12 Mar Here’s What Customers Really Think About Your Company

Sometimes, knowing what your customers or prospects feel about your company and messaging can be a guessing game. Do they really know what you’re offering or how to utilize your services? Do they understand your call-to-action? Do they know what you’re all about?

If you’re the business owner, C-level representative or a marketer, you care about what others see about your business and how they perceive not only your brand but what you have to offer.
But your customers don’t share these nuggets of information when receiving marketing emails, social media posts, or hear about your brand through general awareness. They don’t openly send you feedback on your newest whitepaper or toolkit just to help you out. Boy, we wish they did!

So why do clients do business with your organization? Why do they subscribe to your social media feed or subscribe to your e-newsletter? And, beyond subscribing and opening, why do they ultimately do business with you and take you up on your offer for your product or service?

Let’s decode your organization’s message and client behavior a bit here.

– Consistency. Is your audience base hearing or seeing your brand name regularly, or periodically? In most cases, when we begin working with a client, their communications are sporadic; causing chaos in how customers see their organization. Sometimes they communicate, perhaps via social media, other times they send inbound marketing here-and-there. Sometimes they may even go months without hearing a word. The point is: be consistent in your messaging. Develop a schedule and adhere to it in terms of communications. Having an editorial calendar as a tool to prepare your messaging will help aid in consistency. Need help with an editorial calendar? Download ours here.

– Proactivity. Does your organization fall into the trap of only communicating when something is needed? This might happen when your sales pipeline feels low, then marketing efforts often get ramped up. All too often this will happen just to garner some immediate increase in revenue, dull down once that comes in, and then the vicious cycle repeats again. The point is: don’t fall into the trap of only communicating when something is needed. Your audience will likely engage more and have increased brand loyalty if they hear from your organization regularly, and year-round. No one likes to sign an agreement at renewal time when they haven’t heard from you all year. Ensure current and prospect clients get better communications treatment and watch the ROI blossom.

– Social goodwill. Are you doing good things? Social responsibility is not only great for your brand; it’s nearly expected nowadays. If you haven’t already, consider adopting a cause and really putting some punch behind it. Fundraising, or education on the cause, are just a couple of ways your organization can make a difference. The point is: social responsibility helps customers see your organization holistically knowing a deeper reason why they should do business with you.

– Sales language. What is being communicated on your social page, inbound marketing, or being pitched to the media about your organization? Is it your latest sales statistics or offer? Don’t fall into the trap of talking only about sales. The point is: offer education, resources and valuable insight to customers and your audience more predominantly than sales. People don’t want to be sold to all of the time. Reading social posts on a page that are all about a heavy discount that is being offered won’t necessarily make people act. Offer resources coupled with a call to action in your messaging and watch how relationships will form and flourish.

– Relationships. Finally, what are you doing to manage relationships with your customers and audience? If your message is all about your organization and not the recipient, for example, you could be potentially hurting the relationship with your customer base. Instead, understand that your messaging should further promote a relationship, even in the form of a press release, as this will help your audience know, trust, and buy from your business more often. If you truly understand your customer base (which we hope is the case), then writing about what’s important to them should be no problem. The point is: think about your message from the consumer’s point of view first. How does it benefit them? How does it help them not only succeed in whatever their goal may be but also learn to trust that your organization is a valued partner for providing services to them?

Those responsible for marketing and communications often misunderstand the importance of knowing how customers perceive emails, social posts, and overall awareness, causing discrepancies between what marketers think they should be doing and what is actually being done.

This guide can help you eliminate destructive habits of communicating and increase the satisfaction of your customers and audience.

Need help with having regular, consistent and strategic messaging for your organization? We help businesses achieve the awareness they deserve, which in turn increases revenue, providing peace of mind. We know it can be frustrating trying to get all of your marketing elements to integrate and work with one another as a cohesive, consistent plan. That’s why our monthly program of PR and marketing has helped ease the frustration and delivered real results for hundreds of businesses around the nation.

Call us (yes, a real-live person answers the phone too!) at (813) 865-3093 or email us at info@nspublicrelations.com for a free brainstorming session.