1. Be Branded, Be Unique
Whether you’re making a first impression or relating to loyal customers you need to distinguish yourself. Begin by answering the five W’s: Who What Where When Why. What is it that you’re selling? Who’s it for? Why do we need it? Were can we find it? When is it available? Then be sure to create a consistent branded presence across ALL of your channels.
2. Build a strategic website
I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to have a strategic online presence for your business. Why? Because your customers are online and you need to be there to greet them. A strategic website helps you to achieve your business-building goals.
For example, my client Solar Knights (now PassivWorks) wanted a website that acted as a workhorse helping to bring in new business and better leverage their PR efforts. We built the site to include various plugins – news feed, conversion form, blog, twitter feed – all tools which they use to keep their site updated and relevant, beef up their Inbound Marketing efforts and showcase their leadership position in Passive House construction.
3. Optimize your site for Search
Can’t afford a new website? Maybe you can tweak what you have and better optimize it for Search. This might be adding some social media plugins such as a blog and Twitter feed. Google likes dynamic websites; the more you update your content the greater your chances of prompting a search engine to crawl your site. This is a critical component of your SEO and a basic principal of Inbound Marketing.
4. Live it out loud
In today’s online world your online visibility is extremely important. You need to be where your customers are AT in order for them to take notice. There are examples of many brands that were able to build sales simply because of their strong online presence: e.g. in 2009 St Supery winery had a significant decrease in sales from their wine club. To counter this they developed a significant social media presence:
- Hired social media community manager
- Established presence on FB, Twitter, YouTube, Ustream, FourSquare
The results were that they reduced wine club attrition by 50%!
5. Be open authentic and engaged e.g. Tony Hseih, @zappos
I am a huge Zappos fan. Zappos let’s their customers know that they are passionate about creating a positive customer experience. Free shipping, no hassle returns, thank you notes, and surprise priority shipping bonuses are all part of their customer program but in addition, CEO Tony Hseih and 18 of his customer service representatives rotate in/out on Twitter every day to address customer needs and concerns.
6. Cultivate your fan base
If you have customers singing your praises on your Facebook Page then by all means, be sure to thank them. Do this publically and often which will go a long way toward generating good will with your customers. And if you can, reward them with coupons and freebies. Gary Vee calls this the ‘thank you economy’ whereby marketers act out of a sense of gratitude rather than employing a bullhorn to announce their products.
7. Be your own best marketer
Believe it or not, once you engage your marketing brain you will realize that you have many opportunities to plug your business. Sending an email? Be sure to include all of your company URL’s in your signature. Have a LinkedIn account? Why not start a LinkedIn page for your company? Launch a Twitter channel to address customer service issues.
8. Love Your Customers
Happy customers today are the meal ticket of your tomorrow. Recently a Dominio’s Pizza employee called 911 for an elderly person who failed to call in her daily order. This heroic effort garnered all sorts of valuable brand equity for Domino’s. Read on
