Customer Delight, the Key to Retention

In the final module in the HubSpot Academy's Inbound Methodology course, I learned that customer delight is the key to customer retention with my company.  Building trust is at the core of this relationship.  Interestingly, customer delight doesn't begin with the customer, it begins with team members.  Delight begins with the three customer delight core pillars:  Innovation, Communication, and Education.  The best customer delight starts with an organization's team members feeling empowered to offer their best as they engage the customer.   Customer experiences are formed in every interaction from the moment a customer first engages to the post-sale.

Constantly challenging the status quo among team members is very important with regards to employee empowerment and delight.  Change is better than maintaining the status quo.  Creating a list of core principles that team members can live by and developing autonomy among each member will empower employees. This includes everyone at any level of the company, not just those who work directly with customers.  Personal communication is better than impersonal.  Each team member should consider themselves an educator, adviser, and consultant when working with customers.  Customers need to feel that I am building report and that I am seen as a thought leader within my own communication with them.  This will keep them coming back as they consider current and future buying decisions.

Education is the third principle in customer delight.  Educating customers with good content relevant to their needs is everyone's responsibility.  Educating people is more important than ignoring people.  This is true for both team members and customers.  Traditional outbound, seller-centric selling has been replaced by inbound selling and marketing.  It's important to not 'sell' at customers, but inform and educate them by adding value.

All team members should see themselves as problem solvers, provide recommendations, and just be themselves.  Customers today are more informed and perceptive than ever before in the information age.  It's estimated that 60% of customers have already most of the information they need before ever talking to a sales representative.

So, in conclusion, the most important thing to delight customers is for the team members of an organization to feel empowered to serve their customer base using the best innovation, communication, and education available to them.  Simon Sinek said, "Customers will never love a company until it's employees love it first."  Happy customers start with happy employees.

Targeting Email: Choosing the Right C.A.T.

In this module, I learned that targeting my email campaign strategy is much more comprehensive than just simply generating opens and click-throughs.  An effective email strategy first begins with lead nurturing.  With 4.3 billion email accounts worldwide, email marketing is not a thing of the past, it remains a very effective marketing tool.  Unlike other marketing tools, after a lead purchases a product or service, I can continue to engage with the customer after purchase. simply because a trust relationship has begun.

There are four best practices to effective email targeting strategy:  determine the audience, segment the contact database, send the right email at the right time, and nurture the lead into a loyal customer.  The first best practice involves using the buyer personas and the buyer's journey.  Asking questions like, "Who is on the other end of the email?  What are they interested in?  What information would benefit them as a potential customer?  All email content should follow the golden rule in email:  Give value to the customer, instead of asking for it.  Content in context.  Asking the question, "Who are my customers and what interests them?"

The next step involves segmenting my contact list.  Where is the potential customer at on the buyer's journey?  Studies indicate that sending targeted emails to segmented contact lists increases open rates up to 62%.  Email lists decay 25% per year. so cleaning and monitoring lists is very important.  It's also extremely important to avoid spam emails!  Spam email devalues my brand and reduces customer retention.  Also, supplementing emails with blog posts, e-books, free tools, third party reviews, will help increase attention and engagement with the customer.

The third best practice is to explicitly focus on engagement.  It's important to be clear and concise in an email.  Get right to the point and avoid over-stuffing emails with excessive content.  A clear, direct message, one or two CTA's, and an engaging image is plenty to help keep the attention of the reader.  Time is money, so keeping an email short and to the point is critical.  Also, most importantly, make sure that the email is optimized for all devices, especially mobile.

Lastly, as always, testing and analysis will help determine an effective targeted email campaign.  Focus more on click rates rather than open rates.  Looking at what links or CTA's were clicked and developing content around these will be more effective in increasing email engagement and lead to more customer retention and sharing that content with others.  Using best practices for targeting emails will lead to greater click-throughs and ultimately, increased sales.

Ending the Conversion Process: The Thank You Page

Now that a lead has taken the next step and clicked through on a Call-To-Action, it's now my turn to hold up my end of the bargain.  Following through on the offer is critical to keeping the lead engaged with the content, and essential to best practices with Thank You pages.  The buyer has given their information in good faith, so providing them what they requested should be implemented as soon as possible and with relative ease.  Delivery is the most important element of a Thank You page.

Once the visitor has landed on the Thank You page, it's best to help set his or her expectations with a specific time frame as to when they will receive their offer.  If the offer isn't immediately downloadable or receivable, i.e., a PDF document or e-book, then specificity on timing is crucial.  A buyer should be able to expect within 2-3 business days that which they have requested.

