Customer Insights Every Business Owner Should Know
The key to success in today’s small business can be summed up in three simple words. “Know your customer.”
It is a perfect adage for today’s environment in which longstanding practices and realities are melting away to reveal a transformed landscape where opportunities are abundant, but often more obscured. In this new environment, customer insight is not only important, but also imperative.
It is no secret. Small business profitability is deeply connected to customer insight.
But what is customer insight?
Customer insight means having knowledge about customers and markets that helps structure thinking and decision making. It’s about having the whole picture, visible to the whole organization, from executive to customer service.
Customers expect you to know who they are, what they want, and how they want to be addressed. They want to converse with you. They want to be listened to.
Consider these recent consumer survey findings from the analyst firm Digital Clarity Group:
- Only one percent felt their customer expectations were always met.
- Around 89 percent had switched providers due to poor experiences.
- A full 82 percent said that the company they abandoned could have taken steps to keep their business.
What does this tell us? It means gaining customer insight is one of the most important things in business.
The source of insight
The next question we should be asking is, where can we obtain customer insight data? Customer insight comes from combining data from a number of sources. It is about using all data sources and applying the correct weight to them.
Insight comes from compiling and combining evidence, from data, to paint a picture. Merging the market research and database marketing teams is a step in the right direction, but it’s only part of what is required to create insight.
Part of this process is to know your customer’s touch point data. The following are sources of important customer insight data:
These sets of data can be generated from the following channels:
- Social media data
- Enterprise data
- In store talks
- Email communication
- Website logs
- Phone communication
- News media
- Syndicated research data
- Forums and review sites
The challenge most business owners face is leveraging the data they collect in order to create the right marketing mix. They struggle to aggregate the data to form the right customer insights and disseminate the right actions.
Customer insight requires that small business owners address the following points.
- Who are your most valuable customers (MVCs)
- What do they want to purchase?
- What motivates them to purchase?
- Beyond transaction, how can you interact with your MVCs in a relevant and profitable manner?
- How can you customize aspects of your product or service in order to meet the individual needs of your MVCs
Indeed, having the answers to the above questions is no longer a luxury. Small business owners must not only find answers but also act on those solutions in order to drive growth and profitability of their businesses.
The ability of firms to understand customers one at a time across multiple channels will mean the difference between success and failure because customer-based strategies are the key to competitive differentiation in today’s business world.
Knowing how, when and what to offer a customer can mean the difference between a profitable versus an unprofitable business.
According to Data Mine, you know you are on the right path and have the right customer insight in place when you have adequately answered the following critical questions.
- What is the aim of this organization?
Why was the organization formed? It is important to have the big picture even as you go about your daily duties. Unfortunately, many small business owners get consumed with daily tasks that they forget the mission statement of the company.
What is the organization’s customer acquisition strategy?
Every organization must have a marketing strategy. Doing business without a marketing strategy is like driving in the dark without the headlights. You risk not only getting involved in a fatal accident, but you also risk moving in the wrong direction.
What do we already know (not think we know)?
Obviously, you already know a few things about your customers. It is important to be aware of what you already know so that you can have a starting place.
- What do we need to know?
Now that you know what you know, it is time to know what you need to know. Identify the knowledge gaps and get the right information. Find out what data you need to collect and what tools you need to collect the data and collect it.
· How are we going to priorities what is needed?
Bearing in mind the constraints of time resources, identify the most urgent needs.
How will we ensure insight is retained in the business?
After gathering the customer insight, you need to ensure that it is retained in the business.
In short, insight is provided when the right questions are asked and solutions provided. The following illustration illustrates this very well.
The building blocks of customer insight are:
· Clearly defined company aim and objectives
· Customer driven marketing
· Organized and accessible data
· The right people in the insight team
· Knowledge management
In order to achieve customer insight, people must work collaboratively in the organization and have a clear data strategy.
Customer insight is not employing an analyst, or even a team of analysts. It requires organizational commitment to change. If it was easy, every organization would have customer insight sorted.
