We all know that the key to making sales is to first generate leads. But at Napier, we also understand that generating high-quality leads is harder than it looks.
This blog details seven common mistakes marketers make within their marketing automation and CRM; and some tips on how you can overcome them, to ensure you are using your marketing automation system to its full potential in order to increase your ROI.
Failing to Segment Your Customers
The benefit of segmenting customers is that you can reach out to them via personalised content to match their current needs at each stage of the funnel. Your customers’ needs will change and evolve over time, so it’s important that your business continuously adapts to provide your customers with the right information. Failing to segment/ group your customers means you risk sending them the wrong information at the wrong time, such as sending irrelevant content that they have no interest in.
Believing It’s a Mass-Produced World
Most recognize that there are no true mass markets anymore. Instead it goes beyond looking at market segments to embrace that ‘every customer has their own market’; with customers demanding a personalised and tailored approach. Here are four top tips towards providing personalised customer service via marketing automation:
- Pay close attention to different channels used by your audience
- Make sure your customers service team moves between channels to follow the customer
- Make sure you are proactive in your customer interactions
- Take customer feedback seriously, and provide regular opportunities for customers to leave feedback
Focusing on Your Worst Customers Instead of Your Best Customers
It may seem convenient to accommodate those hard-to-please customers, but a successful business will develop long-lasting relationships with ideal customers. The strategy is effective and simple, give your higher value customers the attention they deserve, and in return they are more likely to buy from your business again. Businesses should focus on customer delight, as it costs a lot less to retain an existing customer than it does to generate a new customer from scratch. When deciding which of your clients are your ideal customers, take into consideration these questions:
- Are you biggest customers your best customers?
- Can you find a way to learn which customers will generate the most profit in the near future and focus on them?
- Will you only focus on the customers that are the most profitable?
It’s important to understand that your best customers will not always be your biggest customers, and it’s imperative to focus on developing long-lasting relationships by ensuring your customers get the attention they deserve.
Fail to Innovate with Your Customers in Mind
Innovation is the willingness to introduce new ideas and take risks; don’t be afraid to seek new opportunities with your customers in mind.
It’s important to keep your content fresh, and to continuously update and change your approach, so your audience are not receiving the same emails or seeing the same posts again and again.
Forgetting to Measure Customer Service
Adapting to your customers’ needs is important, but you also need to track the impact of those changes. Although you may think you are already listening to your customers, measuring your progress is a more reliable source of measuring your growth. Here are five metrics you can use to help measure your performance:
- Response time – how long does it take you to respond to customer service questions?
- How long does it take you to resolve the customer’s problem?
- What percentage of visitors found what they were looking for?
- Customer rating – ask your customers to give you an overall rating on how good their experience was
- Watch and monitor the mass volume of customer communication across all channels
It’s important to review your metrics regularly and examine your strengths and weaknesses to improve where necessary.
Being Overconfident with Your Company’s Strengths
Although it is good to understand where your company’s strengths lie, there is a fine line between positioning yourself as an expert and being overconfident about what you can achieve. It’s important to understand that every situation is different, and you should never overestimate your ability to impress and delight your customers; as a success for one client, could be a failure for another. To ensure you avoid this situation you can do the following:
- Make a list of your business strengths and ask/ create a survey to see if your customers agree with you.
- Revisit old company data to see if you have improved
- Communicate with stakeholders and discuss how to improve. This will allow you to better focus on your strengths when interacting with customers; an honest discussion will also help you work out what areas need adjusting/amending.
Latching on to the 4Ps
The 4Ps, product, price, promotion, and place are not as relevant as they used to be; when businesses once targeted customers, customers now target businesses. Instead of using the 4Ps, focus on:
- Getting access to the best customers
- Acting quickly and effectively – taking as little of the customer’s time as possible
- Employing the right people who can talk to your customers
- Associate and collaborate with the right partners
- Collect and measure customer data to ensure you continuously improve