Even though some people think that marketing has become easy and less burdensome over time, they couldn’t be far from the truth. Indeed, the innovations in technology and the advent of internet, followed by social media has provided marketers and business owners with tremendous and limitless opportunities to further their business, these advancements in technology are probably the prime reason that your business suffers at times.
Social media channels and numerous other online platforms, today, extend services to customers which allow them to, perhaps, post something negative regarding your business practices or products if they are left unhappy or unsatisfied. Thus, one may say that today’s internet landscape leaves the brands and organizations vulnerable to potential negative publicity by unhappy customers. Thus, far outweighing the disadvantages of online channels compared to the benefits that it has to offer.
Importance of Online Marketing
It is a social world. Internet access has made the social connection stronger than ever. It is estimated that more than 3 billion people use internet today. According to Pew Research Center, 74% users use some sort of social media website. All of these statistics show that the internet is becoming central to our lives as various online channels are increasingly used to maintain strong social ties. Thus, it is only understandable that online marketing is taking precedence all over the business world.
In order to reach potential customers and build strong connections with existing customers, it is extremely important that marketers create strategies for online marketing. Since it facilitates and enables businesses to reach a wide ranging and extensive consumer base, it broadens the horizon and strengthens the chances of success. Barriers that exist between the customers and businesses such as distance and boundaries are rendered insignificant when it comes to online marketing. Whether your customers are located in another country or continent, when you market your product online, you can cater to anyone and everyone. Moreover, online marketing is convenient as businesses can remain open and operate around the clock.
Thus, it is important that businesses and organizations embrace the transition to online marketing and design strategies that comply with the internet based business environment.
How to Make Your Customers Fall in Love with You
Customers are central to businesses. Whichever strategies and tactics that business executives employ, whether they be regarding introducing a new product or planning on the pricing, all of these are made keeping the potential and existing customers’ insights and thoughts in mind.
It is safe to say that customers have always been important to businesses. However, it should come as no surprise that the current marketing landscape has lead customers to become more important than ever before. The 21st century customers are smart, clever and more demanding. Businesses and brands cannot take advantage of them anymore as they are no longer gullible or easily trusting individuals.
It is already a tough job to find effective and low cost marketing strategies for your business. But, to come up with a strategy that makes your customerS fall in love with your brand or business, along with it being effective and of low cost is even more difficult to accomplish. Lucky for you, here are 8 of the best online marketing strategies that will make your customers fall in love with you.
Interact with your customers – Hear them out
Remember, communication is the key. It allows for customer insights, their perception and feedback regarding the product or even the marketing campaigns that you are running. Many online channels provide with options that facilitate and encourage interaction. Replying to Facebook posts, or email queries are some of the ways in which you can use online networks to connect and interact with customers. You can even track mentions on Twitter and see what your customers have to say about you.
Furthermore, interaction and communication humanizes your brand and businesses to the customers. It makes them picture you as a business which is reachable, and not think it as some faceless business. Keep in mind though, that you personalize your communication. This means that instead of the automatically generated responses or something like a press release response that is devoid of any emotion, you need to talk to customers like you would talk to a person face to face.
Therefore, conversation needs to be analyzed and assessed to build strong, rich and lasting relationships.
Be polite to your customers – Show patience
Being friendly and polite to the customers is one of the primary goals of customer services. Being rude to them or treating their queries abruptly is bound to get your business in deep trouble. It will fuel dissatisfied customers, and with that loads of negative publicity which has the tendency to go viral on the social media and many other networking sites. Thus, it is important that you show and treat your patient with a polite and patient attitude. Tracking complaints and keeping tabs on its status is likely to help.
Even if the customer is possibly wrong, rude behavior will get you nowhere other than show you a rather quick way out of the market. So, to maintain your reputation and goodwill, it is vital that you treat your customers like royalty. Going an extra mile to work out the problems that your customers have with your company staff or your product is not going to hurt you at all.