Mjrvisuals can help you increase your reach out of that content in your website through our expertise. We run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
Web design Tricks to Build Customer Loyalty
What are some of the elements in website design that one must include when looking to build customer loyalty? If you are looking to build a website for your small business, you know very well that nurturing customer loyalty is an important priority. Unfortunately, many businesses miss the opportunity to build customer loyalty and retain existing clients through their websites. You can get more out of your existing customers as well as new prospects if you incorporate the following elements in your website.
- Responsive Design
More and more business owners and agencies are embracing responsive web design and in this age of mobile technology, why would anyone be left behind?
Customers don’t want to struggle with websites that aren’t mobile friendly. Statistics show that non-responsive websites are likely to lose more than half of their potential customers because more than 50% of searches are now done through mobile devices. Moreover, customers who access your site are likely to access it in future using multiple devices. In other words, even if people visit your site via their desktop, they might get disoriented the next time they visit it using their mobile devices and it is not responsive.
You can have the best product in the world, but if your website isn’t designed to be mobile responsive, you are losing tons of customers to your competitors.
Therefore, it is important to look for a professional custom web design service that can create a responsive website.
- Encourage referrals
Did you know that a well-designed website can help to facilitate referrals? The most loyal customers are acquired through client-to-clients referral networks and recommendations. Looking for web design packages that are network-driven can make the difference between struggling to get clients and enjoying a constant stream of new leads.
You can encourage your existing customers to refer your business by giving them special bonuses for every new business they bring. People are more likely to believe friends who have done business with you than some ad in their sidebar. So you should make it easy for customers to refer other customers to you.
- Social media share buttons
Social media buttons are essential if you want your content to be shared widely. When your audience find your content valuable, they are likely to share it via their social media accounts. This is a free and effective way of marketing your website. In order to incorporate unique social media share buttons in your website, look for a custom web design agency that knows how to create elegant buttons.
As a rule of thumb, your social media share buttons should big, prominent, unique and beautiful. The only way to achieve that is to look for a web designer that knows what they are doing. Incorporate social media share and like buttons into every page of your website to enhance maximum engagement with your audience.
- Offer great value/offer irresistible value proposition
Customers come to your website because they want or need something. Give them solutions that will solve or help them solve their problems.
Through a custom website layout that promises value to your customers, you are able to gain more customers. It is advisable that you offer a freebie such as free eBook, webinar, and course or trial product so that your customers can have a taste of your services and content before paying for them. If it is what they are looking for, they will be more than ready to pay for the full service.
Having said that, your website layout must be neat, impeccable and functional in order to capture the attention your customers and entice them to sign up with your free offer or trial.
- Get customized web design
A customized web design enhances personal engagement with your customers. Customers want to enjoy personalized services. Customers also want to get assurances they can get hold of you through your phone or email when they want to. Therefore, your email, phone number and physical address should be prominently displayed in case customers want to reach you for whatever reason. It is also inspires confidence in your customers.
Don’t forget to include a comment form so that customers can give you feedback. In addition to that, it is good to have live chat capabilities. The more your customers are easily able to get in touch with you the better.
Are you Utilizing the Power of YouTube Marketing
If you have been ignoring the impact of YouTube marketing, then you have been committing a cardinal marketing sin. There are some shocking statistics that will show you just why YouTube marketing has become a big hit. Nielsen report shows that in the year 2011, internet video streaming views increased by 35% compared to only 0.2% increase in television views in America. Mobile video viewing also increased by 20%; therefore, it is clear that internet video marketing (like YouTube) is now more popular, cheaper, and result oriented than the traditional TV marketing. As a matter of fact, the number of people who visit YouTube for entertainment, research, and education is alarming. YouTube is now the second most search engine by volume.
However, something else you should know is that about 35 hours of videos are being uploaded in YouTube every minute, meaning if you take 10 minutes to read this article, you will meet about 350 hours of newly uploaded YouTube videos. So what? So, it means that if you are thinking of using YouTube to advertise your products, then you should bear in mind that competition is extremely high; so, you need to approach it with some plan if you hope to achieve positive results. In other words, just uploading a video does not necessarily mean that you'll automatically get YouTube hits.
