Tag Archives: customers
How to speak the language of your customer
Good quality communication is always about the recipient. To reach out to your customers you need to speak their language and tell them what they need to know in a way that they understand. It is tempting as a business owner to talk about ‘our products’ or ‘our solutions’ but people are coming to you because of their desires or their problems. Speaking the language of your customers is essential in making a sale, and as a customer focused marketing agency we can help you to identify how to speak to them in the best way possible for your business.
Using the right pronouns – When selling to your customers as we’ve already said you always need to talk about their problems and needs. Using the words ‘you’, ‘your’ and ‘yours’ makes the sale or product about them instead of being about the company. When you talk about what ‘we’ do, you are excluding the customer from the conversation. It is essential that the customer is included in the conversation by telling them how ‘they’ will benefit. Make it personal to the customer to engage them more effectively.
Use common language – There is a difference between the words you can use to describe a product or service. This difference between the words you choose can either alienate or engage the customer. While both choices of word may be correct, you need to tailor your language to the customer and not to yourself. Remember that your understanding of your business will in most circumstances exceed the customers and you need to speak to them in a manner that they will clearly understand without all your industry background and knowledge. The key is knowing the demographic of your target customer, including their level of education, interests and experiences. This will help you pitch your choice of language and style of how you address them correctly.
Explain everything – While it may be easier for you to refer to things with acronyms or jargon, this is not easier for the customer to understand. A customer may be left confused by jargon which can leave them unsure about the purchase they are making. They will be unlikely to know what HPWB (high pressure water blasting) means, but they will understand that you are cutting the material. When communicating with a customer you should lead with the features and benefits and avoid using industry shorthand and technical terminology and should instead explain everything and why such details matter to them as the end user. It may take longer but this will lead to greater customer understanding, which in turn will culminate in better buy-in and results. A good trick is to imagine you are explaining the information to a child or friend.
Make the decision today and call us here at to discuss your specific requirements , I am sure we can help you and at the end of the day it’s just a phone call !
We would be delighted to listen to your business goals and help you realise them, please get in touch today on 01392 241653 or contact us through our website here, we’d be delighted to have a no obligation chat to see if we can help your business grow.
GDPR is your business ready?
With the deadline for GDPR fast approaching you still have time to get your business ready and this checklist may help you do just that.
Your current business data
Your business will undoubtably hold data already and the questions to ask is do you know what this data is, i.e. name, address, job title, contact details? Where it came from, i.e. sign up forms, events etc. Why you have this data i.e. marketing, admin? and finally do you share this data with anyone or any other company. This is whats called a data audit and if you’ve not done on then you need to.
Is everyone in the business on board?
The implementation of GDP effects everyone in your business, so everyone needs to be aware of it and what the implications are. This is likely to mean changes are required but how will you know if you don’t bring your employees on board. We are all in some way data collectors so we all need to be a ware of our responsibilities when we collect data from anyone.
What information do you need?
Even business will need a privacy policy that covers what you do with data you collect and a key question to ask in this is what information you need and why you need it, it may well be you need a post code for possible deliveries or a phone number – please don’t ask for information you do not need.
Consent
For the data you hold and plan to use do you have permission to use this data, this will include things like how you got consent and did this include consent to use in the way you wish to do so. Also if you got consent through a simple form that the owner must be able to withdraw consent in a similar way, certainly it should be an easy process and no more difficult than how it was gained in the first place.
Unauthorised Loss of Data
Every business will need a procedure in place that covers the potential loss of data you hold, so you need to make yourself aware of what you need to do and what timescales are in place to fulfill this requirement. It is worth mentioning that the penalties can be unlimited by the Information Commissioners Office if you have a loss of data and you do not have a plan for managing this.
Getting your business facing these challenges and have them working for you shouldn’t be an afterthought – the businesses that succeed will be the ones that have a clear plan in place. If you need help in ensuring your business has the right tone of voice then please call us on 01392 241653 or contact us through the website here for a no obligation conversation.
Also if you need help with a GDPR documentation we can recommend Herbert Ball LLP and you can visit their website here.
