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Tag: build trust in customers

  • Top 10 Strategies for Omnichannel Marketing

    It is very much important for a company to manage all its marketing sources as a whole. The Omnichannel refers to brand interaction with its potential leads across various online and offline channels (such as social media, mobile, stores, etc.) intending to provide a seamless and consistent shopping experience throughout the customer’s journey.

    When it comes to the advantages of adopting omnichannel in your business, you could provide a seamless customer experience by giving customers a variety of options for convenient shopping, the ability to contact or shop at any channels for clearing house, and personalized services with closed deals only. This would ultimately increase brand recognition, customer loyalty and engagement, sales and revenue, and lower customer churn.

    What is Omnichannel Marketing?
    Best Omnichannel Marketing Strategies

    Brands Implementing Omnichannel Marketing

    What is Omnichannel Marketing?

    Omnichannel marketing is a business strategy that intends to promote a business on various channels including both online and offline modes.

    In simple terms, an omnichannel is a network that integrates all its business platforms and channels and transmits accurate messages. For instance, if your company is coming up with a  new product launch, offers, or advertising other business merchandise, you can share content and information about the message on social media platforms, websites, physical stores, and mobile devices, managed by your business.

    Share of Retailers who have Optimized Customer Journeys by Omnichannel Service Worldwide 2020
    Share of Retailers who have Optimized Customer Journeys by Omnichannel Service Worldwide 2020

    Best Omnichannel Marketing Strategies

    Nowadays, customers have more control over the buying process than they used to have before and omnichannel marketing simply intends to offer a seamless experience to the customers throughout their buying journey. The following are the top 10 omnichannel marketing strategies that will help you gain the best possible results for your business:

    Customer Journey Mapping

    One of the most important omnichannel marketing strategies is to map the journey of customers. Omnichannel is regarded as the best and most advantageous marketing strategy because it focuses more on the customer experience than it does on products and services. Businesses can easily post messages on various channels without any hassles and look after customer engagement at each stage of the user’s journey. Additionally, an omnichannel strategy promotes potential customers to continue around for a long time, which increases customer lifetime value by effectively focusing on that specific customer segment.

    Data Analysis

    A data-centric strategy is a key to omnichannel marketing, allowing you to learn more about your customers’ interest in your business, examining audience segmentation data such as their demographics, profiles, search data, and psychographic segmentation. Top-tier businesses use customer relationship management (CRM) software to gather information. Thus, using omnichannel marketing targets potential leads after studying a customer’s data and engaging with them across all channels.

    Data-Driven Marketing | How to do Data-Driven Marketing?
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    StartupTalkySejal Raval

    Target Market Segmentation

    Omnichannel marketing can do wonders when implemented in the right manner. So, in order to achieve the best results, an important strategy is to target the right audience and their proper segmentation. One can create segments on a different basis like location, shopping behaviour, level of interaction, etc. One can also take advantage of automation to send messages to the target audience at the right time.

    Customer Care

    Correct customer assistance should not resemble a sales presentation. Consistency and comfort should always be prioritized in customer service interactions. Keep in mind that dealing with client complaints is a huge part of doing business. Your automated systems and channels should provide easy-to-use help options. System integration issues with your Omnichannel strategy are just as dire.  As a part of your customer service solutions, add live chat alternatives to your eCommerce websites and check that there is enough information available online. Some of the crucial pointers to improve customer service operations include:

    • Become more responsive on social media.
    • Help with live chat.
    • Automated emails.

    Focus On Customer Security

    Customers place high importance on the security of their data and payments, especially when that data is shared across large omnichannel networks. Every touchpoint is vulnerable to a diverse set of threats since there are many pathways, which means many weak spots. At every stage of a transaction, the risk of security breaches can be reduced by using a single platform through which all channels pass. Innovative security capabilities in ERP software allow it to evaluate consumer and business data as well as track every channel in real-time for unusual activity or other risks.