The following are two suggestions to get you started on how to get positive YouTube performance:
1. Just like a website, content is king, and good quality is paramount. Please invest some time to create a quality and compelling video before you upload. Potentials customers should find your videos useful, engaging, and attractive to view. If you let them feel like they have wasted their precious moment viewing you video, be sure that the video will never go viral, or worse still, they wont come back. The rule of the thumb is this: the video should address the needs of the viewers. Anything else is thrash. Therefore, invest some time in researching on what the customer needs and create something relevant. For instance, it doesn't help uploading a video that talks about meditation, yet you are selling cars. In that case, you would want to talk about 'how to maintain a car'.
2. Since it is Google that owns YouTube, you have to play by Google Search optimization rules to get an edge. For instance, in order for the video to be findable, it must have a title, good descriptions, and tags, among others. Also, you should create a brand if you want to attract and retain customers. This doesn't have to be done with massive investment; all you need is to be consistent with your content, create a similar backgrounds, create a playlist for the most popular videos, and choose an appropriate layout.
All in all, taking your business online is not an option in this internet age if you are to stay profitable, and relevant. YouTube presents you with one of the best channel of informing the online users about your presence; hence you should take advantage.
Cheap Marketing Ideas you can implement on your Online and Offline Business
Don’t have many bucks to spend on your small business or start-up? Establishing an efficient marketing strategy is sometimes a challenge for small business owners in Australia because they are unable to allocate considerable funds for marketing; most of them operate on a shoestring budget. You don’t have to break the bank to market your small business in Australia.
Moreover, very day, we hear from small business owners who think they need special skills to reach their customers. Many of these Australian small business owners eventually get overwhelmed by the number and the complex marketing options available, and end up sitting on the sidelines because they are confused where to start. In this article, we will look at 77 local marketing ideas for small business owners in Australia.
Positioning and branding
- Build brand identity
Building your business brand identity can have a big impact
- Add emotion to your brand
Emotional branding is defined as the successful attachment of a specific emotion to a brand.
At one of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) conferences in Chicago, Jay Baer asked a room full of roughly 1,000 B2B marketers, “Are you more interesting than my wife?”
Can you think of the people you have had an emotional connection with in your life? How did they impact on your life? Now think about the brands and see the common threats among them.
It is true for brands as it is for people: to break through in modern marketing, small business owners in Australia need to be more interesting and relevant in the moment.
Brands need to connect with people in the way a close friend would—through emotion—in order to build, long-lasting, and quality relationships. There are huge opportunities for retail stores to take advantage of emotional branding.
According to one research, smell is powerful when it comes to persuading someone to buy a product. Stores using certain scents in their stores have been found to have a 30% increase in sales.
A study by University of Wollongong and Murdoch University in 2012, emotional branding is becoming widely used globally. According to Dr Steve Bellman of Murdoch University’s Audience Labs, marketers are tapping into customer’s feelings to market their brands. Another study shows men who show love for their brand beer purchase 38% more beer than the average.
Therefore, emotional branding can lead to substantially more sales without companies having to rely on discounts and promotions. On the flip side, however, creating that emotional connection can be a difficult task.
How brands can connect emotionally
- By telling a story that inspires an emotional connection:according to Beth Comstock, General Electric Chief Marketing Officer, you can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything. Every brand has stories to tell.
- By allow their audience to be the real heroes: imagine who emotionally connected your brand would be by showcasing how your product has changed lives. Simply give your audience a voice, a platform and face to be heard.
- By being authentic: don’t be afraid to embrace your inner geek. Remain who you are and don’t try to be like who you are not. At Bizify, we try to remain true to ourselves. We try to help startups find their feet and we intend to remain true to that mission.
- By embracing the opportunity to surprise and delight:surprising and delighting customers can be an effecting marketing strategy. Use social media and mobile to spark moments of happiness in customers and you will be surprised at its effectiveness. Coca-Cola has really perfected this art.
- Create an irresistible value proposition
A value proposition is a statement that explains what value you provide to your customers and how you do it uniquely. Establishing a substantive value proposition is critical if you want to stand above the crowd. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs loose out because they fail to articulate a unique value proposition.
Be clear on what your business stands for. What is your promise? How will you put out a consistent and passionate message that attract the right candidate? This will also help you to hire the right people and develop products and services that are aligned with your unique value proposition.