Why your business needs to have goals
Every business needs to have goals. Without goals, you will carry on as you are and will fall into bad habits that can cost you money in the long run, here at Gleave Media we work with digital goals so we can clearly share with our customers what we are aiming to achieve and map the route we take to achieve them. But why does your business need goals and what happens if you dont have any?
Increased inefficiencies
Without clearly defined goals your business will suffer from increased inefficiencies. Setting business goals can help you by allowing you to constantly review systems and see how they can be improved, but without them, things will carry on as they are and become more lax over time. Businesses without goals often end up with increased inefficiencies, simply because they are not working towards improving their systems.
Decreased income
Without goals in place, it is common for businesses to suffer from decreased income. When there are no goals there is no drive to maximise sales, upsell and find new customers because there is no clear reward for doing so. Where goals are not in place it is common for businesses and employees to settle with what they get and not use initiative to maximise opportunities. With sales goals and targets to work towards, however, there is a constant motivation to work towards this.
Stifled growth
Expanding or growing a business is an expensive and complicated process that simply will not happen if you do not have it as a goal to do so. For many small and medium enterprises that have not set goals to grow and expand, this is the factor that eventually defeats them. Businesses need to be able to grow to meet demand or they will have to turn work away and will get a bad reputation for doing so, which in turn will harm business. Without goals in place, the only result is stifled growth.
So why set Digital Marketing goals?
We always aim to set clear goals as we believe they are vital in any business because it sets the direction and focus that we are working towards and ideally for the company to increase sales and grow trade. Setting goals can be difficult from the subjective position of an owner, where we come in is that we can help you to look objectively at your business and determine how these digital marketing goals can help you to expand and grow.
Getting your business facing these challenges and have them working for you shouldn’t be an afterthought – the businesses that succeed will be the ones that know their tone of voice and ensure it is used across all communication. If you need help in ensuring your business has the right tone of voice then please call us on 01392 241653 or contact us through the website here for a no obligation conversation.
What is Beyond CRM for My Company?
The customer relationship management system or CRM is a powerful tool for managing all aspects of the customer experience. As a business concern starting out, one of the most important investments that you can make is in a CRM system capable of managing customer profiles, determining how best the business delivers on its promises and rewarding customer loyalty for continued support and advocacy in terms of referrals and additional business.
The CRM however is not the end all to be all with respect to your management of the customer relationship. The information contained within the CRM is useless if not used in an effective way for you to make process improvements or deliver on the expectations that your customers have of you and the business. Here is a look at what is beyond the CRM and what you should do to better manage information and make it work to your advantage as a new or emerging business owner.
What should a CRM Should Drive My Business to Do
CRMs represent a dynamic tool that can integrate various functions and processes within the business. This integration allows different departments and disciplines to communicate with one another and provide support to customers, the critical lifeblood of any organization. Through the full utilization of the CRM and all its functions, both as a data mining tool and as a interactive communication hub, you can develop a way to involve, engage and fully meet the needs of your customer. This helps distinguish you from our competitors and put you in position to grow at a potential unseen.
Understand that CRM relates to an aspect of the customer relationship but does not take place of the physical aspect of the customer experience. If you do not follow-up on the information being provided to you, whether it is an answer to an inquiry by a customer, a request for information, a follow-up call on a complaint, etc. you miss an opportunity to meet the expectations of the customer. Such a missed opportunity could prove a detriment to you down the road, particularly if you are a business who depends on its reputation and word of mouth as an aspect of your marketing and outreach. The more you humanize the customer experience beyond the CRM, the better you will be at retaining long lasting customer relationships.
Should I Consider a Cloud Based CRM?
A customer relationship management system (CRM) can be the heart of your business. CRMs drive your interactions with customers, manage contacts and provide you with a way to increase sales and expand your customer base. You should consider as an emerging business how the inclusion of a CRM benefits your organization.
What are some of the reasons for considering a move to the cloud as a storage option for your CRM system? Do you lose control or access to the functionality of your CRM when hosted in the cloud? What do you give up moving to the cloud or, what do you gain from a cloud-based solution for managing your valuable customer information?
