Taking the work out of customer relationships

When it comes to relationships it takes effort.  You can’t have a relationship with an organisation, it’s always with someone within it.  You want to talk to a human being.

However, now technology has taken over the planet, things are moving faster and faster and there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

If you’re in a dedicated customer service role, you probably have plenty to do just reacting to incoming enquiries – and complaints, without a spare minute for proactive relationship building.

If you’re a small business owner or sole trader, it gets even tougher.  There’s always something critical that needs doing and gets in the way of your best intentions.  There’s the sales activity to ensure there’s enough work coming in, there’s the accounts to do so you stay on the right side of HMRC (and your accountant), there’s the actual delivery of your products or services – who has time to chat with customers and potential customers?

It’s ironic that the very technology that has made things easier has also sucked up all our spare time – just because we’re all dealing with vast amounts of information and expected to manage many more tasks in far less time.

So it’s time to make that technology work for its living!

First, you’ll need to do a little research - some information you’ll have internally, some you may need to ask your customers about.  You may already know the answers to some of the questions you need to ask.

• When someone first becomes a customer what paperwork do they need?
• What are the most common questions a new customer asks?
• Are there any issues that many customers face in the early stages of using your product or experiencing your service?
• What have customers said was the most helpful information you’ve given to them – and at what stage did they need this?
• Are there any reminders that customers would benefit from receiving?
• What do customers worry about most in relation to your product or service?

You’re beginning to get the idea.  Ask your sales team, your customer service people, maintenance and support and, of course, a selection of customers, old and new.  If you’re a small business then you may already have anecdotal evidence yourself.

Now create an email for each issue and put them in the order that will be most useful for the customer.  Set them up with a welcome message as message 1 and a P.S, on every one that they can pick up the phone and call you at any time (or put your business hours).

You’ve now created an autoresponder series.  Set this up in one of the many online data management platforms (e.g. AWeber, ConstantContact, GetResponse, MailChmp, etc.) and simply add each new customer to the list as they come on board.

Initially, they may get emails almost daily as they get started, then they can be at longer intervals – as long as the customer gets the information they want at the appropriate time.  It takes the pressure off customer service and allows you to spend time helping those customers who need your focused attention.

Is email marketing still OK?

Now the GDPR panic has passed many companies are wondering if email marketing is still OK.  The answer is that, providing your list has opted in, yes.

So, if you’re going to run an email marketing campaign what will keep people away from that unsubscribe link?

Time to go and sit in the chair your email recipients will be occupying when your email lands in their inbox.

Get them to open the email

Your subject line has to generate enough curiosity in the recipient to make them want to open the email.

Take a look at the emails that are in your own inbox.  Apart from the ones from your clients or team, which subject lines make you want to take a look at what they have to say?  I guarantee that anything with ‘October Newsletter’ won’t make the cut!

The only exceptions to this are the ones you’ve been reading for years and always offer something interesting.  However, as new people may be joining your list, don’t rest on your laurels – always take trouble over your subject line.

See it from their perspective

When it comes to the content, be careful about the sell, sell, sell approach.  OK the big online retailers – clothing, home improvements, etc. – are trying to sell their products, but the good ones always have something that makes you want to at least take a peep at what they’re offering.  They tap into your materialistic nature.

Whether you’re selling a product or a service you want to think like your reader.

• What do they WANT to read?
• What will interest them?
• What will help them?

If you can deliver something that ticks these boxes you’ll have cracked it!

What action do you want them to take?

When they’re read your email, do you want your reader to call you, visit your website, download something, read a blog, sign up for a webinar, complete a survey – or something else?

Every email must have a call to action – and you must make taking action literally a knee-jerk reaction.

So if you want them to call you – tell them ‘Call me know for a no obligation chat on 01234 567890’.  Even if the phone number is in the footer of your email don’t make your reader work hard to take action.

If you want them to visit a webpage, a blog or survey, embed the link so they can just click and get where you want them to go.
I’ve never understood people who say ‘call me now’ and only give you a website address.  Why would I make the effort to search round your website for a phone number?

One is not enough

A good email campaign has continuity.  That means that there is more than one message, 3, 5 or more.

They will all be with the same focus, but with different words.

For instance if you want someone to sign up to a self-help programme on your website, you might deliver some useful tips around the subject.  You might even link these to a blog with a call to make the purchase at the end of the blog too.

Remember that one email – however good it is – may not be read by people who are particularly busy when it arrives.  Give them a second chance (and third) to benefit from what you have to offer.

Keeping up with the Zuckerbergs

Using Facebook as a business tool becomes more challenging every day.  It’s getting like Google – the algorithms and filters change almost daily.

Even my Facebook expert sighs in exasperation sometimes.  “Every time I go on Facebook, something has changed.  If I miss a couple of days, I have to go searching for where something has moved to or why posts aren’t performing as usual.”

Facebook for personal use has changed too – the way the posts are filtered and presented is different – and the aggressive monetizing of the platform means that users have to put up with far more advertising and sponsored posts than previously.  Even if they’re tailored to my online browsing history that can be irritating, but the fact that I only see material from friends I have responded to recently is even more annoying.

If Facebook is trying to encourage interaction, surely it would make more sense to present users with posts from people they haven’t talked to recently, rather than more from those they have.  It’s easy to lose track of all the people you’ve connected to over the past 12 years or so.

However, on the business front, to reach your target audience it seems that the only way to go is to pay for it.

Facebook ads are a very smart tool – and, if you get it right, an affordable source of income, especially if you’re selling direct to the consumer.

Testing, testing

The secret of getting ads right is testing.  Facebook ads are set up so you can test different images, different headlines, different content.  The ad system is smart too.  The more people click on an ad, the more often that ad is presented.  Effectively the best performing ads self-select.