- Be careful with launching too many brands
The big problem for many businesses is they think more brands will make them more successful but they have neither the architecture nor the capacity to manage a multiplicity of brands well. Businesses can increase profits by deleting none-performing brands. Even though revenue may fall in the process, reducing the number of brands will be beneficial in the long run.
Multiband strategies are likely to suffer from diseconomies of scale because of the hidden costs. By letting go off weak, declining and marginally profitable brands, you will be freeing resources to make your few remaining brands better and more attractive to customers. Thus, killing some brands in your portfolio may sometimes be the best way for your business to serve the customers.
- Package your products
Packaging is an important element when it comes to marketing. How you package your products can attract or repel customers. Is your packaging visually attractive through shape, color, design and does it communicate the right brand ideals. If not, it might be time to revamp the way you package your products.
Why You Need a Quality Business Website
It is no longer debatable whether you need a website for your business or not. In order to remain competitive and relevant to the modern way of doing business, you need to have a business website to promote your goods and services.
It is, therefore, not a question of whether you need a website or not, but the quality of website you need. This is an age where everything is online. In fact, when people want certain information, the first place they go to is the Internet. That means if you want to compete effectively you need to have a website that ranks high in the search engines.
It doesn't matter what type of business you do. It does not matter whether you are selling services or tangible goods. It doesn't matter where you are located. What matters is the fact that you are online and competing with other business; both small and big corporations. Whatever the case, business websites create a big difference if they are of quality types.
What is a Quality Website?
A quality website is a website that is not just appealing from its overall look, but one that also contains quality content. Actually, quality, SEO friendly and relevant content comes first in the rankings of the features of a good site. Search engines like Google have designed algorithms that have the capability to sift spam sites from quality sites; therefore, if your website has low quality content, then it will suffer greatly in search engine rankings. Remember visitors who come to your site are only interested in relevant, accurate, and updated information, and if they can't find that in your site, they will quickly navigate away to another website or blog which has the information they are looking for.
Avoid high bounce rates
There is nothing as bad as having high bounce rates from your website because it affects your search engine rankings, as well as denying you the opportunity to profit from the potential customer. If other webmasters find out that you have quality content, chances are that they will link to your site. This can be a big boost to your site performance because search engines greatly value inbound links (the number of links that link to your site). Simply put, content is the king.
What a business website can do for you
It is quiet unfortunate that there are still some people who underestimate the significance of creating a quality website for their businesses. Some of them think that websites are only meant for news agencies, sports, bloggers, and government agencies, among others. The truth is that so long as you own a brick and mortar shop, you also need to open your business to the global customer base in the form of a website. You can view the website as a virtual shop. One of the best blessings we have had in the 21st century is the Internet. Why? Because it offers a level playing field for everyone, whether you own a small business or you own a multinational company.
Remain Open 24/7
Being open 24/7 is something that is next to impossible with the traditional brick-and-mortal shop. Moreover, it enables you to sell to anyone, anywhere in the world so long as you can cater for shipping arrangement. In addition, having a website legitimates your business, thereby, boosting the confidence of your potential clients. In other words, it makes your look professional. Most importantly, it is the perfect and more convenient platform from which you can offer customer service to your customers.
It is also important to note that websites are no different from the traditional shop fronts. They also need to be marketed and advertised to attract the attention of potential customers. With millions of other websites competing for the attention of a customer, it is easy to fail to get noticed, and even if you get noticed, it is easy to be abandoned by the customer for the next site. Lest you forget, the next competitor is only a click away. Therefore, it calls for a serious marketing campaign, advertising, and search engine optimization strategies to make it. Simply creating a website and leaving it there isn't going to make any difference.
Let Mjrvisuals help you engage that content in your website through our expertise, we run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
Ensuring that You Achieve Online Reputation Management
Prudent Online reputation management for your business is very vital for the growth of your business. Your reputation is everything when it comes to growing your business online.
Online reputation management refers to a set of approaches and techniques that are aimed at improving and increasing a particular company’s online reputation. If the online reputation management is handled well, it can make a company successful; otherwise, it can break a company’s chance of further progress and success if it is mismanaged. The thing is that you are not going to leave your brand, business, or personality to chance. Apart from the products, good reputation is what the business really has.