    Seamless Payment

    Issues with payments usually arise in the area of digital marketing. Use the appropriate payment gateways to prevent upsetting your customers. This takes into account the interval between the customer’s online order and actual store pickup.

    Equal Focus on Both Digital and Non-digital Channels

    Numerous businesses consider TV, radio, mail, and other analogue channels to be outdated mediums, but they might want to give them another look. This is because millennials say they are more interested in printed catalogues than customers have been for decades. A decent return may be achieved with well-target catalogue marketing. A great technique to reach a variety of demographics in omnichannel marketing is by publishing digital and print copies of a catalogue.

    Best Time To Send Newsletters As Per Your Audiences
    Timing is important to get the subscribers to notice and open your newsletters. The best time to send newletters is 8 am, 10 am, 1 pm, and 6 pm.
    StartupTalkyHanu Agarwal

    Determine the Strengths and Weaknesses of Each Channel

    Another important strategy for implementing omnichannel marketing is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each channel being used. Consider how advertising your products on social media can help customers buy more quickly over the phone or during a convenient conversation than they could do through limited-featured platforms like apps. Connect with your leads using a simple and pragmatic network channel, which has a good effect on your customer service strategy and eventually helps you turn leads into customers.

    Invest in the Right Technology and Focus On Mobile-Friendly Users

    The technological infrastructure that is currently in place frequently lacks the capabilities necessary for an efficient omnichannel approach. To ensure that decision-makers, chain managers and workers, retail staff, and customers are all working with the same information, businesses must be able to organise and monitor data from every channel. Make sure you can also analyse data acquired from various channels and create precise forecasts and what-if scenarios. Thus, another important strategy is to focus on mobile services, as today’s generation is highly dependent on their smartphones.

    Establish Trust

    In any industry, building a customer’s trust is essential. If they don’t believe in your company or your goods, everything will suffer. When it comes to digital marketing, consistency is crucial. It’s about improving user experience to the point that people can relate to and trust a brand name without thinking about it. Customers will stop trusting you if you cannot provide effective customer service to them.

    Brands Implementing Omnichannel Marketing

    Popular Brands Implementing Omnichannel Marketing
    Popular Brands Implementing Omnichannel Marketing

    There are several popular brands that have established a strong brand identity for themselves with the help of omnichannel marketing. Some of the prominent names include:

    Conclusion

    The way businesses operate has changed. It has been a groundbreaking marketing concept to use the internet to advertise businesses and goods. It’s crucial to maintain face-to-face and digital interactions, as well as a cohesive brand identity and user experience. The goal of omnichannel marketing is to achieve just that. A transition from a channel-centric strategy to a framework focused on the consumer is necessary to develop an omnichannel strategy. We hope that the ideas we’ve covered in this post about Omnichannel marketing will be helpful to you as you promote your business.

    FAQs

    What is an omnichannel marketing strategy?

    Omnichannel marketing strategy simply refers to the use of a combination of various channels (physical and digital) for customer interaction in order to create a strong brand presence.

    Is Starbucks an omni channel?

    Starbucks is one of the greatest examples of brands that have nailed the game of omnichannel marketing through its Rewards App.

    Why do consumers want omnichannel?

    Consumers prefer omnichannel because it helps them connect their in-store experiences with the digital market. For example- some people still do not trust online shopping so they prefer buying stuff from the store which they saw online.

  • How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate: 5 Proven Strategies

    A churn is a user or revenue loss in a given period. Customer churn is determined by the number of customers that end to use the product and service during a given period.

    In a more refined way, the number of customers you lost in the quarter in comparison to the number of customers you started with the sales quarter. Customer retention is the major factor in a company’s success. If you have a customer retention rate is 75%, it means you have a low churn rate of 25%.

    Most often SaaS companies face a high churn rate due to the falling demand for existing products and services. The SaaS business evolves constantly so they need to constantly upgrade their products and introduce new services to sustain old customers and engage new customers. If the product is not fulfilling customers’ expectations and marketing demand, the churn rate will increase. Losing customers means losing revenue. So, if you want to reduce customer churn rate follow these best strategies.

