When you’re thinking about your customer touchpoints, are you considering other ways customers may try to communicate with you or about you? Are your company or products mentioned on social media by customers having problems? While you may have the greatest customer support process in the world, it’s only good if people are actually using it to let you know about problems. Even if you’re not doing any other type of social media outreach, at the very least, monitoring for mentions of your company and products can go a long way for improving your online reputation.
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Nov
30
2010
Increase Sales by Improving Customer Touchpoints
You may think improving your website or your point of sale system or even your after-sales service will help increase your sales. They most likely will. But there usually are more places that customers (and potential customers) interact with your brand (touchpoints). Ignoring these other customer touchpoints may counter-act the good you’re trying to do.
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Nov
08
2010
Understanding the Value of Your Customers
Most business owners know the average purchase amount they get from their customers (amount of sales divided by the number of purchases), but few bother to understand how much value customers give over the lifetime of their relationship with the company. Advertising and marketing is vital to the growth of any company, but knowing how much a customer is likely to spend while they’re doing business with you is important for setting the proper budgets (and expectations).
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May
26
2010
Pricing Based on Customer Expectations
Pricing, when done properly, is one of the most difficult tasks any business faces. Yet it is usually only given a perfunctory once-over. Customers have a range in mind that they’re willing to pay, but if you ask them, cheaper is always better. Ask a customer what they paid for something after the fact, and they’ll probably have a hard time remembering exactly. Price something too low, and people wonder about the quality. Price too high, and you’re out of budget. How can you meet your customer’s expectations without directly asking them?
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Apr
30
2010
Identify Your Ideal Customer Before Implementing Social Media
Knowing your target audience is vital to any social media strategy, which requires identifying your ideal customer in very specific terms. Many businesses try to target anyone who they think may be even remotely interested in their product. This can lead to social media presence that is spread way too thin for the company resources (this isn’t a good branding or product strategy either). It’s best to concentrate on the ideal customer and find the most appropriate 1-3 places online to connect.
To identify the ideal customer, think of job titles or occupations they may have. Try describing an individual that would purchase your products. What do they like to do? What interests them? Why would buying your product solve a problem or provide a benefit?
Once you have your ideal customer in mind, it will be much easier to investigate places they may already be online. Look for discussion groups, industry associations and publications that may interest your audience. We’ll discuss finding your audience in more depth in a future post.
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