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Customer eXperience and ROI in a Post-Pandemic Economy

Customer Experience (CX) and ROI in a Post-Pandemic Economy

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Customer satisfaction means even more today in a digital economy.
But did you actually measure its impact on your ROI? Or do you just assume your organization delivers great CX?
— Adam E. Sene, CEO

Delivery gap and wrong assumptions

Customer satisfaction is way too important a business matter to merely assume that “your organization provides excellent service”.

The issue is first a matter of defining “good customer experience” correctly. How do key functions in your organization measure the degree to which their clients are satisfied?

In 2019, Bain & Company published a research study  in which they found that “80% of the 362 businesses surveyed believe that they delivered ‘superior experience’ to their customers”… while only 8% of their customers thought actually were”.

Delivery Gap: Executive assumptions don't match customer experienceClearly, there’s a huge disconnect. Bain called this the “delivery gap” and cited 2 reasons for its existence:

  1. Most growth initiatives damage the most important source of sustainable growth: a loyal, profitable customer franchise… [A business] compounds the problem when it tries to expand its customer base, as pursuing new customers distracts management from serving the all-important core.
  2. Good relationships are hard to build. It’s extremely difficult to understand what customers really want, keep the promises you make to them and maintain the right dialogue to ensure that you adjust your propositions according to customers’ changing or increasing needs.

Bain cites the case of Intuit, the well-known financial software company, which committed major blunders in their expansion strategy in 2003 and saw their online market share plummet.

We would compare it to the case of Harley-Davidson, the iconic motorcycle manufacturer. As the gravy train of the early 2000s waned, Harley started to see its sales decline progressively from 2008. The CEOs tried to expand the product range to hit new markets, both demographic and geographic, completely ignoring their loyal fan base. As a result, the brand was vilified in the biker forums by their core audience for a variety of reasons, including expensive dealer fees, vastly overpriced bikes, and plain bad customer service at the dealerships. In 2020, Harley Davidson was only $1.3 million short of reporting a net annual loss… on sales of $4 billion.

Overdelivering to outperform

According to an article penned by Blake Morgan in Forbes, companies that provide a great customer experience outperform those that don’t. Among the host of percentages mentioned by Blake Morgan, these 3 appeared partcularly relevant to our own team:

  • 84% of companies that work to improve CX report an increase in their revenue.
  • 73% of companies with above-average CX perform better financially than their competitors.
  • 96% of customers say customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand.

If you haven’t yet made an in-person check of how good (or bad) your customer experience really is, may we suggest that it’s time you play “Undercover Boss”?

The pandemic and post-pandemic paradigm

Come 2020, Covid-19, and the worldwide lockdowns. Businesses are forced to rethink extensively their organizational model, from HR to sales to marketing to shipping. Whether small or big, most businesses entered completely unchartered territories where physical proximity and in-person sales/delivery meant nothing anymore.

contactless delivery and customer expectationsConsumers found themselves home-bound, forced to rely on any information they could find on the web to make educated choices for almost everything they would buy. This is a new web paradigm: as the volume of ecommerce transactions is exploding, the volume and quality of content available to help consumers in their choices have both dramatically increased, and the number of reviews has followed a similar trend.

Now more than ever before, consumer reviews have become a nexus of information where retail clients and brands meet, with intersecting agendas.

The quantity of research available on the topic of online reviews and their impact on a business is mind-boggling. Enter the search query “statistics” AND “customer reviews” AND “2021” in Google, and you can start reading over 8 million web pages on the topic. Suffice it to say:

  • Tons of good reviews will help your business sell more, sell more often, sell to more customers, and sell at higher prices
  • Too many bad reviews will sink your sales, revenues and profits.
  • You’d better get your Google rating in the 4.0 to 4.7 star range (an Uberall study quotes 3.7-4.9 but this is a wide range and it ultimately depends on the local competition facing your business in its industry)

reviews reflect customer experienceNew reputation management tools have sprung into existence over the last couple years, with 2 major functions: (a) Get more reviews written as soon as the product or service was delivered; (b) Alert immediately the management of a negative review. Though these tools can’t “gate” reviews (i.e. delay the publication of a bad review until the seller does something about it, or avoid presenting the reviewer the possibility to publish her/his review on Google), they use navigation schemes and psycholinguistic triggers to allow customers to vent before their dirty review hits the web.

