Business owners and marketers understand the value of customer feedback. Listening to what your customers, prospects, and potential leads think can have a considerable impact on the growth of your company.
There are plenty of great forums where you can listen to your audience. Platforms like social media and email offer excellent opportunities for having a personal conversation with your customers and understanding their needs.
The more information you have about how your audience thinks, the better chance you have at expanding your business and offering new, engaging content. Most people believe that they can create a contact form on their website, and they’re done. There are so many other ways you can gather customer feedback, so we are going to look at five of the best tactics for getting your target audience to voice their opinion.
Offer a lead magnet
Lead magnets are exclusive pieces of content or discounts that are generally given away to consumers in exchange for their email address. These lead magnets are also a great way to gather some feedback from consumers. Don’t worry; you’ll still have the opportunity to ask for their email address for your email marketing campaign.
We are all familiar with opt-ins that ask consumers to enter their email address for a discount, ebook, or checklist. Instead of just asking for an email address, try adding a few questions to the pop up for readers to fill in if they want to accept your offer.
For instance, if you work at a marketing firm and offer a free ebook on marketing rules, you would want to ask consumers about their biggest pain point in the industry. You can use this information to create new blog content, design new products, and improve your existing offerings.
Send a post-purchase email
Email marketing is one of the best ways to build trust, nurture your leads, and gather consumer feedback. Additionally, email marketing has a staggering 4,400% return on investment, meaning you’ll get the most bang for your buck when working with these customers.
After someone buys a product or signs up for your service, give them time to receive and use their purchase before you send a feedback email. We suggest waiting at least one week before you ask consumers about their experience.
When you send out the message, start by thanking them for the purchase. Next, ask customers what they thought of your product and whether they would refer your business to a friend. Finally, ask an open-ended question about their overall experience and encourage them to give as many details as possible.
Once you gather enough feedback, you can fine-tune your customer personas, redesign your website, or tweak your marketing campaign based on the results.
Use pop-ups and chatbots to stop cart abandonment
If consumers come to your website, look at a pricing page, put an item in their cart, or interacts with your brand but don’t finalize the deal, this is called abandonment. Business owners lose countless customers and sales when abandonment occurs.
Luckily, you can reduce how often customers leave your website by encouraging them to ask questions when they leave. There are marketing systems that allow you to create targeted pop-ups when customers leave your site, which is a pivotal moment for all marketers and business owners.
The pop-up can ask customers if they have any questions before they go. This technique can help you gather feedback and fill gaps in your sales funnel. For instance, if 60% of consumers abandon the checkout page because you don’t include taxes and fees before they hit the checkout page, you can solve this problem by changing your price to reflect an “all-in-one” package.
Chatbots and AI as a whole are extremely useful for gathering data and compiling it into comprehensive reports. Learning about your customer’s questions and pain points with a chatbot is easy and effective. Add and program a chatbot on your website that asks every consumer if they need help while they are browsing your blog or storefront. Depending on the complexity of the problem, the chatbot can solve the issue or send the customer to your live support team.
Understanding the barriers that hold customers back is one of the fundamental keys to growing your business.
Research consumers on social media
Social media is a great place to hear what consumers have to say. The main reason marketers focus on social platforms is the fact that 80% of all internet users have at least one social media account. In other words, your industry almost certainly has a community on big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Facebook alone has 2.45 billion active users. Their “groups” are beneficial for marketers that want to listen to feedback about their product and the industry as a whole. Business savvy marketers will hang out on major groups that focus on their industry and listen to the attitude of people that need the products they’re selling.
Let’s say your website specializes in selling custom gardening tools. You might want to consider hanging out in gardening groups on Facebook, or comment sections on YouTube videos, to learn what people interested in this niche expect from products and services they buy. If you can pinpoint specific trends and behaviors, you can use this information to craft future blog content and fine-tune your product selection.
Additionally, social media is an excellent place for you to engage with followers on your social media profile. For example, if you wanted to brainstorm content ideas for your marketing blog, you might want to poll your users and ask about their biggest marketing struggle of the year.
If over half of those people say they had trouble with their content marketing, you can create content that fills this success gap and builds brand loyalty. As more people become loyal to your brand, you get the opportunity to gather more information on your customer base, which aids in delivering an excellent user experience and personalized product recommendations.
Conclusion
Customer feedback is essential to the growth of your business. There are plenty of ways you can keep your ear to the ground and hear what people in your niche think about your product and the industry as a whole. Social media, email, and on-site surveys can help you learn about personal experiences. When researching groups on social media, you can pinpoint broader trends and adjust your strategy accordingly.
The key to using these techniques for growth is gathering sufficient data and using it in a way that shows consumers that you’re listening and want to help them find success. You should never stop listening to feedback because needs, pain points, and goals change over time. If you’re willing to pay attention to your customers and meet their needs, there’s a good chance they could reward you with lifelong patronage.