Also, as far as the content on a Thank You page, additional Call-To-Action buttons and content relevant to where they are at in the Buyer's Journey is encouraged.  Perhaps the buyer has other interests related to the CTA, so additional information that can help convert the buyer to a genuine lead can be offered at this point.  It's important not to be pushy, but using good judgement will assist in determining if additional content is helpful.  Also, unlike Landing Pages, it is important to include navigational links that may help entice the buyer to access other information relevant to their interests on the company website.  The Thank You page is essentially the end of the conversion process in the Buyer's Journey.

Getting the Most Out of Landing Pages

To help convert website visitors to real leads, it's important to create landing pages that have a clear, concise headline.  After a visitor clicks through on a Call-To-Action, the landing page should follow best practices for the conversion process.  The conversion process can happen at any stage of the Buyer's Journey including the Awareness, Consideration, or Decision-making stages.

Suggestions for best practices in creating landing pages for a CTA should include the following.  A clear, concise, and action-oriented headline.  Readers should within 1-2 seconds be able to discern clearly what is being offered since they will be making decisions within that time frame to stay on the page.  Also, the value of the offer should be clearly communicated with as little text as possible.  The reader shouldn't have to take long to understand exactly what's being offered.  Use clickable buttons as well, as most every visitor knows how to engage with button CTA's.

Navigation menus and links should be kept off of the landing page as well.  It's important to keep as little navigational clutter out off the page as possible.  Having said that, one good, attention-getting image directly related to the offer is helpful.  Also, it is important to keep the offer above the page 'fold', or upper half of the page so a visitor doesn't have to scroll down.  Instead of an image, a short video or professional animation can be used.  It's also important to place social media links clearly and visibly to be sure that visitors will share the offer with friends.

Finally, if the page doesn't convert at least 20% of visitors to conversion, then it's important to revisit and analyze the landing page for best practices.   Testing and analyzing the page continually for effectiveness will help raise the conversion rate.

Call-To-Action Best Practices

In this module, I learned that a good CTA, or Call-to-Action, must be action-oriented.  It is, in fact, a call to action to move the visitor forward in clicking through to an offer or landing page.  This call-to-action button can lead to an e-book, download, or offer that entices the visitor to take another step on a website or blog.

Using best practices for CTA's, it is important to use the buyer's persona in analyzing what kind of an offer would be enticing to the buyer.  What kinds of information would my buyer be searching for online?  Then, it's important to use keywords in the CTA that match both my content and branding across the conversion process in inbound methodology for my business.  The CTA needs to be well placed on the page, and it needs to grab the reader's attention.  Using color and font consistent with branding will help draw the reader to the CTA and help it standout.  On a blog, it's important to place a CTA at the end of the post.  On a website or landing page, placement at the top of the side bar is a helpful location.

Finally, it's always important to analyze the results of the CTA.  A good click-through rate for a CTA is 1-2%.  In other words, out of 100 people, if 1-2 visitors click the button to take the next step, then those customers can eventually lead  to conversion.  Also in best practices, it's okay to adjust and experiment with CTA's as long as I am consistent with my branding and content.

Amplifying Social Media Content for Lead Conversion

With over 3.9 billion users of social media, amplifying social media content for today's social media user is an essential part of inbound marketing strategy.  The first question to ask is, "What do I want to achieve with social media?"  To this end, a comprehensive social media content plan involves setting goals that are S.M.A.R.T.  The S.M.A.R.T. goal social media content metric: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

Content that is specific to my audience, or buyer's persona, is critical to capturing visitors' attention.  A comprehensive social media content plan outlines the pieces of content to amplify and the social media platforms it will be promoted on.  A remarkable content plan will clearly communicate brand identity and awareness.  Remarkable content may include blog posts, landing pages, or 'like' or 'share' buttons.  The idea is to gain traction with the content and keep visitors engaged and promoting the content.  Additionally, providing valuable content will keep users coming back to visit my business's social media platforms in the future.

Not all social media platforms are right for every business.  Researching relevant social media use by using the buyer's persona will help identify applicable platforms.  With social media content, it's important to be creative and concise as platforms limit the amount of characters that can be used in posting content.  How content is communicated is as important that what is said.  Building trust with my audience will bring them back to read more. Engaging images are also very important.Statistically, content that is paired with an engaging image is far more likely to be shared with others.  Lastly, and most importantly, optimizing and testing the content will help with determining ROI for social media strategies.

Optimizing Your Blog For Lead Conversion

In this fourth module, the instructor guided me through best practices of good blogging fundamentals.  Picking a relevant topic and title are the first steps in creating a good blog that will help turn visitors into leads.  Based on the Buyer's Personas, choosing a relevant topic is essential to attracting visitors to a blog.  Choosing a title that pops and engages is also important when choosing what subject to blog about.

