Your step-by-step template to build a marketing strategy that delights at every opportunity.
How does a 16% price premium on your products and services sound?
It sounds great, doesn’t it?
Great customer experiences deliver great rewards.
That’s just one of the things customer-centric businesses can look forward to.
Another is increased loyalty: 63% of shoppers say they’d share more information with a company that offers a great customer experience.
We’d like to help you become a more customer-centric business, so that you can enjoy some of those benefits, and more.
If you don’t know how to become a customer-centric business, our latest eBook – Customer-Obsessed Marketing Strategy Playbook – is what you’ve been waiting for. It will show you how to start actively listening to your customers so you can win more of their business.
Here’s an overview of what you’ll find when you download your copy.
Don’t just sit there – take action!
We want you to do more than just add to your knowledge base. We want to help you get to work right away. So, you’ll find carefully selected models and templates in the eBook to show you how you can start making real progress – fast.
It will also show you how customer feedback can power your business forward.
Top-down or bottom-up?
We’ll show you how the kind of business strategy you follow can shape your growth trajectory. Businesses with a top-down outlook are those that tend to set goals that are all about what they want to sell. Then they go looking for customers to sell to. A bottom-up business is obsessed with learning from customers’ wants. It’s something that has helped make Amazon the success we all know.
Don’t just think about your business goals – start asking what you can do that will make a real difference to your customers. How can you find out what will make that difference? Simply by paying attention to what customers are trying to tell you.
How confident are you that each and every customer interaction could earn your business 5-stars?
Getting started: The SOSTAC model
This framework was defined by PR Smith Marketing in the 1990's. It will help you to structure your marketing strategy.
Situation: where are you now?
The more time and energy you invest in assessing the situation your business is in, the better your outcomes are likely to be. In the eBook, you’ll find detailed guidance on researching your customers, competitors, your own business and much more, to help you create a really robust situational analysis.
If you’ve ever tried reading a map, you’ll know how important it is to understand where you are before you can plan your next move.
Objectives: where do you want to be?
What’s the overarching mission and vision of the organisation you work for? Now, think of some granular measures of success – like sales figures, margins, cost per sale and so on. You’re going to include them all in your objectives.
Strategy: how do you get there?
This is arguably the most vital part of your plan. It needs to be to-the-point and it needs to be right. Think of this as your direction of travel – set off wrong and you’ll struggle to get to the right destination.
Tactics: what are the steps you’ll take?
Tactics are the individual actions you need to take to bring the strategy to life and deliver the objective. You are likely to include some of the following in your chosen tactics: your online presence, your pricing structures, your promotional activities, and customer service delivery.
Action – how will you bring your tactics to life?
It won’t matter how great your strategy is nor how comprehensive your situational analysis if you can’t get your messages in front of the right people at the right time. Think passion! Think excellence! Think experience! And think about the difference it makes when everyone in your team gets behind what you’re trying to achieve.
Control – how will you measure your progress?
Not everything is a key performance indicator. Focus on measuring only what needs to be improved – because that’s what matters. And once you know what matters most, you need to put the right structures in place to measure progress.
But just because something can be measured, doesn’t mean it should be measured!
Setting objectives: Keeping things objectively real
Whether you’re new to setting objectives or an old hand, the SMART framework can help you stay focused on delivering solid but realistic results.
Specific: The more specific your objective is, the more likely you are to achieve it.
Measurable: You might want an increase in customer satisfaction, for example. But how will you actually measure it? Can you even measure it reliably at all?
Achievable: Don’t become a hostage to fortune and don’t let your ambition be the thing that trips you up. Ensure you have the time, resources and support needed to be successful.
Relevant: Thinking about relevance helps you to be certain you are putting your energies into the right thing. Keeping people busy is not enough – make sure your actions are furthering the business goals.
Timely: Some goals will be short-term. Others will be long-term. The key thing to remember is that there needs to be an end date.
Taking action, actively
The pace of change and the degree of pressure facing businesses shows no sign of relenting. Staying ahead of the pack means keeping up with your customers!
Customer centricity isn’t something you can pay lip-service to. You need to do more than just listen – you need to actively listen.
3 questions to prioritise today:
Making customer feedback an integral part of your business strategy
- How will you capture it and act on it at the highest level?
Making your customers’ voices heard
- Do you have the in-house technical skills, or should you partner with a specialist?
The need to trust the data and insights you capture
- How will you make sure feedback is coming from genuine customers?
Measure for measure
Some metrics are more obvious than others, like footfall and social media engagement. These are clearly important for multichannel retailers. But likes and shares are not purchases, in much the same way that people leaving a store empty-handed aren’t actually customers.
It can be more helpful to think about things like conversion rate, cost per lead, or the cost to acquire net new customers. The key is to understand what information you need to know. Then go looking for it.
- Suitability – Does it give the information you need?
- Acceptability – To marketing areas and shareholders
- Feasibility – Can it be actioned and communicated?
- Resources – Are you able to do it? Is it practical?
- Actionable – Can it be influenced by your actions?
- Focused – Are you measuring the most important and critical areas?
Make feedback part of your daily routine
Regular monitoring and evaluation are vital. Reviews offer valuable insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
Define the key areas of customer feedback you need to evaluate and develop a regular schedule for monitoring your effectiveness.
Is the volume of reviews falling? Is the balance of sentiment where you need it to be? If you identify a change, investigate it immediately – the root cause of a drop in reviews might not always be obvious.
Remember – if you’re not paying attention to your customers, you can bet someone else is.
Delight your customers at every opportunity
Done well, the right reviews strategy helps you put the customer first, uncover valuable insights and outperform your competitors.
Keep asking yourself how much you’re doing to ensure each of those touchpoints is an example of excellent customer experience. Because when each step is being executed exceptionally, your customers will feel valued.
And when they feel it, they’re going to want to tell everyone how good it feels.
Talk to Feefo
Find out how we help millions of real people share trustworthy, verified feedback on real interactions with our clients – feedback that helps those clients build long-term relationships and deliver exceptional services that their customers can depend on. Get in touch today.
