Brother explores seven ways to make the transition to hybrid work less stressful for your team.
It also looks at some of the major pros and cons of hybrid work.
https://cutt.ly/w2iaYTs
All communications should strengthen customer relationships not only during the first stages of the marketing funnel but also post-purchase. Ask how each communication tool enables you to improve customer retention is as important as customer acquisition.
Building relationships and increasing loyalty are required to increase profitability.
This Customer Relationships Building Block represents the fourth building block in the Business Model Canvas.
Customer relations are important because:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy that is designed to improve how you manage to focus on the right customers to generate profits:
Customers change a lot and often very quickly. Sometimes that can be down to new competitors in the market, a change in economic conditions, new technologies… Assuming your customers are the same year after year can be disastrous.
Developing ongoing relationships with customers not only helps you understand them but also how they change. Great businesses know this and use this to innovate.
Keeping track of your customer’s allows you to:
Customer relationship management concerns the way you engage with customers to deliver the customer experience. This involves creating long-term solutions that are geared toward customer success. Customer relations aims to create a mutually beneficial relationship with the customer that extends beyond the initial purchase.
Your vision, strategies and approach impact every part of your business. Customer relationships are not just about the customer service department. Sales teams, marketing teams, customer service teams, customer support, customer success, and product development all play important roles in building successful customer relationships.
Customer relations also extend to marketing and sales teams as well since these departments have a significant influence over the company’s interactions with the customer.
Customer Relationships are the type of relationship that you want to provide to a customer segment. It also represents the section where you consider the strategies for customer acquisition and retention.
The size of a brand’s customer base is closely linked to market share1.
Not surprising really, however, it shows the importance of growing a database of customers and lowering churn within your business.
If you don’t have a good value proposition then you won’t get email sign-ups or conversions on landing pages. For more information on how to develop a powerful marketing process download the free Growth Marketing Blueprint. The Canvas is designed to help you map your customer acquisition strategy and test it.
Customer Relationship Management is at the cornerstone of marketing and for good reason. The research shows that customer relationships are fragile and impact the bottom line either positively or negatively depending on how well they are managed.
Companies that do a better job of managing customer relationships see higher customer retention rates.
Despite the importance of customer relationships, many companies still struggle to get it right. A Microsoft survey discovered that the biggest complaint with a company is not being able to get help from an agent when needed to.
You need to test your business model in the market and understand if customers will buy, for how much and if they will also remain loyal.
Companies like Spotify, Uber, Amazon and many others, focus on ‘usage’ measures, not just customer acquisition measures. If you win customers but they don’t stick around to use your service then you know you have a problem. In effect, you have a big hole in the bucket that needs fixing.
The definition of customer acquisition varies. As an example, some definitions consider it to be the absolute moment when a person buys your product. However, others consider this part of a larger process, and in this case, customer acquisition is acquiring customers email. The subsequent stages being validating the customer.
One of the best tactics for acquiring new customers is utilizing the power of content marketing. Matching content to the different stages of your marketing is a proven method for winning customers.
Creating practical and useful content generates shares and links that help you start to naturally rank in search engines.
Smart businesses and entrepreneurs harness the traffic they receive from inbound marketing to build an email list. An email list is your customer database and forms the backbone of your CRM system.
Social media gets hyped a lot but when it is combined with a broader strategy, brand narrative and marketing campaign it can be an extremely powerful way to generate leads.
Building an online business without utilizing analytics is like driving with your eyes closed.
Customer Retention refers to the long-term relationship a company establishes with its customers. The more repeat customers, a company has, the more it is assured of champions who will market its products and help it acquire additional customers.
Customer loyalty is a behaviour while customer satisfaction is an attitude.
Customers are more likely to ignore you if your company doesn’t stand for anything. Research from the Corporate Executive Board that included 7,000 consumers from across the U.S. found that of those consumers who said they had a strong relationship with a brand, 64 per cent cited shared values as the primary reason.
While negative social proof (“Nearly 90 percent of websites don’t use heat mapping software!”) has been proven to dissuade customers rather than encourage them, numerous studies on customer acquisition have shown that positive social proof (like testimonials) are commonly the most effective strategy for getting people to listen and trust your brand.
All businesses, no matter the industry, are going to have to sell to the three types of buyers that are out there. According to research from Wharton Business School, nearly a quarter of these buyers will be conservative spenders or “tightwad” customers.
