Live Feedback Survey Insights Elevate The Customer Experience

The Customer Experience Matters

When companies ask you to take a live feedback survey after engaging with their customer support, you should take the time to do it. Why is that? Because, customer service is part of your customer experience. With that being said, all too often, companies fail to ask the right questions. When you receive bad customer service, your expectations are not met. Let me tell you about a recent experience I had with Delta Dental. 

Consumer Behavior, Marketing, and Analyzing Big Data

Consumer behavior is the fuel of marketing, yet understanding the influencing factors that motivate their behavior is the issue of return. Personas, content, creative, channels, are what pull consumers through the funnel. Each identified persona has a different set of attributes with unique intonation along the path to purchase. Here’s where the muddle of interpreting big data begins, and the importance of measuring the right data for each intonation path because stale data provides inaccurate findings.

Measure Inbound Content Marketing for Conversion ROI

Don’t make this mistake. When a business fails to measure content ROI, the bottom line does not benefit. Content Marketing Institute found that 28% of B2B marketing goes unmeasured. Even if a business is in tune with its audiences, it can still be out of touch. Because technology has changed the way a business need communicate, businesses need to learn how to create content that does not add to existing content clutter its audiences are subjected daily. Marketing insights provides a business with a wealth of analysis data:

Inbound Marketing: A Key Messaging Tip

Inbound marketing does not mean being a jack-of-all marketing trades. Quite the contrary, and too many businesses today are in the business of sales funnel management where a visitor is sent to a landing page and expected to release name, address, telephone, email. Businesses face even greater stumbling blocks if its content is an online store with nothing but products because the rising on demand culture seeks immediate resolution coupled with short attention spans. Inbound marketing though is SEO, and it in itself as well does not mean that someone who specializes in SEO be a jack-of-all marketing trades. See with all inbound marketing campaigns, it involves understanding what the targeted audience exactly wants, and positioning to deliver.  Unfortunately, far too many businesses assume they know what their desired target audience wants - and in turn - conceptualize sales funnel models around those assumptions. That's quite a fleeting assumption for the growing $60 million Gen Z, and the $2 billion .net via mobile (International Data Corp.) audiences. Nothing could be farther from reality; consequentially, here begins the losing sales funnel model.

Stop Misunderstanding Website Visitors

Some believe that the best way to get site visitors to act is to appeal to their emotional motivations. This belief is partially true if you’re marketing an impulsive product/service. Triggers can then lead to desired path response. But when a product/service requires conscious consideration, desired path response becomes complicated. To understand these site visitors, a business has to first see the big people picture because it lacks buyer mindset access to engage.

For a business, this means that what it thinks it knows about its customers is wrong. Buyers are not who a business presumes, and they pull the site with different reasons than what a business guesses. So what does this mean in terms of website context? It means that the business’s buyer profiles are incomplete needing the key ingredient, buyer insights. What the ingredient accounts for is:

Make Marketing Decisions with Superior Information

Consumer/buyer insights is not about marketing intelligence. Let’s be clear about the difference. Marketing intelligence typically advantages third party sources. Its focus is about what is happening where as insights are about how consumers/buyers decide. Captured intelligence (from sales agents or reviews) measures a product’s strengths and weaknesses. The Internet has enabled businesses to value captured intelligence, and make changes at the speed of the Internet. Intelligence also reveals needs and trends. This opens doors, allowing businesses to bring forward solutions; however, companies continue scrambling to understand and identify with consumers’ expectations as well as their needs. It’s a type of myopia that is correctable all while avoiding the marketing guessing game.

Know Your Customer And Win More Business

What is the dream of every marketer? To build interconnections with customers/buyers for long term success, of course. What is the dream of companies’ CEOs? To build brands that resonate with customers. However, that’s only part of a larger story. For both sides to accomplish:

• each must advocate for the customer/buyer, and 
• take the customer/buyer side along with understand the customer/buyer position. 

Instead of shunning when a customer calls, embrace the moment for here is a customer/buyer that we have the chance to not only speak with but understand. Yet, so few do.

Socially, Brands Are What They Say

In today’s social media fueled madness, your brand’s branding is in the hands of your buyers. Don’t even pretend to claim you have a brand when you don’t. Fact, buyers are the ones who determine your brand. Some of you may say that you have a brand because of name awareness, but that is all you have. Understanding how buyers think along with the processes of activities buyers go through, is your task to identify what intersects and triggers brand concept in their minds. In other words, your brand is context dependent.

Make Money Socially

According to Pew Research, the average American spends more than 2 ½ hours each day on social media. Facebook, by far, remains the most popular social site commanding 71% of Internet users. [Think of it as home base.] Moreover, 77% of Facebook users who like a brand, state it results in s/he saving money because of taking advantage of deals offered.

So, how can your business become a social champion? Simple -

Market To Attract More And Be Successful

What brands don’t spend enough time doing is spending time doing the right things. The most important things for any brand to figure out are:

1. What type of marketing will be used
2. What type of brand development will take place
3. What type of promotions will resonate and trigger the potential consumers

Social Messages and User Experiences, Say I Do.