Why Reputation Management is Important
Online Reputation management is very important to individuals and business. Professional reputation is vital, and need to be maintained at all times in order to achieve better results in search engines. The products of good reputation include receiving favorable customer testimonials for your goods and services as well as having high market ratings, compared to your peers. Suppose that your company receives too many negative comments concerning the products you sell, what would be the repercussion? Of course there is no need to go into that, but there is only one thing you will be sure to face-stagnation or decline of your business performance. From the customer perspective, a company what people say about a company is a very significant means of making a purchase decision.
Business entities and individuals should approach their online reputation management from a proactive angle. In other words, they have to actively control how their brand, product and company’s image is painted to the outside world. It involves actively removing negativity by substituting it with positive feedbacks to ensure that the business achieves longevity.
How Can Companies and Individuals Effectively Manage their Online Reputation?
One of the most popular approaches to achieving good reputation is by hiring an online reputation expert, whose work will be to specialize in managing online reputation. This will also include repairing negativity and introducing measures that will ensure that the company’s online reputation is well taken care of. A good example is where you can find a dissatisfied customer or a rogue competitor generating several articles in forums and blogs discrediting your product or services. In such a case, it is the work of the online reputation expert to counter such claims through the most effective means. Figuratively speaking, a good online reputation management involves preventing fires of negativity from being lit, as well as putting off those fires if they have already been lit, through feedback.
Normally, online reputation experts would monitor social sites, forums and blogs to scavenge for any information go around about the company. Generation quality, informative and promotional content is one way of enhancing a reputation of a company. The company should also integrate its website to social sites like Facebook, Linkedln, twitter, and YouTube, among others. A great emphasis should be put on the positive customer testimonials, product reviews and feedback. However, this doesn’t mean that negative feedback from customers should be ignored.
Traditional methods of maintain a company’s reputation or brand can still be utilized. Such methods may include billboards, fliers, mass media, press releases, and promotional campaigns.
How to convert your cold leads into hot prospects
No doubt, you have worked hard to get the leads. But the difference between successful marketers and the average is that the successful ones will convert their leads into prospects while the mediocre ones will leave their leads undecided.
However, there is a general misconception among business persons that they should convert every prospect they get caught in the trap of thinking they can while in the real sense, they end up wasting a lot of valuable time in trying to do the impossible. Here are some suggestions on how to turn those cold into hot prospects
Create an email list and add your new lists into your periodic campaigns
If you run a monthly email campaign, you can use it to follow-up on those prospects that have not made up their minds. Some people will be temporarily distracted while others will have their situations change, and the best thing to keep them on track is your periodic email updates.
Simply stay in touch
With so many things happening, your name is more likely to be forgotten as soon as you speak to your lead. Therefore, you must keep in touch to keep your name in their minds. One moment they could think they don’t need to join your business but their situation could change and change their minds. Keep in touch through newsletters, postcards, letters and articles, among other things.
Approach their business executive assistants and learn about their personality
Making use of Executive assistant is important as this will help you to know the person you are dealing with and the best approach to take. They might also be able to give you the reason why you were not successful in making the sale so that you can approach the person differently in the future.
How important is the sale? 
The thing you should ask yourself is how important the sale is going to be. If the sale is important, you need to determine other approaches or actions you are willing to take to make the sale happen. You need to find creative ways of convincing the lead(s) to buy supposing the sale was the most important thing in your career.
As already mentioned there is nothing you can do if your lead suddenly turns cold and proves difficult to convert to prospect despite doing everything possible to convince them. Rather than live in denial, you should gather courage and move on. Remember you need to focus your energy on other opportunities. It is important to bear in mind that you only have a limited time to do your business and you cannot spend long periods on one prospect. Actually knowing when to quit and move on is one of the key strength of entrepreneurs.
Spinning your wheels trying to convince unmotivated prospect to change their mind is a self-defeating approach. Even if you succeed in converting them, you will not get much value from them. Simple question to ask is: “what is the best use of my time right now?” dropping a potential lead may be difficult but it is worth it.