    How Customer Churning is Affecting Businesses?
    Customer Churn Vs Revenue Churn
    How to Reduce Customer Churn?

    How Customer Churning is Affecting Businesses?

    Customer churning is greatly affecting the business and if above than 10% of customers are cancelling the product, it is difficult for long-term growth. It also means that you are losing more customers than acquiring them and which is seriously impacting your revenue.

    According to a survey, companies lose $1.6 trillion per year due to customer churn. You need to permanently fix the root cause of churning to run your business for the long term. Every customer is different, you need to make strategies to make existing customers stay content and happy with the products and services.

    According to the Forrester analysis, acquiring new customers is 5 times cost more than maintaining the existing customers.

    Customer Churn Rate in United States in 2020
    Customer Churn Rate in United States in 2020

    Customer Churn Vs Revenue Churn

    Customer churn is the number of customers you are losing in a given time frame. Revenue churn is slightly different from customer churn. Revenue churn is the loss of revenue that is not necessarily happening because of customer churning.

    Revenue churning means that you are not making enough money from your existing customer base than you were making before. There could be several reasons for this such as, your customers might have shifted to lower subscriptions, declined a few paid features, got discounted features, and so on.

    Analyze all the business metrics, competitors’ graphs, target customers, and long-term customers and determine the most useful customers that stay long with you. Retain your loyal customers and try to compensate for your revenue loss with flexible customers.

    If you have a diverse customer base, most likely you cannot satisfy all customers. Hit the majority of your target customers and meet their requirements and expectations, instead.

    How to Reduce Customer Churn Rate?

    According to Gartner’s survey report, approximately 80% of a company’s future revenue come from just 20% of its existing customers. So, 60-70% of the marketing focus remains on selling products to old customers.

    Many companies are understanding the importance of low churn and proactively implementing reduce churn strategy. They emphasize improving customer relationships and communications and removing all bottlenecks that come in between product and customer experience.

    According to HubSpot’s 2021 State of Inbound report, over 50% of companies are giving top priority to increasing customer satisfaction and generating leads. They are incorporating occasional rewards, free offers, and promotions to retain customers for a long time with the product.

    Implement a systematic retention process that brings you the actionable insights to generate new ideas to reduce churn. Break down your churn into its component parts (pricing, types of users, product features, support, etc) and experiment with different parts and resolve all aspects of churn.

    Here a few strategies are given to maximize customer satisfaction and reduce churn:

    Analyse the Cause

    Analyze why customers are leaving? There could be lots of reasons for customer churn such as pricing, product quality, customer experience, etc. To track the problem in the right direction, collect customers’ insights and their issues through email, feedback, and surveys, and build strategies proactively to prevent churn.

    The survey is useful and easy. You can get the survey through email, SMS, live chat, social media, etc. Analyze their response and work on the points which are causing you more revenue loss.

    Moreover, find out the specific reason for leaving the product after 30 or 60 days of using it. Talk to your customers and offer a discount or incentive to engage them with the product.

    If there is any technical issue regarding the improper functionality or lack of understanding about the product, communicate with them and provide all technical support to reduce customers’ dissatisfaction with the product. Ask cancellation reasons in the form of a survey to get valuable product insights.

    Spot the customers who have not been contacted for a while. They might be in the risk group and can impact the churn badly. Take preventive measures to include them in regular conversation. Start email conversations, feedback, and survey to foresee the problems.

    Engage with Customers

    Ensure quality customer service for successful onboarding and implementation. Guide them in every step so they get familiar with the product features. Provide a guided tour for all functionalities, and give value-added support and FAQs so they don’t feel clueless on handling basic issues.

    Offer free training, webinars, video tutorials, and product demos to make them comfortable with the product. Demonstrate the full potential of the product so customers can see the value of using the product.