Good blog formatting includes having plenty of whitespace so the reader doesn't feel overwhelmed, bolded text where appropriate, and using engaging images at the top of the post.  Optimizing the page for conversion includes using a relevant long-tail keyword in the blog title, URL, in the body of the text, and in subject headers.  Using relevant external links to other sites is also important in establishing credibility with search engines, and will show that research has been done on the subject.  Also, good keyword research is essential in helping visitors and search engines find the blog.

Finally, promoting offers on the blog can help increase lead generation.  Offers may include an email subscription box, e-books, and relevant offers that will entice the reader to a call-to-action.  Promoting blog posts is also an important step to help visitors engage and connect with the business.  Promotion includes social media buttons, side bar links to past blog posts, and promoting the blog in email campaigns.  Lastly, it's always important to analyze click throughs on the number of clicks for each post and any promotional call-to-action to determine efficacy.

Creating Content with Purpose

In this third module, I learned that creating content with a purpose is critical to capturing potential customers that will engage and convert to buyers.  With traditional marketing, physical space was driving competition among agencies.  Now, businesses are fighting for attention, not space.  With the post-internet age, there is virtually unlimited space requiring more businesses to put more thought towards how to gain attention and awareness of their product or service.  To think strategically about how to gain the attention of a buyer, 'The Content Process' model from HubSpot is helpful to consider in creating content.

There is no substitute to taking the time to consider the planning, creation, delivery, and analysis of creative content for the Buyer's Persona.  In order to determine what content is the most relevant and engaging, a buyer's location in the Buyer's Journey must be considered.  Is the content part of the awareness, consideration, or decision-making stage?  Relevant content should be solution-based, not product-based.  Content should be more educational and informative, rather than focused on the product itself.

Best practices for creating relevant content for potential customers involves mapping specific content to the Buyer's Persona, a 'less is more' philosophy, easy consumption, and focuses first on information, not design.  Multiple media are available for creating and distributing helpful and engaging content, such as blog posts, landing pages, E-books, websites, webinars, social media, etc.  Once relevant content has been planned, created, and distributed, it should always be analyzed to determine efficacy.  Then, the Content Process model should be repeated continually for content relevancy.

Optimizing Content for Website Search Engines

In this module, I learned about how to drive more Internet users to a website by optimizing the keywords that appear in content that my site would be using.  Instead of using keywords that are short and general, it's important to use a long-tail keyword, that gets much more specific in describing what content a user might actually be searching for.  This requires thorough keyword research.

As part of a comprehensive strategy in SEO best practices, it's important to choose keywords that are relevant and appear directly in the content that my website is using.  Keywords that identify what a user might be interested in and that appear in my website's content is critically important.  Search engines are much smarter than ever before, and will crawl the Internet and find content that is most relevant to a searcher's keyword search.  Search engines have moved beyond just a word-for-word search to try to match exactly the phrase entered into a search engine's search bar.

Also, it's also very important to optimize content on my website around a primary long-tail keyword.  This includes: having the primary long-tail keyword in the website title, using the keyword directly in the content within the webpage, and using it in anchor text that links to other pages internally and externally.  This optimization using a primary long-tail keyword will help drive more users to the site, and help create credibility with search engines as they work hard to match content relevant to a user's search criteria.

HubSpot Inbound Marketing Introduction

Today I started the Inbound Marketing Online Certification course with HubSpot.  It was very informative.  The introductory module explained the difference between traditional marketing, involving telemarketing and cold calling, and inbound marketing, which is customer-centric and much more thought and research based.

I learned that the first thing to do with an inbound marketing plan is to create a Buyer Persona.  This helps to identify who buyers are demographically, their work responsibility, buying trends, etc.  This is a semi-fictional persona based on real research.  The next step is to use the Buyer's Journey to help identify the process a buyer will go through from awareness, consideration, and lastly, decision-making regarding my product or service.

Understanding what the Buyer's Journey really is will help to identify where stage each part of the inbound marketing process fits into.  This is thinking from the buyer's perspective, not a marketer-centric perspective.  Content in context.  This helps to understand what content the buyer really will be drawn to within the context of their own buying journey to help drive traffic to any one of a number of calls to action.

Lastly, Professor Lindsay walked the viewer through the real case scenario of CFO On-Call company's transition from traditional marketing strategy to inbound marketing strategy.  This was a case study in an effort to show how necessary inbound marketing strategy is in today's world of marketing and how effective it can be.  This real world example was helpful and backed by real data on this company.