Did you ever think about how each person really feels when they come into contact with your brand? More than just the mechanic act of browsing and buying?
Then, you were thinking about Customer Experience. CX quickly became a major factor for Digital Marketing success in the past few years.
If you want that same power to attract, convert, and retain more customers, let’s talk about everything you need in order to start answering the 3 major questions:
What is customer experience exactly?
When we talk about any experience, we are always entering a subjective field of discussion. For client-business relations, there are points like:
- How do you feel when entering a store and buying a product?
- What is the sentiment when using that brand and showing it on social media?
- How glad you are when a question or problem is quickly solved?
- How does it feel about interacting and being part of that brand’s life?
All these feelings are part of what we call customer experience. It is the emotional result of every contact a customer has with a business and a brand. It starts from discovery, and it consolidates in a loyal consuming relationship.
So CX is not just about the act of buying; it goes way beyond that. It is a perception of the connection with your brand that is impacted by every interaction.
But even if it is such an emotional, subjective notion about a brand and a business, it doesn’t mean it isn’t replicable.
Customer Experience is the end product of a client-focused strategy. It is about knowing what relates to your audience, what engages them, and doing everything possible to trigger the feelings you want.
What does it do to your business?
If it is possible to trigger specific connections between your customer and your brand, you have a powerful tool at your disposal. So, it is not a coincidence that so many successful companies are investing in CX recently.
But how exactly does it impact your work? How can marketers use the power of a good experience to improve financial and operational results?
Let us take a look at the positive factors you can have investing in this strategy!
Increased conversion rates
Many companies’ boards and even some CMOs mistakenly think about online visibility as a numbers game. If you want to sell more, you need to be seen more.
But this is not exactly true, especially for small businesses that have to compete for space with players with higher budgets. You have to focus on engagement.
Digital Marketing professionals today are way more dedicated to optimizing lead generation than attracting more.
The goal is to increase conversion rates and make more people interested in their business from the same pool of leads they had before.
You do that with deeper emotional connections between the brand and the audience. Well-tailored interactions that assure meaningful experiences can make more people take the extra step.
Lowers your CAC
If you are converting more with the same budget and visibility, that means you are having a hugely positive impact on the companies’ financial health.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is an indicator that shows how much the marketing department has to spend to convert each new sale.
With a great Customer Experience, you lay out an autonomous system that can be present in every step of the customer’s journey, consuming few resources and minimum effort.
It makes crucial parts of that relation easier and inexpensive. This way, CAC is reduced, and the budget that has been saved can be used to expand or optimize even further.
Creates an identity
A unified and well-designed Customer Experience can result in your brand’s culture that allows people to identify with it.
This is especially great when you are searching for a niche market to embrace. More than a company, it becomes a part of that community, inserted into discussions and setting trends. That kind of position should be the goal in mind for every CX activation.
Increased customer loyalty
If people like interacting and consuming your brand, and if this experience becomes sufficiently positive, you have a customer for years.
Customer loyalty guarantees predictable income and makes it easier for CMOs to learn about their audience and tailor even better CX for the new buyers to come.
Turns buyers into promoters
What do you do when you have an incredible experience with a brand? Like everyone, you probably recommend and share that feeling with the people you like and care about.
Satisfied customers will gladly talk about a brand they love. And every digital marketer knows the power of word of mouth on social media.
It is a free, effective advertisement, another huge influence in your CAC, and the brand’s visibility online.
How to guarantee a good CX?
Now that you know why to do it, it is time to understand how. The way you approach CX will depend on factors such as type of business, products, audience, goals, etc.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t start with some universally applicable steps you should take to be successful. Let’s see how you can improve your Customer Experience and convert more.
Know your customer
This is always the first step in any marketing strategy, and it should be no different with CX.
How can you give your customer a perfect experience with your brand if you don’t know much about what they want?
Your research on the matter should be more focused on expectations. That is, what your buyer persona expects from a relationship with a brand, what they value most.
Then, the team can work on content and interactions that meet those needs and make suggestions to other departments (as CS and sales) about what they should also do to solidify your plan.
Consolidate a brand persona
And that is an important hook to follow up on. Customer experience is not only about your social media interactions or your website. It is the sum of everything a company does when people come into contact with a brand.
Imagine having a cool and hip communication online and attracting a younger public from an innovative niche. Then they talk to the sales department, and they are super formal and bureaucratic. This dissonance is enough to break the experience.
So you have to lead the whole business in this aspect. Create a unified and strong brand voice that is heard the same way, however and whenever the customer needs you.
Improve your CS
Going deeper on the matter, the brand persona is only the first step in customer service. But the main goal here is to be faster and more efficient in resolving tickets.
The golden rule to a great CS experience is doing what the customer needs, and then doing something extra. Exceeding expectations turns unsatisfied clients into spontaneous promoters.
An awesome tip is to invest in omnichannel: a marketing strategy to provide seamless, integrated sales channels from interest to purchase. Your brand needs to be available all the time, wherever your audience needs it.
Make your website perform better
Many CMOs focus on communication and forget how a badly-designed website harms CX.
After all, it is your place on the internet, where people go to know and consume your brand. If the browsing experience is sub-par, that problem reflects directly on the business’s image.
So make sure to have a compelling layout, well-structured information, and easy to navigate pages. Focus on speed, performance, and responsiveness.
Investing in a great website does a lot more for customer loyalty than a lot of marketers give it credit.
Create great content
Every experience online is enveloped by content. It is what sticks in the mind of the customers and makes them remember a brand later. It is what creates real connections and identification.
You probably already work with a Content Marketing strategy, but how about framing it in a way that it makes sense for CX?
Interactive pieces, for example, work really well to bring to the audience that feeling of participation, of actively being part of a business’s life.
Measure your customer’s satisfaction
With a good plan, great content, and the right voice for your brand, the company is ready to get better practical results from CX. But a marketer’s job never ends.
After execution, it is time to measure and adapt. Your main approach here should be getting feedback from the public, with two main indicators of customer satisfaction:
- Customer Effort Score (CES): will measure how easy it is to interact and consume that brand;
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) will measure how eager your customer is to recommend that brand to family and friends.
If these KPIs are going up, it means you are doing something right. Your job then is to identify what is working well, and what are the possible problems that could hamper the improvement of your results.
At the end of the day, Customer Experience is based on a client-brand relationship. Like any other, it means it can change and should never be taken for granted.
So why don’t you keep on learning about creating a more meaningful connection to your audience? Take a look at this special article on what is Content Experience!
