Are you utilising all the opportunities currently available to you to market to your prospects and customers, or are you missing chances and potentially losing revenue? Many companies do a lot of marketing work upfront but then don’t nurture their customers once on board. This can result in increased customer churn and lost revenue opportunities. For example, let’s say you spend money and effort developing a marketing campaign which brings in a lead. What do you do with that lead once they contact you? Do you ring them? do you send them some cut through, relevant information? Do you have follow-up emails? Do you have a nurturing process for any that aren’t ready to buy? At the point of sale, do you have a streamlined process and materials? Once you close the sale then what happens? Do you have an on-boarding process and appropriate collateral, emails, etc? Do you have regular customer communications and opportunities to engage and interact with your customers? What process and materials do you have in place to sell more to your existing clients? Knowing how your customer interacts with your business directly and indirectly can be key in providing value, building relationships and driving repeat business. Here are three key areas to focus on to review and improve your customer journey;
- Map out the customer touchpoints – Look at all stages of the marketing funnel from Awareness to Engagement to Sale to On-boarding to Retention and Re-Sale. Look at what communications or marketing you do each at of these points. There is lots of models and templates to help map out your customer touchpoints. Here are links to a couple of examples:
- Mapping Your Customer Journeys Across Touchpoints: Examples and Techniques
- Why Digital Touchpoints are the Key to Your Content Strategy
Alternatively, call in the experts like Blaze Marketing to help you map out the journey and give you unbiased advice on where you can improve and how to do it.
- Identify your gaps – We tend to find some businesses do well in some areas but are almost not existent in others. For example a lot of communications often occur in the lead generation and sales stages but then once on board customers don’t hear much from the company. This is a wasted opportunity and potentially lost revenue – not only do you risk losing customers but you arent utilising the opportunity to sell more to your existing customer base.
- Optimise each touchpoint – What can you be doing better at each of the touchpoints as the prospect/customer moves through their journey with you? Look at what other companies does and see if you can adopt or adapt any ideas. Articulate the process for yourself and your staff clearly identifying what happens at each touchpoint and what is sent to the customer and how. Review and develop materials for each touchpoint to optimise each interaction for example have an email or a potentially a kit that it sent to customers when they sign up that welcomes them and provides key contacts and information on the service or product and how it will be provided to them etc. Encourage them to follow your social media, send a regular newsletter or customer communication. Set up a process for them to feedback information to you, etc.
Having a strong communication and marketing process throughout the customer journey can drive more leads, close more sales, retain more customers and drive more repeat business. It is a bit of work and investment to set up all your processes and develop materials but it will pay dividends in the long run.