    When customers feel the product/solution is helping them to achieve target expectations in business they are less likely to leave the product/solution. You need to constantly keep monitoring and communicating with them. Constant feedback keeps you aware of customers’ inclinations and expectations. Amazon has excellent customer service that gives it leverage over its competitors.

    Proactive Customer Services

    Sometimes customers struggle to navigate the website and didn’t get exactly what they are looking for. Confusion around a product or service and a lack of effective and timely support around for a particular issue increase their disappointments.

    Use Live chat to engage with them throughout their product journey and have your customer support system ready to address product-related issues. When customers get an immediate solution and it enhances their overall user experiences.

    Very likely, customers may overlook small glitches if they get timely support and stay with the product. You also get time to improve on technical things without losing your customer base.

    According to a Harvard Business School report, 65% of the company’s business comes from existing customers.

    Build a personalized relationship after onboarding the products and maintain a friendly rapport with your customers. The Starter Story and Pigeon had reduced their churn rate with personalized emails and customer support, only.

    Build Customer Loyalty

    Make your customers feel that they are a part of a brand community. Invite guest posts, question-answer discussions, and community forums where they can share their views and suggestions. It keeps them engaged with the product and if there is any issue or dissatisfaction, it can be solved within the community.

    You can also get insights into customers’ perspectives and get time to resolve them early. Offer discounts, promos, and loyalty programs to keep them stuck with the product. Occasional discounts and incentives are offered to show how much you value your customers for the business. If the customer is approaching to end of their subscription, you can offer discounts to elaborate the subscription and retain your customer.

    Be honest and transparent with your customers and share your revenue report and business metrics openly.

    Reeboks and Nike have huge customer loyalty bases. Smaller SaaS brands like Ahrefs and e-commerce software Shopify also have a big loyal customer base that contributes to their growth.

    According to research from Bain & Company, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits margin by 25% to 95%.

    Improve Customer Experience

    According to Forum Corporation’s research, 70% of churning is happening because of slow services and uncooperative support staff. Delight your customers with Thank You or Welcome Note after their subscriptions or purchasing the product. A Reddit uses a handwritten thank you message for its subscribed customers to give them value and importance.

    If your customers are happy, they may refer you to others and help your business to expand. Celebrate your long-time customers by rewarding them with badges or highlighting their success on social media and your website. For example, freelance marketplace Fiverr highlights its customers’ stories on its blog.

    Good customer service can reduce churn for a long time. Improve customer services to hook the customers with your brand. Attend every complaint seriously so the customers stay with the brand.

    Conclusion

    Nothing is going to change overnight! Follow the process and observe closely what areas in the company are causing churn problems. Retention is cheaper than customer acquisition. The KPMG survey revealed that customer retention drives 52% of the company’s revenue. You already have customers, engage with them and make sure they too stay with you.

    FAQs

    What is the churn rate?

    A churn rate is when your customers stop using your services within a certain period of time.

    Why is the churn rate important?

    Calculating the churn rate is important, as it shows how many customers you have lost and lost customers mean less revenue.

    What is a good average churn rate?

    A 5% – 7% churn rate annually is considered an acceptable churn rate.

  • How To Reduce Customer Friction in Your Startup?

    Customer friction is caused when the customers feel hesitant to buy goods or services or are unhappy with your company. Friction is something that slows down the customers or they lose interest in your products and services. Friction arises because of numerous flaws in the product or design or delivery. This will lead to poor customer service. ‌‌

    An example of customer friction is that when you are a software company and the app developed by you is in trouble. The company’s website has chat-bots which instantly gives solution for the problems faced by the customers. A chatbot is a solution for customer friction which otherwise need the customers to make a call to the customer care who does not respond quickly. ‌‌

    According to the survey, 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. ‌‌

    Friction can be reduced when you make the business as easy as possible for the customers. This is when you will increase the customers and retain the existing customers.‌‌‌‌

    How to reduce customer friction?
    Conclusion
    FAQs

    How to Make Customers Loyal?

