Everything you do as a business owner should enhance the customer experience because it is your greatest source of leads and referrals.

Throughout the year, you get ideas for improving this experience also known as the customer or buyer’s journey. How are you capturing, testing and refining them to make that experience better?

There are distinct stages in the customer journey that typically follow a predictable pattern.

In the Duct Tape Marketing System, these are:  know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer.

Each one of these stages must be planned and practiced so that everyone on your team instinctively knows how to guide that part of the journey.

Use marketing automation to supplement personal interactions

One of the greatest lessons I learned from one of my customers is to always be thinking about what’s next.

If you don’t know what’s next, then you have gaps in your customer journey. That also means you have gaps in your marketing that should be informing the customer journey.

Human beings are naturally anxious about a future of unknowns. You can help them with marketing that assures them they are safe and in control.

These doubts often arise between personal interactions, such as initial inquiries about service offerings or after a formal sales presentation. Rather than a telephone call that may be perceived as an aggressive sales tactic, consider using marketing automation to make a gentler follow-up.

The idea is to use gentle persistence to provide additional value that also offers a glimpse of what it’s like to work with your company. This thoughtful follow-up is often what separates you from the competition in their minds.

One way is sending an email that supplements key talking points, showing you listened and understand the buyer’s problems. Better yet is sending an email video using a recorder such as Loom to personalize that interaction. It takes more time, but the impact is powerful because it’s personal.

Your best customers are already thinking about next year. You and your teams should be too. Where are the opportunity gaps that can be exploited to make 2022 better for them?

Triggers and actions

Every strategic buyer’s journey is a planned series of triggers and actions. In a simplistic world, an inquiry triggers a conversation with a company representative. If that reveals a potential fit, it triggers an invitation to take the next step, all of which can be automated:

• Receive a series of emails that detail how your unique process works
• Schedule an appointment for a free consultation
• Make a contractual commitment to get on your 2022 schedule
• Stay in touch while researching other companies by subscribing to your newsletter

Marketing automation has a bad reputation because inexperienced marketers use phony personalization to encourage action. Nobody needs another unwanted email, but we all know a genuine effort to help when we see or hear it.

Our ideal customers love hearing from us. Yours will too if you audit your marketing to find the gaps in their experience. This shouldn’t be difficult if you are sensitive to what customers are talking about, or when your relationships with them go uncomfortably quiet.

These are triggers that merit your action. Limit this to three improvements. Test them with customers to learn ideas for making them better.

Small actions consistently implemented yield big gains for years to come.

I’d love to hear from you. Email me if you have questions or would like feedback on your action ideas.