Here is a look at these questions and why a cloud-based CRM makes sense for you.
The Perception of Cloud-Based CRMs
Cloud-based computing is the buzzword for our time as it relates to all businesses, large and small. The simplest way to think about the way cloud computing works is by considering placing your files online as oppose to maintaining them remotely, through storage servers you own and control. Moving data, particular that containing proprietary customer information essential to building your business and managing customer relationships automatically invokes thoughts and fears about:
- Security and safety – is my information protected in the cloud and subject to loss or hackers?
- Accessibility – what type of access issues are present if I move my valuable business information into the cloud?
- Portability – Can I easily move my cloud-based information between sites, users or strategic partners with little to know disruption to my business and efforts to grow and become profitable?
These concerns are real; however the advantages of a cloud-based solution may more than outweigh the concerns you may have.
The Reality of Cloud-Based CRMs
The perceptions about a cloud-based solution for your CRM should be weighed against these advantages:
- Cost – use of a cloud solution saves you on the hardware and personnel costs associated with maintaining your own servers.
- Scalability – the unlimited potential of the cloud as a storage option means it grows as you grow, again lowering your costs associated with investing in hardware and people power.
- Accessibility – data can be access from any device connected to your business, allowing you to grant remote access to your field associates when interacting with customers.
If you are in the process of considering the power of CRMs to harness your business outreach and improve customer outreach and contact, you should also consider how a move to the cloud not only compliments your system but allows you to scale up quickly, lower your costs, and give you a business advantage that allows you to be competitive at a time as an emerging business such advantages are necessary for survival. This is how we’ve grown our business and how we can help grow yours.
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The Importance of Social Media Integration with CRMs
As a small business that is either in the startup phase or looking to ramp up and become competitive, it is important to integrate as much technology as possible in order to streamline your operational capability. One such tool that is important to all businesses is sales automation tool integrated into a customer relationship management system or CRM.
A CRM is simply a tool used to integrate all points of interaction with a customer, from initial enquiry to sale to post-sale follow-up. The capabilities of your CRM system without a fully integrated social media platform is limited in terms of what it can do to grow your aspirations as a business owner. Social media works to keep your business current and relevant with the needs of your customers.
Why CRM/Social Media Integration is Vital
According to the Small Business Social Media Engagement 2015 Digital Marketing Survey published by IT research consultancy Clutch and a survey by IT firm Sprout, the following came to light concerning the use of social media by small business:
63% of millennials use social media to stay up-to-date on the brands they are interested
46% use social media to accomplish their online purchases
53% of small businesses surveyed use social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.)
More than three-quarters of small businesses (76%) see the same or an increase in their social media investment
These numbers more than suggest that social media is a huge influencer on purchasing decisions, particularly for tech savvy millennials. This is an important to note as for example millennials in the USA alone – 80 million consumers – are expected to spend over $10 trillion over their lifetime.
A well integrated and managed CRM with social media will give you the tool to reach this group and effectively engage them as consumers, your business growth depends on you being able to manage and grow this, you can read more about our Sales Automation/CRM on our website here and get a free download that may help in your decision process.
Why put a human face on your business?
In 2016 developing your business is greatly helped by building personal relationships and engaging with your customers and prospects as this will help your business develop brand loyalty and a greater sense of trust. It then follows that people are more likely to trust your business if they know that real people work there, so how do you do that, these are are top tips to put a human face on your business.
1. Use genuine pictures of your team with bios where appropriate.
2. Why not conduct an interview with the MD or a key member of staff.
3. Collate and share images of your products and services that customers have shared with you.
4. Positive feedback from customers and people you work with is always good to share.
5. Why not include a thank you for something that a customer has done for you – could this be a long standing award.
6. Include any charity work any staff member has done, run a marathon for example.
So there you have it just a few examples of how you could put a human face on your business and so develop the trust in how your business is seen by your customers and prospects. How you get this out in front of your customers can be by things like blog posts or email marketing or maybe your audience is of a different demographic so Tumblr or Shapchat is more appropriate?
Whatever this is we can help identify and help your business reach its customers so you can concentrate on managing and growing your increasing enquiry levels, to find out more please contact the team either through the website here or call us on 01392 241653.