    How to reduce customer friction?

    Understand the customers’ need

    In the business, As a first step, understanding customer’s problem is important. Know who your buyer is and what they are looking for. When you identify the customer’s needs and understand what they are expecting from you, then you will reduce the customer friction and make their experiences will be more pleasing.

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    Happy employees create happy customers

    A business is successful when they have happy employees. It is the responsibility of a business to prepare their employees well so that they can clearly explain and brief it to the customers. This type of clear human interaction will reduce frictions. The employees will also know the skill to satisfy the customers with theirs needs. When the employees are made comfortable they in turn help in increase the business by understanding the customer’s needs. When the employees are happy, the customers are also happy. ‌‌

    Improve customer Interaction

    Improving Customer Interaction
    Improving Customer Interaction

    Lack of customer interaction is the major cause of customer friction. If you want your customers to invest more in your company or brand, then it is important to improve your company’s website, train your employees well as they represent your company’s pride and create informative posters. Whether it is online or offline, provide a helpful platform for your customers to directly interact with your products or services.‌‌

    Maintain quality design

    It is important to have a well-oriented and clutter-free website or an interface that will allow customers to show more interest in your company or brand. When you have a clear web design that equalizes the market standards, half of the friction is reduced. When a company provides many useful ways to stay connected with your product like pamphlets well-informed websites, et cetera this will ease the customer friction and increase your business. ‌‌

    Use persuasive content

    The content must be clear and to the point, where it is a website or social media or blog. Proper content will answer many of the questions of customers and they show more interest in your brand or product. There must be a clear call to action that will lead the customers to additional information or the opportunity to buy your products. ‌‌

    Answer the questions before they ask

    Having good communication with the customers is the best way to serve your customers well. Communication means having real-time notifications about the purchases, shipping and follow-ups to make sure that your customers are satisfied with your products or services. Also, place a FAQ section on your website which will help the customers to know more about your company and its products. ‌‌

    Taking the feedback

    When people buy your products, ask them for their valuable feedback. Feedback also give insights into the customer’s satisfaction. You can improve your weak points and serve your customers with the best quality of products. You can also make customers interview to understand their pain points and try to fill those gaps. In this way, you can remove the customer friction completely and focus on building your brand/company.

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    Follow-up with the regular customers

    Regular customers are the best source to know about the hindrances created by any of your products/services. On this basis, you can improve the defective areas and reduce customer friction. If you follow up with these customers they will identify the changes exactly and also help to boost the word of mouth marketing.

    Conclusion

    Customer friction lowers your brand and also affects your business. Following the above strategies will help your company to have happier and loyal customers. When a company or business reduces the frictions, it will decrease your unnecessary investments in other things, increase the purchasing base for your customers.

    The digital world has eliminated the global barrier, thus it is important to make your process and information as simple as possible to reach out to a more customer base. Simplifying the content and website is very important as research says that- “78% of customers cancelled their orders/purchases because they were not happy with the company’s services”. So invest in good website design, train your employees well, attract more customers by reducing customer friction as ‘word of mouth marketing is still a KING’.

    FAQs

    What are the other frictions that reduce your customer base?

    The friction varies from business to business. Some of the common customer frictions are poor website quality, poor customer service, limited business hours, negative reviews, improper content and many more.

    What is the difference between customer friction and poor customer service?

    Customer friction is caused by flaws in the product or its process. This will reduce the customer base. Whereas poor customer service is a service that does not meet the customer’s needs. An increase in customer friction leads to poor customer service.

    How to improve customer satisfaction?

    There is a number of ways to track your customer needs and serve better. Few are taking feedback, conducting customer interviews, create customer journey maps etc.

