Sowing The Seed To Grow Customer Relations

Every customer, no matter where they are on the scale, needs the same dedication that a flower seed requires, to be fed and watered, ensuring it has the best nutrients for continued growth. Turning a curious lead into a loyal customer can be a long process with many twists and turns. But how do we ensure those curious leads convert into long term fruitful customers without any issues?

Establishing the target and planting the seeds

Targeted marketing has long been a focus area for marketers and enables a dedicated approach to prospective customers on the issues and matters that are important to them. But before rolling out the red carpet of marketing materials, they will need to assess who they want to target such as B2B or the general public? Start-ups or large enterprises? The first step is to capture who the ideal customers are and the issues they are facing.

Once the profiles have been identified, the next step is to adapt the inbound marketing strategy to capture the prospects’ attention through quality content, promotional offers, and events. Marketers need to ensure they remain creative and maintain communication in a timely manner, even if it means having a group email which prospects can interact with, to ensure there is no delay in response. Doubling efforts and creativity may seem like a difficult task, but it's not impossible!

Nurturing the seeds

Ordinarily, marketers measure their online success through website leads, often via a completed web form or a gated whitepaper. So once website visitors have provided positive responses, it’s time to bring in the big guns and maintain their interest by driving them to: fill out a form (for a demo or estimate request...), download a white paper, use a contact widget or participate in a contest.

Once prospects have filled out these active interactions, they will be providing valuable information for marketers and sales teams to adjust their communication channels according to the lead’s maturity. A captive audience always likes to be spoiled with "special" offers. Treating them as an individual and understanding their business frustrations will help marketers and sales teams to transform them into customers!

Making potential customers loyal

From day one, marketers are nurturing leads to lull them into a place of potential engagement, where they are more willing to listen and receive potential offers. But what makes the transition possible from potential customers into loyal ones? The key to success is the customisation of the offers and reassuring the ‘target’ - proving a keen understanding of their company, and therefore, making them more likely to have confidence in the system they are being sold.

Simplicity has never been so critical. A certain expectation exists for different materials and technologies to be completely accessible without sacrificing security. Today, customers must be able to accept quotes quickly and safely. For this reason, electronic signatures are a necessity. Reliable and legally binding, electronic signatures are sealing the deal, marking the beginning of the collaboration and the journey to customer loyalty.

Maintaining customer loyalty

Final step? Signing the first contract with a new customer? No. The final stage is consistently ensuring a satisfied customer is eager to renew - as keeping an existing customer is much cheaper than acquiring new ones. So, you can’t relax once the business is won, quite the contrary actually. A happy customer can spread the word and become a promoter of the brand. For positive word-of-mouth to work, trust must be maintained. How? By maintaining 5-star personalised quality service. To preserve the relationship and ensure the relationship continues to blossom, marketers need to show gratitude to their customers either by regularly sending them good intentions or sharing relevant material, keeping their satisfaction at a consistent peak.