Come up with excitement – intrigue and lure them
Don’t bore your customers with constant and over the top hype around some upcoming products. Though, your customers might seem interested and somewhat animated with the marketing campaigns you are running for your new or existing products, it is not likely to last.
Customers want some excitement. They log in to social media websites to engage in some interesting activity, and not something that bores them out of their mind. This means that you should use the online media to deliver the excitement and elation they crave for. Running some interesting contests related to the product and offering a gift card or some other prize is very much likely to intrigue and lure them.
Appear open and sincere with your customers – establish trust
Honesty and transparency are the core of successful relationships. Similarly, these are central to build meaningful relationships with your customers. The key to it is to appear open and sincere with them.
You can do this by keeping your customers abreast with any potential changes in company policies that is likely to have a direct effect on them. If you are planning to remove or withdraw a product entirely from your stores or are thinking of upgrading your prices, you should make sure to inform your customers beforehand. After all, it only takes one negative experience to overshadow numerous other positive experiences.
Understand though, that establishing trust takes time and energy. You cannot expect to develop strong relationships and trust overnight.
Own up to your mistakes – rectify them
Recognizing responsibility and accepting that you made a mistake is important as well. But, to do something to rectify those mistakes and make up to your customers will establish your relationship with customers on an entirely different level.
Establishing customer service centers and offering 24/7 service to customers via online channels and forums is the way to go. This gives your customers the opportunity to post any complaints they have regarding the product or anything related to it. However, listening to complaints is not enough. You need to tell your employees to handle those complaints posthaste. A proper process needs to be introduced that gives employees a step by step guide regarding how to handle dissatisfied customers.
Accepting that you made a mistake and saying the magical words, ‘We are sorry’, is likely to pacify and appease your customers most of the time. But when you offer to fix it, they are guaranteed to love you. Just remember the rule of thumb, the customer is always right.
Connect with them frequently – don’t stalk them
While it is important that you need to connect with your customers and stay in touch with them on a frequent basis, there is a fine line between appearing to interact with them and giving out a stalker-esque vibe.
No one likes people who appear to be needy and are constantly hovering. It gets irritating and annoying. Similarly, if you flood your customers’ email accounts with your promotional campaigns and spam their social media timelines with continuous posts to promote your products, your customers will run away from you and may eventually block you.
In fact, marketing is not so much about the frequency of posts and emails as it is about smart marketing and campaign. If you have marketed your brand well, it is only a matter of time that customers seek your brand and come to you.
Run special offers for special occasions – entice them
What better way is there to make your customers fall in love with you other than enticing them with special offers? Treating your customers with special offers on occasions such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day and their birthdays is bound to make them feel special and loved.
Many companies run special discounts during such occasions. To make them even more special and unexpected for the customers, add a personalized touch to your products with respect to the occasion. Moreover, you can build a profile for each and every customer according to their purchasing history. This will allow you to create personalized products for your customers on their birthdays etc.
Always say ‘thank you’ – show gratitude
Appreciating your customer and showing gratitude by a simple ‘thank you’ endears you to your customers for a long period of time.
You can achieve this by sending a personalized thank you note to your customers along with their order. A simple, ‘We appreciate you as our customer’ is another way to show them gratitude. Indeed these are quite simple things but they are much more meaningful to the customers. It shows the customers that rather than being taken for granted, they are appreciated and cared for.
It is about time that businesses and brands understand the importance of building valuable relationships with their customers. The first step to build a strong relationship is communication. Online media has made it extremely easy for marketers to form communication with their customers. Although, one can argue that it is not easy to communicate with each and every customer on a personal level, especially if you are a huge brand and are dealing with millions of customers. But it is not impossible.
Since, the customers are online; it is only fair that you come up with online marketing strategies that establishes meaningful relationships with customers and makes them fall in love with you. And to be successful on the web, you need a good online marketing firm like AOK Marketing. We offer myriad of services for all kinds of online businesses, so get in touch with us today and see what we can do for you.
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