    ‌‌

  • Top 10 Ways to Build Customer Trust in Online Business

    In family or in business, every successful relationship involves trust. Trust determines the progress that we make in life. People can lose trust in you as a result of you being negative, self-centered, selfish or even ungrateful. In our daily life, trustworthiness is always evaluated. It increases our credibility. Nowadays every business wants to go digital as it is quicker, more efficient and hassle-free than doing offline business. Doing business online means you are dealing with people you don’t know and have never met before. Therefore, creating a climate of trust with your clients is very crucial to make your online business grow. So, if you are into online business or are planning to foray into the same, here are a few tips that will help you to earn customer trust.

    10 Ways to Build Customer Trust
    FAQ’s
    Conclusion

    10 Ways to Build Customer Trust

    1. Be clear

    Being straightforward in your business is what will determine its growth. Customers get irritated when they realize you are not transparent with your service or product. For example, they might like the product and in the process they realize later there are some hidden costs in it. Be clear with the terms and conditions, pricing and discounts if any. Credibility is easily lost when you keep fishy deals.

    giphy-1

    2. Timely response to client’s problems

    No one is perfect in this world. And we all know customer relationship is very vital. Products we sell sometimes are faulty even right from the company perspective. Be honest and respond to your client’s problems on time. Sometimes it becomes scary when a customer buys a product and realizes they cannot find you or cannot be assisted in any way.

    3. Video charting

    Online selling involves dealing with clients around the world. We need to invest in technology where for example videos with customers can be recorded. This will create a platform to attend to customer’s queries and also engage other viewers. In the process of interacting, this could be a way of selling your personality and also such videos with customers will build the credibility of your brand among new and potential customers.

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    StartupTalkyRishabh Rathi

    4. Create room for teleconferences

    Sometimes we tend to lose focus when we look at the cost of something before doing a cost-benefit analysis. Create dates for questions and answer sessions and let your clients participate. Customers should have an avenue to share with you the pros and cons of your product. This will also help you to improve the quality as per their preference.

    5. Remain positive when corrected

    We all make mistakes. Sometimes you might publish information that has small mistakes like spelling or others. When customers try to correct you, don’t cover-up. Admit, make necessary changes and move on.

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    6. Add and implement testimonials

    In order to keep trust online, testimonials are one of the key things you should put in place. Ask for consent from customers and include them on the page. Readers will be able to access it. People want to be sure you have worked with other people. Especially B2B companies gain a lot of credibility as a result of this.

    7. Business rating

    Involve your business in relevant rating groups. This assures customers that your goods meet the minimum standards and are valid and recommendable to use. With business rating, consumers can do marketing for you and get valid feedback. This brings a better understanding of how best you can serve your customers.

    StartupTalky User Rating

    8. Document a case study

    It is very important to carry out an intensive analysis of a product. A case study captures the reality of the product. This will give the clients a picture of how a product helped someone before and how could currently help them. It can also promote ideas and innovation.

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    9. Post credentials

    Clients would always like to hear if the product they want to use is legally accepted or is insured. Customers also want to know if you are a registered member of any organization/body. This convinces them that your product is right trusted and regulated.

    10. Publicity

    Without looking at the expense side, you need to get your business to media sources. People highly trust materials publicized. The more people hear about your brand or see your brand, the more they trust in your brand.

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    FAQ’s

    What is consumer trust?

    The trust between a consumer and a brand is just as important as any other relationship.

    How do you gain customer trust?

    These are some ways you can build customer trust & loyalty

    • Offer Excellent Customer Service.
    • Publish Customer Reviews and Testimonials.
    • Be Transparent.
    • Ask for Feedback.
    • Create a Loyalty Program.
    • Always Put Your Customers First.

    How do brands build trust?

    Your brand trust relies on what you say to your customers, how you say it, and how you prioritize their needs.

    How is brand trust measured?

    Brand trust can also be measured by analyzing social media content, by tracking consumer habits, and through internal organizational tracking.

    Conclusion

    In this online world, we interact with people from various backgrounds and diverse cultures. Hence it is important to remove unnecessary fear and suspicion to earn faith from customers, and the above-listed steps will surely help you in doing so. Know about some other great ways to build customer trust? We will love to hear from you in the comments below!