The five clear benefits of CRM Software for small business
We work with numerous growing business and help them engage and manage their customer relationships, we know that companies that manage those customer relationships the best are more likely to win than those that do nothing.
This management of customer relationships is the reason why the use of modern web based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems has massively grown in recent years as small and growing businesses are able to adopt those technologies traditionally only open to large business thus making use of CRM Software for small business.
If you are still unsure about how CRM Software for small business could make a change to your business, here are five of the biggest benefits of a well managed and augmented CRM system.
Improved efficiency
A CRM system that can integrate with marketing and sales tools does offer significant efficiencies in replacing none joined up systems. They allow the business to move away from having multiple spreadsheets or checklists by joining all this process into one cloud based efficient system that allows you to track, monitor and engage at every stage of the customer journey.
Better Collaboration
With having one CRM system run your sales and marketing functions you can manage the job functions in your business that allow different employees (departments) to be able to input and increase the value of the customer engagement journey through good training and better data management.
Centralising your data
We’ve written previously about how data is any growing businesses greatest asset and having that data in one place THEM being able to manage run data analysis on this allows you to learn things about and from your customer that simply wouldnt be possible.
Increased accountability
By having a central CRM system for your business you can manage every aspect of that customer relationship thereby ensuring that prospects don’t get lost on bits of paper and they of course add a layer of accountability as you will know who has done what and when thereby managing this customer lifecycle.
Better customer experience
Ultimately, for all of the benefits CRM systems provide to the businesses that use them, the biggest benefit of CRM software for small business is that their use leads to a better overall customer experience.
Customers are more easily and accurately segmented, their needs identified, and because the status of a businesses relationship with them is accurately tracked, then they can interact with them meaningfully at the right times, leading to more sales, faster sales and higher customer retention and satisfaction.
If you would like a non obligation chat with the team at GleaveMedia to understand more about our CRM offering then please get in touch through the website here.
five ways to create amazing customer surveys
We are big believers in customer surveys as a great way of helping you determine which way your online business should proceed and these are are five ways to create amazing customer surveys.
1. Do your research
Any successful survey needs to be as targeted as possible. Don’t just ask your email list, “What products do you want to buy from us?” may not turn up as many good ideas as asking them about specific subjects.
So why not look at your webstats and see which are you best selling products or if you don’t sell online yet your top content pages, if any are similar then why not use this as a starting point for your survey?
2. Draft your questions
This is controversial I know but we think for best results, try and make your survey no more than 10 questions. Most of us have short attention spans and if you bombard your email list with lots and lots of questions you completion rates will fall considerably. Also a Yes or No answer to your questions is great but it won’t give you as much information as a free text box, they will just take more time to collate – but do you want great research to act on?
3. Can you offer an incentive for completing the survey?
Why not come up with an incentive to encourage completion of your survey, this doesn’t have to be cash – Premier Inn for example offer a cash draw for x participants, others may offer an ebook – think different to get people to participate, you won’t regret it.
4. Make your survey work well online
Many web companies will tell you they can hand code you a survey that looks great and works amazingly, why bother just head over to SurveyMonkey or Google the phrase Online Surveys to see what best suits you, these automated surveys can do a lot of the hard work for you and some even offer a free survey solution to trial on…. You generally find the paid upgrades offer some great features like automated follow ups and a custom URL for your survey and stats on sending and the like so don’t be afraid to splash out the costs aren’t significant, on SurveyMonkey a paid plan starts at just £24 per month.
5. Ensure you publicize your survey to prospects, customers and your target audience
Once you have your survey all ready to go, make sure you then tell people about it, some location could be;
• Your business or personal website
• At the end of your news updates
• Included in email newsletters
• On your social media profiles
Don’t forget your target audience may not have time to complete the survey first time, so make sure you tell them once, then again and then again – you want to ensure it gets high completion rates so you have the best feedback to act on.
So there you have it our top five tips to make your online survey amazing, at GleaveMedia we can help integrate your online survey into any Digital Marketing plan and help your business achieve it s targets, just get in touch here.