Quality of experience is the new benchmark

In times of hardship, who needs another headache, really? If a business is known online to treat customers poorly, when its competitors are walking the extra mile to support their products and services online, doesn’t it mechanically follow that a greater number of consumers (or businesses in B2B industries) will find themselves looking at more options, even more so than in pre-pandemic times?

Google has picked up on the trend towards quality. Since mid 2021, their Google My Business unit is gradually implementing new quality tags in their review system. In certain industries and certain markets, Google My Business reviews now offer consumers to click on experiential criteria to bring more qualitative data to a review: “courtesy”, “professionalism”, “punctuality”, “product knowledge” are among these news tags. It is unclear at this stage how Google My Business actually uses the qualitative data in its ranking algorithms, but if past experience is any benchmark, it is safe to venture that at equal average rating (total number of stars/total number of reviews), Google will give an advantage in its rankings to the business getting the best qualitative data.

The Unique Selling Proposition is corporate-wide

Back in the late 1940s – early 1950s, legendary adman Rosser Reeves developed a new concept he coined the “Unique Selling Proposition” (USP). Reeves actually attributes the origin of the concept to his time in NY-based ad agency Ted Bates.

In his 1951 book “Reality in Advertising“, Reeves defines the USP along the lines of 3 principles:

  • Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer… Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
  • The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique
  • The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e. pull over new customers to your product.

Cover of Reality in Advertising - The book that fleshed out the Unique Selling Proposition conceptBy way of example, Starbucks became what it is today because Howard Schultz’s vision was to make his coffee shop chain: “A Third Place Between the Office and Home.” In itself, the concept was brilliant, but for it to be workable, it actually had to find its incarnation in everything a Starbucks shop was.

A Unique Selling Proposition is not just product puffery or a brilliant slogan:
it is an actual experience offered to a customer throughout the entire chain of functions of the organization.

Jay Abraham, a direct mail genius of the 70s and 80s, said nothing less when he wrote:

“All your in-store clerks, telephone staff, receptionists, customer-service people — everyone with any public contact or customer interaction or anyone who makes any decision that impacts your business — must fully understand, embrace and believe in your USP. That passionate belief in your USP must become part of every employee.”

How does your marketing tie into a Unique Selling Proposition? How does every function of your organization support your Unique Selling Proposition? And how do you measure the results of the collective and individual efforts in terms of Customer Experience?

A team of result-oriented millennials

Building of Eden Ads Digital Marketing Agency TampaEden Ads is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Tampa, FL. Our team is young: we are all Millennials, except for our two old barbs, Jamie and Phil, who love to remind us of sound business principles from the height of their 30-year business experience.

Although we are Millennials, we place results first, feelings second. We take your experience as a customer very seriously, almost religiously. Our philosophy of “being in service” spans across and up-and-down our agency: from the technical specialists, to the Customer Satisfaction Managers, to the support staff, all the way to the execs.

For instance, our good clients have our personal phone numbers. They know they can reach us when they need us. We will walk the extra mile for them.

For the last 10 years, our Ads Management team has successfully created and managed clients’ ad campaigns using Facebook, Google, Instagram, Amazon and LinkedIn. We run successful campaigns of all sizes and our ROAS is 5-7x. Our web design team builds high performance designs for both local clients and national brands. Our SEO team applies cutting-edge techniques to rank websites in search engines. Our SEO team lead has over 20 years in experience optimizing websites for businesses in the U.S., Europe, and China.

