The #1 Marketing Tip of all time

Discussing Marketing Tips

Today we’re going to talk about the #1 marketing tip of all time for every kind of company.

And that is to invest 5 – 10% of your marketing budget into improving your customer’s experience.

Now just don’t assume YOU know what the customer wants. That’s probably not going to help you spend the money wisely or improve their experience. That would just be your ego getting in the way again – which we touched on in podcast #1.

Trust me, you DON’T know what they’re thinking or what suggestions they might have. You’ll be missing out on golden nuggets if you think you do. Instead, you ask your employees and your customers.

Now if you’re following our advice in podcast #1 and starting to get your employees to map out and define the standard operating procedure for each and every job function they do and recommending improvements, then you’ve already started this somewhat.

But now you want to really zero in on just the customer experience and every touchpoint they have with your company.

From answering the phone to the completed job and communications afterward. Every part of each process should be examined for improvements. It pays to invest in your customer experience for three major reasons:

1. Because customers are the lifeblood of your business and you want and need them to be happy after doing business with you.
2. Referrals from your existing customers should be your best quality leads – so you want to invest in word-of-mouth marketing
3. Great customer reviews are your ticket to growing more prospects – nearly everyone searches your company reviews before they call your company – make sure they’re overwhelmed by amazing customer reviews.

Everything they see, hear, smell, and touch if it applies, must be a totally great experience.

So let’s get suggestions from your employees and customers on how to create the best customer experience possible.

For your employees –

Create a “help make us better” or “customers are #1” program and ask your employees to suggest how they think your company can provide a better experience to your customers.

Define a reward for every valid suggestion – and a better reward for those that get adopted.

Now if you’ve been like a dictator to your employees they may be scared or reluctant to suggest anything. You’ll have to tell them those days are over, you’ve come to realize it takes a team to be a great company, and every person and their input is now valued and invited and will be rewarded.

Let them know your WHY – that you want to create the best experience possible for your customers.

Create a suggestions box – ask them to write down all recommendations, add their name to it, and place it in the box. Let them do this alone or team up with other employees. Their choice. Give them a 30-minute break on a given day every two weeks or once a month to put this into action.

Don’t just add to their workload, give them the time to do this.

Next, you can hold a meeting after each period to share and review the suggestions to all the employees, or by groups – like technicians, customer service, etc. and let them accept, add to, or decline the suggestions.

Let their group decide what’s a “valid” suggestion.

Let the group help you decide which ones to discuss more and possibly adopt.

Also, remember that happy employees make for happy customers.

Are you helping your employees be the best they can be?

Do your employees know and share the WHY your business does what it does?

Is there a mission that they believe in?

Are they compensated fairly and better than your competitors?

Do you allow for personal time and understand they have a family, personal needs, and emergencies?

Take great care of your employees, share your mission, your WHY with them, and they’ll take great care of your employees.

Write it out.

something like….

Dear valued customers (address them by name),

We’re offering a (reward) to every customer who would like to recommend to us anything you believe would have made your experience unforgettably top-notch.

Our customers are the most important part of our business and we want to do everything in our power to provide the absolute best possible experience to each and every one of you.

What could we have done, or can still do, to improve your experience with us?

Don’t hold back, we can take it, lay it on us. What could we do to be the best we can be?

We’re NOT looking for praise here, we’re NOT looking for “Hey, you guys are great.”

We’re looking for all the little and big things that you think we can do that would have blown you away with how great we are.

Our goal is the greatness and only our customers know how to judge that.

So please, reply to this email with your suggestions and we’ll send you out a (reward) without thanks for helping us be the best we can be.

All the best,

———

Send that by email or US mail to every customer in your database. Shout it out on your social media channels.

Make a page on your website with a form for them to submit their ideas and provide a link. Do that, and you will save yourself a ton of money in advertising. It has the power to be one of the best marketing tactics you’ve ever used.

I hope that helped some of you.

Good luck out there and create a great day!