In today’s competitive, digitally-oriented business world, it’s not enough any longer to simply sell products or services – we must sell experiences.
Ooooo, we hear you say. Experiences.
We know – it’s a little vague, to be fair. And when all we’ve got is a SaaS tool or a FinTech solution to peddle, it doesn’t exactly scream “Disney Land” or even “Chessington World of Adventures”.
But, as perhaps “boring” as our business models may be on the surface, this doesn't mean that we can't infuse excitement and engagement at the most crucial level – with the customer. By prioritizing exceptional customer service, we ensure that each interaction becomes a memorable and positive experience. Coupled with a strategic embrace of the inbound methodology, we not only address customer needs proactively but also attract and retain clients through personalized and value-driven interactions.
In this post, we will look at 4 ways you can improve customer loyalty and customer acquisition with inbound marketing today!
Check out the following articles to learn more about inbound marketing:
- Inbound v outbound marketing: Top differences in 2023
- 3 Top Examples of Emotional Inbound Marketing in 2022
- 3 Ways to Add Campaign marketing it Into Your Strategy
Is Customer Experience the Most Important Level?
Of course, it is.
Why?
Because all potential customers have a choice whether they do business with you or not. Regardless of how unique you may perceive your product or service to be, you will always have competitors. Customer acquisition is essential but so is customer retention. Your inbound marketing strategy must consider both.
And indeed, if your customers are torn between your business and a rival across the road, then, aside from prices, the customer experience that you offer may well prove to be your crucial differentiator. Traditional marketing offers a variety of solutions that might have been effective when there was no other option. With the recent takeover of digital marketing, setting up systems like search engine optimization and other content marketing strategies, delivering exceptional customer experience is a must.
Check out these stats from clarabridge.com, from where we have also taken the screenshots of a brilliant info-graphic we highly recommend you check out.
- 86% of buyers will pay more for a better experience
- A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10%
- 89% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after experiencing poor customer service
- 89% of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience by 2016
Great customer experiences make for happy customers. It’s as simple as that. And happy customers are far more likely to stay with your brand, spend more, and will result in great cost savings in terms of marketing – for it costs five times as much, according to ivespcro.com, to attract a new customer than retain an existing one.
4 Ways Inbound Marketing Improves the Customer Experience
So, let’s consider some tactics that can be used to improve the customer experience.
Inbound marketing strategies are our weapon of choice (we are an inbound marketing company after all). Finding that perfect balance between optimising for search engines and creating valuable content that your target audience will appreciate will result in an exceptional customer experience.
Inbound marketing, distinguished from outbound strategies, is commonly perceived as a pivotal driver for lead generation within a business. While this aspect underscores the potency of successful inbound marketing, its influence goes beyond mere lead generation. It's about orchestrating inbound marketing work effectively, turning it into a comprehensive strategy. This strategy not only excels in generating leads but also masterfully nurtures and converts them into loyal customers. This holistic approach establishes enduring relationships, laying the foundation for sustained business growth.
An inbound marketing campaign is just as important for retaining existing customers as it is for attracting new ones.
And, with the right content marketing tactics in place, and understanding the customer journey to deliver it accordingly, it can improve the whole customer experience with your brand from start to finish whilst building trust, and ensuring that your valued customers continue doing business with you and don’t venture off in search of better experiences elsewhere.
Here’s how it works.
1. Personalisation
Inbound marketing focuses on practices that involve gathering data about your customers/target audience to then provide them with engaging and relevant content.
This is done through analytics software such as HubSpot, through tracking customer behaviours on your company website and social networks, through email conversations, and through each and every on- and offline interaction that customers make with your brand.
With all this information, it becomes very easy to start personalising your interactions and streamline your inbound marketing efforts for the improvement of customer experience.
To begin with, you will of course be using first names at the top of every email you send out to customers. But, beyond this basic approach, your email marketing should also be tailored to each individual customer based on what you know about them.
Furthermore, inbound marketing tactics can also be used to target specific content deliveries in the direction of specific cohorts of customers.
If you have a blog or an eBook that would be of particular interest to certain marketing personas, then you can provide them with a highly personalised experience by promoting your relevant content on the networks you know they are most likely to frequent, ensuring that they don’t miss this vital information.
What’s more, when you do use a sophisticated inbound marketing automation tool like HubSpot, then you will even be able to serve different versions of your website to different customers, and I direct you towards HubSpot’s Content Optimisation System so you can see what I mean (and the screenshot below gives you a little flavour, too).
2. Thank You Emails and Special Offers
Following neatly on from the first point, inbound marketing tactics also allow you to tailor special, personalised offers to keep your existing customers happy.
A strategic approach to customer engagement involves leveraging outbound marketing techniques, such as attaching a generous coupon voucher to thank-you emails. Recognizing the significance of email marketing—encompassing both inbound and outbound strategies—is vital, considering the substantial time customers dedicate to their emails daily.
Thank-you emails, a potent inbound tactic, express genuine appreciation for customer loyalty. To refine marketing strategies further, actively tracking customer behaviors is essential. This involves understanding how your audience interacts with content, products, and communications. Analyzing these behaviors allows businesses to tailor both inbound and outbound efforts, aligning seamlessly with customer preferences and actions.
But email marketing is not the only way to deliver special offers. Another huge part of inbound marketing takes place on social media. And so, creating exclusive offers that are “only available to our valued Facebook (or what have you) customers” is another targeting tactic that will improve the customer experience with your brand across as many channels as you see fit.
3. Adding Tons and Tons of Value
Inbound marketing tactics, if executed well, can add tons and tons of value to your brand.
From educational blog posts and eBooks to entertaining videos and infographics, there is an almost bottomless pit of opportunities that you can utilise to create valuable content that will at once thrill, delight, entertain, educate and inform your customers.
It’s important, however, that you try to customise your quality content when working on your inbound strategy for existing customers. Inbound marketing, of course, is a very powerful tool for lead generation, but when you’re targeting existing ones, you need to create content that addresses different issues.
Think in terms of how they may extract even greater value from your core product or service, and in what format this information is best delivered – blogs, infographics, eBooks, case studies, white papers, or videos.
Delivering key industry insights will be even more valuable to your existing customers than even your special offers – so think hard about this, and then deliver.
4. Socialise on Social
Great customer experiences are ongoing, and so you must do everything you can to ensure that you’re putting the “social” into your social networks.
If there’s an important industry discussion taking place on the likes of LinkedIn or Reddit, then make sure you’re there, contributing your ideas and building relationships as you go.
And the same goes for all of your other social networks. As you post content, you will generate engagement. And good inbound marketing practices dictate that you should aim to perpetuate this engagement, encourage it, and respond to every like and comment that you receive in order to build up an enthralled and active community surrounding your brand.
Inbound marketing is essential for great customer relations and experiences. In 2022, consumers don’t like doing business with faceless entities – they like to know that there’s a human being or two behind the brand. And on social, you will be able to present your personality to the world, and give your customers an ongoing experience they can engage with, and a sense that they can turn to your business pages whenever they have a question or problem.
Contact us today to learn how Incisive Edge can help you use effective inbound marketing strategies to your advantage and increase your ROI
