The Inbound Marketing Methodology: Delight

But first, let’s look at how far you’ve come. If you’ve read any of our previous posts on the inbound marketing methodology, you know that your hard work has paid off at this stage. You’ve used content, SEO, and social media to attract visitors to your website. You’ve converted those visitors into leads using forms, long-form content, and other conversion opportunities. And your sales team has closed your leads using lead scoring techniques, workflows, and their CRM.

Delighting people who are already customers is a means of building brand loyalty. Brand loyalty can provide you with repeat business from your current customers and new customers through word-of-mouth promotion. Existing customers spend more and cost 10 times less than attracting someone new through your regular marketing activities. 

So, how do you do it? Here are some techniques that can help.

Send Follow-Up Emails

It’s important to manage and respond to customer messages on every channel they use, but email is still people’s favorite method of communicating with businesses. Just as you created email workflows for your sales prospects, you can create email workflows for your customers. For example, you can send them emails offering special deals and discounts or you can create workflows to address customer queries and comments.

In a follow-up email to your customers, continue promoting content that is relevant to them. You have a good idea of what they need and care about. Prove it with timely and relevant recommendations. Give them updates on what’s happening at your company, inside and out. If you have the capability, you can even create a separate blog or newsletter for your customers.

If you provide your customers with software or some other type of service, you may want to use email to answer questions and concerns. This may require agents to respond, but responding quickly could determine whether you get shining reviews on review sites or not.

Consider other channels your customers might use, such as live chat, online forums, SMS, or a good old-fashioned hotline.

Create Smart Content

Some Content Management Systems, including HubSpot, enable you to create smart content. Smart content changes based on who is viewing it. It can help you increase conversion rates on your website and make your pages more intuitive for customers.

For example, you likely have one or more content fields on your homepage. It only makes sense that your customer of 3 years should see something different when they visit your site than someone who is visiting for the first time. Replace call to action text with customer support text. Change your calls-to-action so they change based on who is looking at them. A visitor might see a button that says, “Download Our Guide,” while a customer sees a “Contact Support” button.

You can do the same thing with forms. If a visitor has already filled out a contact form, the fields will change based on the information you want and the information you’ve already collected about them. A first-time visitor may see a basic contact form while a visitor might see a form to submit a query to your support team.

Host Surveys and Events

A great way to find out what your customers think of you is through a survey. Make it your priority to continue engaging your customers so you can find out if you’re meeting their needs. Their responses will indicate how well you’re serving them, but they may also provide you with ideas of how to tweak your product or service.

Events are one of the best tools for delighting customers. They can vary depending on your goals. Maybe you want to host a regular series of instructional webinars on how to use your product. Or maybe you just want to throw a party for your best customers. Providing help and showing appreciation is a great way to stay top-of-mind and encourage your customers to spread the word.

Events are also marketing opportunities. Take photos and recordings of your events. Post them on your website to show how much you appreciate your customers. Use your webinar recordings as marketing assets. You can even put them behind a form to capture leads.

Use Social Media and Other Tools

Social media is now a ubiquitous tool for most businesses, but how they use it varies widely depending on their goals. Marketers use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms to promote content and bring in more leads. But your customer support team can use them, too.

Some customers may @ your business on social media with questions, suggestions, or concerns. Make sure you have someone monitoring your social media tools to respond to these pings. If it becomes widely known that you are active on social media, more customers may engage with you. People who aren’t customer may become aware of your business.

Who knows? If people love you enough on social media, you may get featured in a magazine article!

Delight

Give the Delight stage as much time and effort as the first three. Just because someone handed you their money doesn’t mean you can drop off the face of the Earth! Follow up with your customers on their favorite channels. Design your website to be helpful to first-time visitors and people who have been with you for years. Hold events that delight them and ask for their feedback with surveys. Talk to them on social media.

Not every brand can turn itself into a lifestyle, but these practices will help you build customer loyalty, at the very least. If they love you enough, they’ll sell your product or service for you!