It’s hard to re-frame a customer complaint into a gift, particularly when the complaint might involve a lengthy or expensive resolution. But when you consider that a customer’s feedback could streamline your process for designing or refining your marketing strategy, you might decide your customers’ words are a valuable addition.
Here are four ways that customer feedback can help you create a better marketing strategy:
Customer Loyalty Programs: There are a couple of ways that feedback and loyalty can intersect. You can use customer feedback to create special promotions and discounts for loyal purchasers, or you can trade those same perks to get feedback. Consider offering a discount for customers that fill out a survey or submit a review of your website.
Invest in Customer Support: This may not seem like part of your marketing strategy, but it has a lot to do with how satisfied your customers will be. From making sure there are multiple contact channels for customers to use to ensuring that issues are handled and resolved quickly, support can make a big difference in whether customers become advocates for your brand.
Refine Buyer Personas: You think you know what your customers like, their ages, gender and income, but customer feedback can help you gain a more reliable picture. Maybe you’re getting feedback that your products cater to too young a demographic, or that men use your scented soaps just as faithfully as their sisters and wives. Use this information to refine your marketing strategy with better buyer personas.
Improve Your Blog: Through customer feedback, you may find that a lot of customers don’t typically make use of a particular feature of your product, or they may not know that your services solve a common problem. Use your blog to respond to your customers with helpful tips or advice. You can also use your blog to introduce new improvements you’ve added or address a complaint that led to a resolution that you would like to share with all of your customers.
While you never want to make a policy of listening exclusively to your squeaky wheels, a complaint from a customer can be a useful tool for informing your marketing strategy. Our team at SJC can help you learn more unexpected ways to create a better marketing strategy. We would love to chat!