On Wednesday night, my content teammate (Dylan Mazeika) and I braved Winter Storm Athena, and attended MozCation in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The venue was gorgeous, the speakers were great and the food was delicious.
Again, every speaker was fabulous, but there was one in particular who blew my mind: Joanna Lord. Her presentation was on The New Customer Acquisition, something we all want insight on.
The following are her 10 Ways to Acquire Customers that Love You, with my thoughts sprinkled in between:
1. Be authentic
Duh!
2. Rethink trust
Customers will stick with a brand and business they trust. In order to earn it, you need to stop strategizing and simply follow this formula: Reliability + Delight = Trust
(Delight being the great experience your customers have).
3. Conversion evolution
Remember, initial conversion isn't the only conversion. Focus on other areas of conversion to make that $$.
4. Invest in your story
Like #2, customers want to know what's going on "behind the scenes." So, Joanna suggests doing things like updating your About Page 3 times a year.
Here at BZ, we love updating our About Us pages. We want our readers to get to know our authors so when they read our content, they know it's coming from people who know what they're talking about - building that trust.
5. Design, design, OMG design!
This tip blew my mind. Joanna explained that today marketers NEED to be involved in the design process. This way, the focus isn't just on converting customers; instead, it's about creating a positive "vibe" and "experience" when they visit your site.
Rand Fishkin backed this up and stated that companies should devote a web-dev team to marketing.
6. Personalize the value
Put in a genuine effort to actually connect with your customers.
7. Make loyalty part of acquisition
Noticing a theme here? Don't just try to get a one-time customer. Make the experience so great, that they will come back to your site - and tell their friends to use it too!
8. Push for company-wide awareness
Joanna suggests making the entire company aware of how each department drives customer acquisition. Boost morale and get everyone thinking that they are valuable. This gets employees excited, and ultimately motivated to think outside the box.
9. Offer a resource
You obviously want to make money off your customers. However, every now and then, offer a free resource that has the same amount of value and helpfulness. This will ultimately lead to the "great experience" you want them to remember.
10. Embrace the share
Make sure everything you do is share worthy. Joanna explained that people share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it's surfaced through friends and people they know and trust.
What other tips do you have for building customer acquisition? Share them in the comment section below!
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November 10, 2012 1:41 PM
What a great list Sylvia. Number 5 "Design" is probably one of the most important in my opinion. People are very visual from designs along they can probably tell what kind of company they're dealing with. thanks
ReplyNovember 12, 2012 3:59 PM
Joanna also mentioned the Golden Circle concept which was really awesome.
If you're interested here is the link to Simon Sinek's TED talk where he talks about it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html
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