Free independent evaluation

Eden Ads is a full-service digital marketing agency in Tampa, FL. Our team offers qualified local businesses a unique opportunity to have their website and digital marketing/advertising campaigns fully evaluated under multiple aspects:

  • ROI of Google Ads campaigns
  • Finding where you waste money in your Google Ads campaigns
  • ROI of Facebook campaigns
  • Search engine position checks on your 2 or 3 main keywords
  • General SEO-readiness
  • Adequacy of mobile design
  • Google speed scoring of your mobile website

This free independent evaluation can reveal weaknesses that hurt your site and prevent it to get to the top of search results. It can also highlights design issues blocking it from converting more visitors into leads. Call our web consultants today at (813) 940-5699 to request a free independent evaluation, and discuss your most pressing needs.

If you’re want results, speak with one of our Marketing Consultants to find out how we can help you! Call us at (813) 940-5699 or make contact with our team via our secure online form.

Why Your Business Should Use Google Ads

5 Reasons to Sow With Google Ads
(Get Ready to Reap)

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Google Ads are one of the greatest marketing and advertising tools available to you today. (Yeah, we’re fans.)

— Adam A. Sene, CEO

 

harvest with google ads A Google Ads account in the hands of a dedicated expert is a ferocious tool that will reap in customers from the online battlefield known as the competitive marketplace. In other words, it works very well if you know what you’re doing. “But, will Google Ads work for me?” you ask.

They will work for your business if it meets these criteria:

  1. Your customers go online.
  2. Keywords relevant to your business are searched for online.
  3. Some of your competitors or companies with similar offerings use it.

If You’re Not using Google Ads, You’re Making a Big Mistake

There are a few reasons why your business, no matter the size or its current phase of growth, would benefit from Google AdWords.

1) AdWords gets much faster results than SEO (organic traffic takes much longer to build).

SEO and Google Ads are both search engine marketing strategies that generate traffic to your site. SEO is organic, Google Ads are paid; but hiring an SEO team (it’s one of our digital marketing services) to get you those organic rankings can be costly, and it is slow. Google Ad campaigns, expertly designed, will work much faster to get you top rankings in Google’s pages when people search for your services and products.

You can also monitor very accurately what you’re paying for and getting with Google Ads — you can’t track your results as precisely as that with SEO.

2) Surprising to many, Google Ads often converts to more leads/sales than organic traffic.

As reported by HubSpot:

a) The top 3 paid advertising spots get 46% of the clicks on the page. The top three links on a search engine results page (SERP) capture almost half of all traffic for that keyword. This data supports the PPC method as it involves buying ad space at the top of the SERPs.

b) Businesses make, on average, $3 in revenue for every $1.60 they spend on AdWords. PPC is a relatively inexpensive way to experiment, and there is a solid average ROI for investing in paid search ads.

c) PPC Ads can boost brand awareness by 80%.

d) Google’s algorithm updates don’t affect PPC. While not a stat per se, a big benefit of PPC is that it’s immune to Google’s changing ranking algorithms. In 2018, Google reported that they had updated their algorithm 3,234 times! If you’re using SEO, you have to adjust many factors on and outside of your website to match updated algorithm requirements.

e) 63% of people reported that they would click on a Google Ad. A high click-through rate (CTR) is the goal driving both PPC and SEO, and if the majority of surveyed consumers report that they would click into a paid search ad, it is a compelling statistic for investing in PPC.

f) 75% say it’s easier to find what they’re looking for from paid ads. The reason the top search results in Page 1 gets the vast majority of clicks is due to a combination of ease of use and finding what you are looking for. Bidding on target keywords through PPC accomplishes both needs: Paid Ads are easy to find at the top of the page, and they bring the right answer to the question of the searcher.

3) Google Ads are Scalable.

One of the most difficult things to do in marketing is to create lead sources that can scale — that means that you don’t have to 10X your ad spend to 10X your leads. Google Ads is very scalable. When you create a Google Ads campaign that converts with a good ROI, you don’t have to limit your ad spend for that campaign. You can increase your PPC ad spend… and your profits will increase in proportion to the higher budget.

4) Reconnect with past website visitors.