According to serial entrepreneur David Skok, sales are often more effective when you have an existing relationship with a customer, and when you’ve already provided value. This matches up with research from TARP Worldwide, which shows customers do enjoy receiving helpful recommendations on new information and products that will help them achieve better results.
The #1 thing that creates loyalty in anybody (that includes your customers) is the social construct of Reciprocity. Reciprocity is the social construct that makes the world go ’round and keeps customers coming back. The premise is simple: when “delighting” customers makes sense, it’s best served up as a surprise.
Handing out discounts and freebies can be costly. Instead, you should embrace the art of the frugal wow — creating reciprocity through small, thoughtful gestures. In fact, psychologist Norbert Schwarz found that as little as 10 cents can create reciprocity between two individuals (it really is the thought that counts).
This type of customer relationship is characterized by human interaction and is typically used by industries such as hospitality and events. Customers have the opportunity to interact with sales representatives, customer services representatives, concierges and VIP assistants.
This type of relationship takes personal assistance to the next level by assigning dedicated customer representatives to the customer. This kind of relationship is often used within B2B environment that involve complex services and products as well as high-value contracts. The representative develops a long-term relationship with a customer to help tailor services to a customers need and secure the business over the long-term.
Self-service has become more popular as new digital technologies are enabling a greater degree of personalization. Methods used include forums, AI Chatbots, knowledge bases and FAQ’s.
Automated services help customers to perform services themselves. These kinds of services usually offer more customized experiences. As an example, Amazon uses a customer’s online and buying behaviour to provide suggestions to the customer to enhance his/ her shopping experience.
In today’s social media-driven environment, communities are a wonderful way for companies to understand their consumers, get insights into their habits, perspectives and create a platform in which customers can get together and share knowledge and experiences.
Companies are increasingly changing the nature of the customer relationship by involving them in the design and even the creation of the end product. Proctor and Gamble and many other companies have used customers to help them innovate and produce new product and services. Open innovation, which relates to concepts of co-creation and crowdsourcing, makes use of a technology-enabled platform to innovate with consumers, universities, startups and important network partners.
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New products breathe life into a product portfolio. “New” is one of the most powerful words in the marketing vocabulary and every company needs to see a significant proportion of its product lineup graced with this adjective. This is something we all know. What is more difficult to determine is where ideas for new products come from.
New ideas can arise randomly or they can be forced in a more systematic way.
Random ideas may appear as such, but it is more likely that they are drawn magnetically to the crucible of design. A company’s existing products will inevitably draw comments and conceptions from within the company and from customers. The skill is being able to harness these seemingly random suggestions and vet them to see if they can be turned into a viable opportunity.
However, we haven’t time to hang around waiting for random ideas which may not arise when we need them. It is worthwhile therefore understanding how to force the generation of new product ideas. Here are 8 possibilities:
Look to the competition. Visit exhibitions, look on the Internet, walk around distributors premises. Despite what people say, there can be money to be made out of being second into the market. Think BookStacks which was founded in 1992 and paved the way for Amazon who didn’t start in business until a couple of years later and made a better fist of it.
Look at market sectors. Look at the indirect competition – companies making products that perform a similar function to yours but which are made in a different way. A manufacturer of cardboard boxes wanted to extend its range and looked at companies using plastics in packaging where it found targets which were interested in a more sustainable packaging product.
Look at patent applications. Where patents are registered and what they are for can be highly illuminating. In addition, there could be mileage in looking at patent applications which have remained dormant but which could present good licensing opportunities today.
Look inside your own company. Ask the sales teams, look back through old reports, check the archives. There could be something that was not appropriate for launch a few years ago which could make it to the market today.
Look to customers. Customers use your products and sometimes they modify them to make them more user-friendly without mentioning what they have done to you. Walk round your customers’ factories and offices and see how your products (and your competitors’ products) are being used. Ask your customers what they would wish for if they had a magic wand.
Look at the pressures influencing a market. The traditional forces that shape a market are political, economic, social and technological. Which of these are having most effect on your market? A company selling mail-order products could see that its customer base was ageing rapidly. Instead of trying to diversify and find younger customers, it extended its products for older people and tapped into a very wealthy and profitable seam.
Look to the academics. Universities and academics have time on their hands to think about new products. Sometimes their lack of commercialization means that they ignore opportunities which are sat on their benches.
Look to foreign sources. It used to be said that products launched in America would find their way into other countries five years later. America isn’t the only cradle of new product development today. Asia could be a fertile source of new ideas.