Yes, of course clicks cost money – and that may be a case for getting someone who is an expert to create and manage your ads for you.  But there are ways to ensure you only pay for clicks that convert.

The pixel you insert on your website that tracks clicks from Facebook that land on your website, just need to be installed on the right page.  You may pay more per click, but you’ll be paying per sale, not per curious clicker (or competitor)!

You can use the ads campaigns to:

• Increase the likes on your Page
• Build your permission-based marketing list
• Sell products
• Get people into your sales funnel with a low cost purchase
• Fill webinars (free or paid for)
• Get bums on seats for events

It’s all a case of getting your ad on target and setting up your process well.

If you want help with getting your ad campaign set up, get in touch – it’s one of the things our team can do for you.  Call 01245 473296 or email lesley@insidenews.co.uk

Working to rule

If you own your own business you almost certainly are doing something you love (and, if you’re not, maybe it’s time to sell the business and do something else).  The challenge for most business owners is that they end up working long hours and the business pushes the other things in your life into second place.

Even if your family are 100% behind you, eventually they’ll get fed up with sharing you with the business, especially if their ‘share’ is tiny.

If you’re a sole trader or an independent consultant, it’s easy to find the hours flash past and it’s got dark and you’re still slaving over a hot computer.  If you work from home it’s even more of a challenge as it’s all too easy to ‘just’ do a bit more on that presentation, course, proposal, client report – etc. etc.  When you emerge from wherever your work area is – are you surprised to find everyone has gone to bed?

I’ve been there and made the mistakes.  I worked in a converted garage and it was easy to pop into the house, cook dinner and pop back into the office to finish writing a training programme.  By the time I’d finished the kids were in bed and I was too tired to be good company.

My solution at that point was to move the office to somewhere about 8 miles away, so I couldn’t ‘pop back into the office’ after dinner, unless there was a really, really good reason.  I also had other people working with me so it was easier to go home around the same time as the others.

Then I moved and was back working in the spare bedroom.  I knew that there was a danger of spending all my time in the ‘office’ again so I made a rule that I would quit work at 5.30pm and close the ‘office’ door behind me.

That worked well and, although I’ve since worked in external offices, I’m back working from home and I pretty much finish work at somewhere between 5-6pm.  Actually, these days I only work about three hours a day – and only do the things I really love to do and do well – everything else is outsourced.

And there lies another challenger for the solo-preneur; doing everything yourself.

Yes, in the early days of growing a business it’s going to cost less to do it yourself, but you will have to be prepared to do the things that you don’t enjoy and also to apply skills that aren’t in your current portfolio.  I’m a writer, I don’t do numbers – but to start with I had to keep track of my income and expenditure on a spreadsheet, even though I had an accountant to do the final accounts.

As your business develops there’s a danger that you’ll keep saying ‘but I can do that myself, why pay someone else?’  The answer is that if you don’t enjoy doing it, it’s probably going to keep getting pushed to the bottom of your to do list – and it’s probably going to take you much longer than it would to outsource it to an expert.  If you earn £100 an hour and your accountant charges £100 an hour, for example.  You could earn upwards of £200 (in my case much more) in the time it takes to struggle through the accounts.  But your accountant will do what’s required in half the time and cost much less.

You can outsource telephone answering, administration, posting social media, writing content for marketing, accounts, filing, following up proposals, customer liaison (at least some of it) and more.  This leaves you free to do what you love and give your clients exceptional service.

Time to make some rules – and work to rule.  You’ll find life gets a lot easier and your business grows faster.

What do your clients want to know?

Getting into the press may be an excellent way to raise your company’s profile, but finding good stories for regular press releases is tough – and there is never any guarantee of getting published.

However, putting a good article full of information that your ideal client will find useful into their trade journal is not as hard as you might think.  You may need to make a few phone calls or send some emails to find out where the opportunities are, but, if you can deliver a good article, there’s the potential for getting more items published in the future.

What should you write about?

Your article needs to engage the reader – ideally, those readers who would make great clients for you.  If you have clients that already like what you do, they’re an ideal source of content.

What do your clients want to know?
You should know the answer to that question, but think carefully.  What you want to tell people and what they actually want to know about your business are not always the same.

However, there are probably plenty of questions that your clients do ask about your products or services, almost always in relation to how that will work for them.  These are not the simple things that might feature on an FAQ section, but the more in-depth questions.

Focus on added value

• How does your product or service help your clients?  What are the benefits they get from it?  How does it add value for their business?
• What does your product or service offer that people don’t always know about?
• What advice do you find you often give to clients?

These are all excellent subjects for an article.

Tone and style

Never write for a publication that you’ve never read.  Read two or three issues before attempting to write for a new publication.  What you write will need to fit with the other items so the reader feels comfortable.

However, within those parameters, aim to write conversationally, use straightforward language and the active tense so your article has life and energy.  You don’t want to submit a bland, wordy, article – the editor won’t thank you for it and, even if they’ve indicated an interest it may not get published.

If you haven’t written an article for publication before (and even if you have) a plan is always a good place to start.

List the points you want to make, note any anecdotal evidence relating to each point or examples you want to add, then write using the plan as your structure.

Stick to short (3-5 line) paragraphs and sentences that don’t run to more than two lines.

Always ask how many words the editor would like – and stick to it.  You won’t win any prizes for delivering 500 words when you’ve been given a word count of 400 words.  The more articles you write, the better you’ll get at getting your message into the word allocation.

The key point

Read your article when you’re finished and ask yourself ‘Will this give my clients information they want?’  If the answer is ‘no’ – back to the drawing board!!