Messages are merely bits of communication, right? Well, yes and no. Online social messages today carry more than just written words. It’s communication, which sparks psychological sensations that drive:

• Benefits
• Sense of Community
• Interaction
• Discussion.

Summertime Social Inbound Marketing Shape Up

Just because it is summer, it does not mean that your social inbound marketing should go on auto pilot. Summer is time to re-examine and shape up your brand’s social inbound marketing campaigns. First let’s think about people. People always seem to be the problem, but are people the problem? I say no. People are not the problem. Brands are, and the problem is in the marketing message. In today’s profusion of content, a brand must customize its marketing messages to engage in the hands of prospects. This means that inbound marketing messages must reach and leverage interests of tiered segmented audiences.

Turn Procratinated Customers Into Connected Consumers

Why do website visitors procrastinate when on your website?

• Some seek immediate gratification
• Some seek information
• Some are differentiating
• Some are browsing

Instead of focusing on engaging website visitors, focus on how to get your visitors talking to you.

Advantage of Plenty - Psychographics, Demographics, And Audience Segmentation

I find that companies forget about creation of a brand for audience segments.  Oh, brands do claim they know target demographics; however, audience segmenting is not straightforward . You know, things such as:

• age ranges,
• race,
• gender,
• income variables,
• religion,
• so forth

are great aspects to gather when it comes down to demographics That type of detailing though is for an undivided target audience.  Push advertising relies on these types of details to push out messages; hence, one size fits all messaging matches a brand when it assumes its audience to be one sized.

Position A Brand Amongst Geo-Local Universe Of Consumers

Brand positioning is key to brand survival. I know simple, right. However, why is it that many geo-local brands fail? Oh this not to say that national brands do any better a job. Looking at geo-local brands that struggle, denote a lack of support for how the brand’s mission connects with target audience demands.

The key is Relationship Development. Relationship Development begins by understanding who your customer is, and how to divide into profile segments.

Slip Into Something More Comfortable. Anyone Can Be Better At Social Media Marketing

Many business leaders prefer 16 hour flights in coach than wanting to hangout, listen and engage in social media spheres. Yet; no matter what business you are in, the keys to success lie in successful social media marketing. Effective social media marketing means that you are able to draw your audiences (notice I say audiences because your larger target is to be siloed down into homologous cliques) in, and offer advantages that have them come out on top.

Build Online Content For Relationship Development

Before doing any online marketing, take time to create a content relationship strategy that will have the consumer asking for your brand by name. Here is an outline to go about building an engaging Relationship Development Strategy.


Understand Your Target Audience

• Age plus public base.
• Percent of females versus males.
• Urban/Suburban/Rural.
• Education levels.
• Ethno-demographics.
• Prime communities for target audience.

The ideal target audience profile can then be summarized.

Successful Brand Marketing Formulas Surpass Visitor Expectations

Brands that understand their targeted markets implement marketing strategies that leverage social networks. Social networks hold a key role and give a brand that grasps how to use them benefits by being able to define marketing models. Learned integrated behavioral insights then come to the aid of those areas needing revision. A brand that participates in social media, crowd sourcing, or a combination of both, opens relationship opportunities that extended beyond traditional channels. Therefore, improved customer satisfaction becomes the key to differentiation.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (2009) summarizes small business owners, who carefully layout their marketing strategies, position themselves with a stronger market presence over their competition.  A focused business centers on those activities that need shouldered, which produce consumers. The U.S. Small Business Administration (2009) also points out that successful small businesses determine:

Footings For A Winning Brand Concept Positioning Statement

Capture The Bigger Idea Of Your Brand

Your brand concept positioning statement is the foundation for understanding your targeted consumers needs. As well, your brand’s promise is followed by all employees. When done right, your brand uniquely puts the targeted consumers insight first. Thereby, captivating the consumer by making the consumer stop and consume the brand.

20 Social Media Alliance Building Do’s

1. Do take time to answer individual questions with valuable information that people want to share
2. Do join like kind groups focused around your industry, and participate under your brand or business name
3. Do use your business or brand name when creating a social group
4. Do follow others and engage
5. Do create follower subsets, and engage through media that meets each subset particulars
6. Do use hash tags (#) and @ symbols
7. Do create an account with a url shortening tool like goo.gl, tinyurl, owly, or bitly, so you can track who is clicking on your links
8. Do complete your business or brand online profile including bio, location, and link(s) to your website
9. Do focus on growing lasting relationships
10. Do make it easy for customers and potential customers to contact you
11. Do target specific niche audiences
12. Do use Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin to connect up with your industry leaders as well as communicate daily
13. Do use apps such as Buffer to spread your social feeds, and Hootsuite to keep abreast of social conversations
14. Do use social networks to spread the the word about your specials, coupons, deals, events, contests, or other exciting happenings
15. Do announce contest winners over social networks
16. Do use social networks for reviews and feedback
17. Do showcase what is happening right now at your business with pictures and video
18. Do dedicate 15-20 minutes three times a day to socialize, so if you’re eating, watching TV, or having a personal moment do the social thing
19. Do plan, plan, plan, and plan some more
20. Do talk in a natural voice