This is what’s known as remarketing (or retargeting). Google Ads provide the capability to reconnect with your past website visitors who didn’t convert on your site, abandon a shopping cart, peruse the site but don’t download anything, etc. With remarketing, your business can continue to show the visitor your offerings through targeted ads directed at them.

This is a great way to pinpoint the people who are interested in what you offer without the need for them to navigate your website — you target your Google Ad message precisely, and send the people who click on it to a specific landing page that gets your message across clearly (without anything else to distract them).

Remarketing can produce a very high ROI. These targeted ads provide a second chance to convert those ‘could-have-been’ customers into paying customers.

5) Increase your brand awareness.

In addition to increasing traffic and conversions on your website, Google Ads are a compelling way to tell people about your brand. It’s been reported that paid search ads lift top-of-mind awareness by an average of 6.6%.

Ready to Kick Off a Google Ads Campaign?

If you’re not yet convinced to try Google Ads, you should speak with a trained Google Ads Consultant on our team who can evaluate your website and offerings, answer your questions and help you determine an advertising strategy that’s right for you, your brand and the products and services you offer.

 

6 Business Tips for Surviving the COVID-19 Pandemic

You don’t need another article telling you about the specifics of the coronavirus pandemic. If you’re living in the same world we are, you’re probably all too aware of what’s happening all around you. Operating a business under the circumstances of stay-home orders, state lock downs and major business closures is stressful and challenging to say the least.

Essential COVID-19 Business Tips

These 6 steps are simple, effective ways you can ensure your business survives this pandemic. All entrepreneurs, business owners and e-commerce professionals can act on these now, from the comfort and safety of a home office, to positively impact your business immediately and create lasting, positive effects once “normalcy” is resumed.

1. Continue promoting as much as you can.

If you sell online, this is a no-brainer. Use ads on Facebook, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn and other platforms to let the world know you’re open for business. Offer incentives and discounts to buy now. Those who are hurting financially will appreciate discounts which help them obtain services and products they need to continue their lives and their businesses. This will help them as much as it helps you.

If you don’t sell online, you should still promote offers online that are good for some months. Use creative design and messaging to make these look like coupons or vouchers. You’ll need those people to buy from you when you open your doors.

2. Take this opportunity to update your website and your social media pages.

Make the fixes you’ve been meaning to make. Update your profile and header images, spruce up your “About” copy with fresh content and create posts which promote your discounts and specials. Consider also a regular cadence of social media posting which educates, entertains and provides value to your audience. Americans are on their computers and mobile devices now more than ever.

3. Crate an email campaign (it can be as simple as a series of 5 email messages) and send your entire database.

While you may be aiming to promote and sell as a priority, be sure to diversify the content you send by including relevant information about your industry, news, tips, guidance as well as products, services and discounts. Produce and send content that might help them in any way during this crisis.

4. Contact your customer database and thank them for being your customers.

Give customers an update on what’s happening with your business. Offer them something that might help them if you can, but even a simple communication from the CEO expressing understanding and compassion for what they might be experiencing will resonate with them. You’ll be surprised at what you get back from a genuine, heartfelt communication.

5. Do everything you can to promote your company and tackle backlogs that require your attention.

Address that long-forgotten to do list and wrap up all the things that need to be squared away. Consider this time an opportunity to become more prepared for delivery, sales and production than ever before. Being prepared for when things get back to normal is something your future self will thank you for.

6. Lastly, because we are following the same advice that we’re giving you: If you need any help with any of the promotional activities outlined here, please reach out.

We’re here to help. Eden Court Advertising Co. provides expert service, marketing strategy and account management which will help you promote your business and gain a positive return on your investment. That’s all we do—help you make more sales and profit.

If you’d like to get 5 to 7 times the return on your ad dollars, speak with one of our marketing consultants and find out how we can help you.

And if you really have no budget for advertising right now with everything going on, we’re happy to jump on a call with you and talk through some strategy or offer any other ideas we might have.

Call us at -727-366-1243 to set something up, or send us a note and let us know how you’re doing. We’re stronger when we work together. Wishing you much success!

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