After many brands adapted their business to work online in the new world of quarantines and COVID-19, the next question immediately on their mind has become about scale. How do you scale business revenue when customers have more time to research your competitors? You can still improve customer relationships, even right now.
Building deeper relationships with your customers has always been important, but with the global pandemic, it’s now vital––in fact, it’s the only reason customers choose to shop with you. Without a devoted audience, your digital marketing will quickly fall flat.
The lifeblood of your business, your customers, likely feel the same as you do: isolated.
To scale the new virtual side of your business this year, use your digital channels to start new conversations with your customers, pay close attention to customer feedback, and implement changes to your online platform based on all of your learnings.
Invest in your customers, improve customer relationships right now, while you sit in quarantine. Your relationship with your audience isn’t just important, it’s the only thing that will keep your business going through these tough times.
Now is the Time to Start a New Conversation
Don’t sit around in quarantine expecting the business, and your customers, to be in the same spot when you come back. The world isn’t frozen, just hidden in all of the digital channels throughout the internet. You have your own digital channels, from your website to your social media channels. Use these to your advantage right now by striking up a new conversation.
When times change as drastically as they have, you can’t expect the same old messaging to stick. Your customers are isolated, barely aware of what day it is, let alone what you’re trying to say-–you need to get their attention with something different.
Get started right away with these tactics:
- Test new product offerings, through teaser blog posts, or select a smaller test-group on your email list and send an email update to test the waters.
- Start a new content series of blog posts or videos to delight your audience and keep them thinking about your business.
- Take a new, bolder approach to your online platform with a website redesign that helps you stand out against your competitors online.
Make Sure to Really Listen to Customer Feedback
Your customers are actually in a conversation with you all of the time. The products or services they buy are a vote, and so is their choice not to buy, or buy somewhere else. It says that your current offerings need a tweak. At the very least, it says that you need to know more about your customers.
Reward the engaged members of your audience by offering them a chance to help your business. Customers who support you by buying your products want you to succeed. You can let them help even more by listening closely to what they’re saying.
- Run a series of surveys on your website or on social media. Start with broad questions and tighten your focus as you begin to understand more and more about your audience.
- Evaluate your PPC campaign and SEO keywords to optimize for click-through-rates and on-site engagement. What does your audience really respond to; what do they ignore?
- Maintain your regular meeting cadence with clients through video conferencing––video on. New studies suggest eye contact is just as vital online. For those not in the service business, video conferences can help you run small focus groups for product research, customer feedback, or just to get to know your best customers even better.
Implement Changes That Reflect the Needs of Your Best Customers
Online, everything happens fast. If your website hasn’t changed in a year or two, it may as well be covered in a layer of dust. Your website, and other platforms, should constantly evolve, just as the needs and desires of your customers constantly evolve.
Think of your website and social media channels as a giant online experiment. Constantly test what works for your audience and make sure to track your learnings, as detailed as possible. Make changes based on the data. Without careful notes, you may learn something important, but forget to implement any changes before you move on to putting out the next fire.
- Based on survey responses and customer feedback, how can your business better match the needs of your customers, through product offerings or brand positioning?
- If customers ask for a new feature on your website, send a specific update that you’ve implemented their feedback. They may reward your diligence with a purchase or referral.
Improve Customer Relationships Online (& Off) This Year
Your audience is stuck at home, in quarantine, with more time on their hands than ever to research your competitors and thinking about their buying behavior.
Still feel the need to connect with your customers beyond just digital channels? Expand your outreach into more individualized or personalized outreach channels like phone calls, or customer advisory boards. Phone calls to your best customers, just to update them about your business, to ask them how they’re doing, and if there’s anything your business can do to help, can cement that one-to-one relationship. Customer advisory boards bring your favorite or most supportive customers into the process of creating new products or services. Feeling involved in the process of your own business growth not only keeps them engaged with your business, and makes them more likely to talk about you with their friends or family.
Improving customer relationships with those customers right now can help to maintain your business in the short term, but will also reward your business down the road when the world “goes back to normal.” Whatever that may look like.
To scale the new virtual side of your business this year, invest in your digital platforms and your customers. They’re the lifeblood of your business, online and offline.
3 Media Web can help. Learn more about our talented team of caring web designers, thoughtful SEO strategists, and clever digital marketers at 3mediaweb.com.
Who Else Wants to Wait Until This Is All Over?
You may feel the urge to wait. Eventually this time of quarantine and global pandemics will pass, right? Right? Really though, will it?
“
We’re waiting until COVID-19 is over, before we…”
You may have said this yourself or you may have heard it from your customers. Maybe both. The problem is, there’s no telling when the next shift in the way we do business happens. In the meantime, you’ll lose the opportunity to build better relationships with your customers online.
Customers who have been with you through the tough times, who have seen you working harder to maintain the relationship––not just their business––are more likely to support you in the long term. Plus, once the world does go back to normal, your new extra robust online platform can then support your business in-person better than before and improve customer relationships now.
