Customer service is the new marketing. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Well done is better than well said.” Your customers respond better to what you do for them than what you say; that’s why customer service needs to be part of your marketing strategy.
There should be a cordial relationship between customer service and marketing. Like peanut butter and jelly, the two should go hand in hand.
Suppose you rely on your marketing strategy to attract new customers and increase your revenue. In that case, you need to strengthen relationships with your current customers to maintain the marketing budget spent on getting customers in the first place. To use them with customer service, they need to maintain even more revenue. As a result, you have a 60-70% chance of getting business from your existing customers, compared to only a 5-20% chance of selling to new potential customers.
How Customer Service Serves Into Marketing
Customer service & marketing are mutually beneficial strategies with potential reciprocal links. However, for this article, we will focus on how customer service can be used as a marketing strategy on its own. Not only will this help you improve your customer retention and acquisitions at the same time, but it will also save you some dedicated marketing effort, reduce your costs and improve your bottom line.
Whatever the business, remember that you are not just selling the product or service you provide; you’re selling customer service. If you want to build a customer-centric marketing strategy, start by including your customer support team in that strategy by following these tips.
1. Engage Customers
As a manufacturer, you can handle many clients, including distributors, channel partners, B2B buyers, brokers, agents, contractors, engineering consultants, end-users, and more.
To create an engaging experience that drives customer satisfaction, businesses need to use effective online content that captures customer interest and retains it long enough to prove the organization’s value.
Here are some ways you can do this:
- Examine your social media and website analytics to see what content experiences resonate with your customers, and then make changes that use your findings.
- Incorporate technologies that facilitate the customer buying process, such as cloud-based solutions
2. Guide Customers
Customer experience is becoming more of a differentiator, especially for B2B customers. Leading your customers doesn’t mean telling them what they need. Instead, it’s all about showing them what they want to buy and making it as easy as possible for them to get to the next stage.
A robust knowledge base, case studies, reviews, testimonials, guides, checklists, tutorials, demos, and even feature reviews can act as great tools for customer service.
3. Grow Better Customers
This is where customer service — as part of your marketing plan — can provide the most benefit. First, actively monitor and track your customers’ feedback to see what works and what doesn’t. Typically research, email, and communication will help you identify ways to improve customer service and increase revenue.
4. Use Customer Reviews & Testimonials As Promotional Material
One of the most powerful ways to showcase your customer service and improve your brand’s sales outlet is by showing your customer reviews and testimonials in your promotional materials. People trust peer reviews as much as they trust personal testimonials from friends and family, so as long as you offer excellent customer service, you can take advantage of positive reviews here and then share them on your onsite or outside promotions. It will show your concern for your customers and will sell your brand on your behalf.
5. Create Discussions With a Brilliant Customer Service
You can create organic, perhaps even viral buzz for your brand by providing over-the-top customer service to one or more of the best customers. For example, if one of your customers has had a bad experience at your restaurant, you can invite them to a free food party for all of their friends. Such an experience will undoubtedly make up for any bad taste in their mouth. In addition, the customer and their friends will probably talk about the experience on social media, further expanding your reach. Here you don’t need to spend a lot of money – you just need to create an unforgettable experience.
6. Showcase Your Customer Service as a Benefit
If you have a unique form of customer service or have specific institutions and processes that make the customer service experience different from your competitors, highlight these features as part of your marketing strategy. For example, do you have dedicated account reps for each of your new customers? Explain. Are you offered 24/7 support? Talk about it. Tell people how far you are willing to go for the best customer service experiences. As a result, you will see a much higher conversion rate.
7. Incorporate Customer Service in Your Content Marketing Strategy
Finally, consider using the customer service-focused part of your website to continue your content marketing strategy. In general, the purpose of content marketing is to provide people with information about the needs of your industry or your company. Customer service content can go one more step further by helping people who have problems with their products and services or how to use them most effectively. For software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses, this is important, but almost any business can create a helpful FAQ and help section with good content to drive higher search rankings and more inbound traffic.
In our time of deep data access to industry trends and competitive intelligence, it is all too easy to forget that what matters is your genuine customer and the unparalleled knowledge of your company.
And who could have more customer knowledge than your customer support team? It’s a disgrace that they are often singled out from the rest of the company. Use the above ideas to incorporate them into your marketing strategy, and you may find them even more effective and inspiring! For more assistance with customer support marketing, you can contact us. Our experts are here to help you. Call now!