In today's fast paced digital world, discovering and implementing the latest SEO tactic or social media trend sometimes seems all-consuming. If there's time leftover, there are still blogs to write and ad campaigns to run.
For marketers and marketing teams, the list of things to do is truly endless.
In my experience with current marketing strategies, there’s a tendency to worry too much about day-to-day minutia. Marketing is about making your products and services attractive and helpful to customers, and if your products and services do have built-in value, this is easy!
I believe today’s strategies are undervaluing a marketing tenet that can calm the collective storm in the minds of marketers: a great customer experience!
It’s not that marketers don’t want to deliver a great customer experience, but rather they sometimes don’t understand their roles within the customer experience itself.
The truth is, delivering a truly exceptional customer experience begins in the marketing department. Still not sure why? Read on to find out the 3 ways to align your customer experience with your your marketing message!
As Employees, Live Your Brand
The roots of a great customer experience actually start with your company and its leaders. Marketers often look internally for inspiration for their customer-facing messages, which means the way they are trained and treated as employees will be reflected by the marketing material they produce. As a leader, this is exactly what I want, and it’s my job to ensure we treat our employees the way we want them to treat our customers!
Too often, however, companies fail to teach their employees how to properly “live their brand.” A Toronto customer experience agency called Fifth P created a very helpful infographic outlining the customer experience breakdown, which often begins with employees who aren’t trained well enough, as seen here:
The Customer Experience Breakdown
Leaders: when employees – like marketers – are trained and treated in ways that directly reflect the message you want to project to potential customers, you have laid the groundwork for your people to deliver great customer experience. Just beware that if you do not do this, the opposite is true: this is where poor customer experiences truly originate.
Make Promises The Team Can Keep
Everybody, at least once, has bought something they didn’t need because of a good marketing campaign. My friend recently returned from Universal Studios in Orlando with way more Harry Potter themed souvenirs than is reasonable. Who can resist the gift shops at the end of those awesome rides? It’s just good marketing!
There is, however, a significant difference between good marketing and making false claims just to get sales. Unfortunately, fierce competition sometimes calls for desperate measures, and this often includes saying anything and everything to get the sale.
Marketers and salespeople: do not make Philippines Photo Editor promises the products and service can’t keep.
If a company makes a car with a max speed of 195mph, they should not say it can reach speeds over 200mph. A golf club company should not say its driver can lower a golfer’s score by 10 shots...because nothing can lower Charles Barkley’s score by 10 shots. Marketing companies shouldn’t promise to get brands a #1 ranking on Google because there is simply no way to guarantee it.
The people over at Fifth P found a stat saying 82% of people will not do business with you after an unresolved poor experience. Any sales made under false pretenses just amounts to fool’s gold. Be honest about your products and services and highlight their value, nothing more, nothing less.
Make promises you can keep. Don’t do this:
The Customer Experience Breakdown
Deliver On Your Marketing Messages
“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.” – Carl Jung
This quote is an apt maxim for both company leadership and marketers. If a company claims it will treat employees a certain way, and then follows through, those employees are much more likely to deliver the same experience to customers.