Millennials want the same thing as every other age group, it's just the channels for delivering it that have changed

They have youth, influence, and spending power. They can also spot BS from a mile away, and it’s not easy to win their hearts. EContent even predicts that Millennials – or Generation Y – will "become the world’s most powerful customers". Indeed, it seems that the demographic has reached an important point where its purchasing power is approaching its peak. [si_guide_block id="35932" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Smarter Instagram marketing guide" description="Our Smarter Instagram marketing guide will help you tap into the consumer activity on Instagram to use it to grow your business."/] It’s also a huge generation, born anytime between the early 1980s and 2000. Of course, there are major differences in life experience and expectations between someone born in ‘83 and someone born in ‘99, but the important…

Good service once earns one happy customer. Consistently good service builds a satisfied, loyal customer base.

Unfortunately, unless you’re a sole proprietor doing everything in your business, you can’t control how your customer service teams work at every moment. How do you make sure customers get a consistent, positive experience every time they interact with you?

Customer service needs to be at the heart of your business. It’s not something that’s limited only to the customer service team. Your company culture and the heart of everything you do need to revolve around serving your customers as well as possible.

This blog post explores 2 case studies - which highlight the dos and don'ts of customer service in 2020. But first, how can you lay the groundwork that makes it simple and rewarding for your employees to provide good service every time?

Building strong customer relationships

Before you can develop…

Increasing competition across all industries means that customer experience is more important than ever if you want to stand out for the right reasons

Customer experience (CX) is more important than ever. With competition increasing, the digital world making it easier to make purchases and consumers less likely to be swayed by brand loyalty, CX can make all the difference between a conversion and a lost customer. This is why businesses need to look at and improve the customer experience they offer in line with current consumer expectations. Failing to do so could leave you well behind your competitors, even if your product is more advanced. To better help you understand what CX in 2020 looks like, we’ve gathered some recent statistics from customer experience research. These stats should help you benchmark your performance, better understand current consumer expectations, bear in mind where CX is going in the future and stay one step…

If you can get customers to become loyal to your brand, their lifetime value to your company will skyrocket.

Turning customers into loyalists was once the holy grail of branding: If you can get customers to become loyal to your brand, their lifetime value to your company will skyrocket. Today, fanatics are the new loyalists. They don’t just buy your brand all the time, yours is the only brand they buy, so it becomes an important part of their identity. A loyal customer loves your brand, but they might also buy your competitors’ products half the time. Brand fanatics — like sports fanatics — are fiercely loyal to the point of exclusion. They’ll even turn other items into billboards for your brand by placing your stickers and logos all over their computers, cars, and backpacks. [si_guide_block id="59989" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Customer onboarding guide" description="This guide will show you how to…

The benefits of using Augmented Reality technology for better customer engagement

All of us remember the famous Pokemon Go game and its insane popularity - but can marketers use the same technology to attract users and make them buy more? Apparently, the answer is yes. AR has proven to be a true gem for marketers as it significantly boosts customer engagement and the level of interest for a product. Research by Deloitte states that most of the mid-market companies already experiment with AR to improve user experience and the global AR market is expected to reach about $75 billion by 2023. [caption id="attachment_149371" align="aligncenter" width="640"] [Image Source][/caption]If used right, AR technology can significantly increase the recognition of your brand among the users and engage them in a…

It’s easier to repurpose past clients than to find new ones

Whether you’re an e-commerce shop, a small "brick and mortar" boutique, or a major retail chain, you should never overlook past customers and clients as a potential source of future revenue. In fact, it’s often easier to remarket to your past clients than it is to generate new business leads. Your past customers are invaluable, in that they already understand your product or service, they have had personal interaction with your brand, and they have likely developed an opinion about your product and its ability to satisfy their needs. As we’ll see, sometimes all that is needed is for your company to re-introduce itself, reminding the customer about your product. Other times, you’ll need to do some harder work, changing customers’ opinions and perceptions about your product and its ability to satisfy their needs. Both of these paths achieve the ultimate objective…

Only 16% of companies focus on retaining a customer when all data points to the fact that acquiring a new one is at least five times more expensive.

In this modern digital world, with fleeting loyalties and diminishing attention span, brands and businesses are continuously trying to come up with new plans and ideas to keep their customers in the fold. Today, this is largely driven by the data an organization can collect on its customers. Thanks to the proliferation of the internet and social media, much of this information is available freely. Brands are now studying customers’ behavior, expectations and motivations to learn more and more about what goes into their purchase cycle. A large part of this is trying to engage with the customer once the purchase has been made. One common mistake that most brands (especially those in the e-commerce sector) make here is assuming that the customer will re-enter…

For digital marketers, it’s the actions (or lack thereof) that our customers take that speak the loudest.

The latest neuroscience research is crystal clear: it’s our emotions, not our intellect, that drives our decisions. As Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel’s Kahneman’s characterized in his book, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow,’ the intuitive parts of our brains work super fast, like on ‘autopilot’, while our reflective frontal lobes plod along methodically, like a ‘pilot’.  For digital marketers, of course, it’s the actions (or lack thereof) that our customers take that speak the loudest. So we need ‘full spectrum’ tools — ones that capture, analyze and report on everything from affect to action.  The good news is, with the latest tech, we can now scientifically measure whether or not our ‘stimuli’ (our marketing creative, user experience designs, etc.) are generating both the intended effect and affect.  …

Digital marketers need experience-based metrics

If you’ve been a digital marketer for more than a quarter, you know your key performance metrics by heart - things like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and, of course, Conversion Rate (CR). These are what I call the ‘hard’ marketing metrics - the ones associated with money. But there are other ‘soft’ metrics you should be tracking as well - ones related to the customer experience you’re providing. Why? Because they represent the feelings that ultimately cause your visitors to click that call to action or complete a purchase. It has become increasingly clear over the past few years that fast-changing consumer expectations and rapid technological advances have raised the bar. ‘Good enough’ no longer is. To survive - and, ideally, thrive - you need to know…

Creative, low-cost ideas are the way of the future, and they work just as well (and sometimes better) as some of the most expensive methods of marketing

Despite what you may have heard from expensive marketing companies, it doesn’t take a lot of money to get your customers to engage. As long as you know what you’re doing, you can keep costs low and still facilitate a high level of engagement. Whether you’re an entrepreneur in a small company, a freelancer, or a member of a big marketing team at a large company, it pays to save money where you can in your advertising techniques. Creative, low-cost ideas are the way of the future, and they work just as well (and sometimes better) as some of the most expensive methods of marketing. [si_guide_block id="86160" title="Download our Free Resource – 10 common website customer experience mistakes" description="This guide reveals examples of poor website design…