No business enjoys losing customers. But for some businesses, it’s a lot more damaging than for others. A grocery store, for example, can withstand a single customer going over to a competitor, possibly without noticing any business impact. But a food distributor serving eight grocery stores is going to feel some real pain if one of those stores takes its business elsewhere. For some industries comprised of small markets of large consumers, there may be a limited pool of candidates to replace a lost customer, and often the question is, “can we get them back?” Well, it’s certainly not easy. Leaving a B2B relationship is costly for both companies because the customer has to spend time and money finding a replacement vendor as well as a lot of effort adjusting its business processes to work with a new partner. Consequently, they won’t be eager to switch back just like that. But in the long run, it is possible to win back a lost customer. Continue reading “Best Practices in Handling the Loss of a Customer”
Tag: customer engagement
Beyond Bribery: Building Customer Relationships Through Engagement
It’s hard to overstate the importance of brand loyalty. Marketers know how difficult it can be to win new customers. Once you have brought a new consumer into the fold, it’s important to take steps to ensure that they will not only keep coming back, but that they will also refer others to you. Continue reading “Beyond Bribery: Building Customer Relationships Through Engagement”
Content Marketing: Developing Your Brand With Consistency and Regularity
For a small business or a new startup, marketing can be a real challenge. It’s not just the financial aspect; it’s also finding the right channels to get your brand in front of the potential customers you’re after. While some businesses have found success in outlandish publicity stunts, we don’t recommend such a dramatic approach. Continue reading “Content Marketing: Developing Your Brand With Consistency and Regularity”
Are You Creating, or Removing, Barriers for People to Buy Your Product/Service?
Sometimes I think the most simple thing that we can do as businesspeople and marketers is to “put ourselves in the shoes” – literally – of our prospects and customers. Are we making it easy to buy? Or are we setting up unintentional barriers, however “slight,” that may interfere with – or obliterate – the purchasing process? Continue reading “Are You Creating, or Removing, Barriers for People to Buy Your Product/Service?”
What South Park Can Teach Us About Transparency in Advertising
As we’ve discussed so often, content is king when it comes to modern online advertising. One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is to provide fresh, relevant content that is interesting and desirable to your target market. This isn’t advertising, because you’re not directly promoting your product or service. The goal is to entice audiences to visit your site and keep coming back because you provide a useful service. Hopefully they’ll look around your site a bit and start to develop a strong impression of your brand, whether it’s because they see you as an expert or because they feel that you represent the same values they do.
But there’s a line between content and advertising that is often crossed, and when that line is crossed, we end up with what is commonly referred to as native advertising. Continue reading “What South Park Can Teach Us About Transparency in Advertising”
Twitter: Beyond Self-Promotion
In our recent blog post about the best ways to use Twitter for small businesses, we mentioned several uses of Twitter beyond pure advertising:
• Research
• Content curation
• Sharing Information with key target audiences
• Keeping an ear to the ground
Harvard Business Review (HBR) recently published an article titled “50 Companies That Get Twitter — and 50 That Don’t.” The article looked at a use of Twitter that is an important element of the pure advertising we choose not to focus on, and yet has a much broader usefulness: Continue reading “Twitter: Beyond Self-Promotion”
Best “Hack” for Planning/Running Public Relations Campaigns
The idea of hacking used to be associated almost exclusively with the computer industry. A hacker was someone who found clever or clandestine ways around computer safeguards. But more and more, hacking has acquired a broader application, associated with developing and exploiting unconventional means to accomplish a task in a variety of industries and settings. Public relations (PR) campaigns are no different. Continue reading “Best “Hack” for Planning/Running Public Relations Campaigns”
To Engage Your Audience, Provide Real Value
Savvy business owners and marketing professionals are always looking for ways to deepen their connection with existing customers and attract new clientele. In the age of content, newsletters and e-letters are great ways to connect with an audience and good tools for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to use for customer engagement.
The key—as with any kind of online communication—is to Continue reading “To Engage Your Audience, Provide Real Value”
An “Inside Out” Approach to Engaging Your Audience
We work with companies and individuals in the business-to-business (B2B) space on content marketing planning and implementation, including the use of social media. The greatest challenge—and opportunity—for companies of any kind is generating content that is going to be valued by their audience. That often means thinking, as we like to say, “from the outside in.”
Continue reading “An “Inside Out” Approach to Engaging Your Audience”
Using Social Media to Build Your Business
by Linda Pophal
“Does social media really work?” I get this question a lot and, as for most marketing communication-related questions, my answer is generally, “It depends.” It depends on what is being offered, who the audience is and what the goals/objectives are. Social media can certainly work to drive business results, but it is still not the answer in all cases.