Is Your Marketing Making It Easy for Customers to Choose You?

As a business owner, it’s easy to get caught up focusing on the me, we and us in your day-to-day tasks. You’re always reviewing your bottom line, your product inventory, your employees, your equipment, your software… everything you need to take care of a successful business. But when you want to create a robust marketing strategy, you need to shift your focus to them, the customers.

The cold, hard truth is that you can have a great product or service and still lose customers before they ever contact you. If your business info like your hours, phone number, address, website checkout process, etc are not correct, customers will move on to the next business who does have accurate and working information.

Today’s customers will research a business before making a decision. They look at your social media, your website, your Google listing, your reviews and anything else that tells them if you are the right fit for what they need.

If you stop to think like a customer and ensure that every step- from finding you to contacting you to completing the sale- is in working order, it should make choosing your business easier.

1. Can Customers Find You?

Are you showing up when people search for your services? This includes having your website optimized with good, keyword rick, SEO friendly content.  You will want to make sure your website clearly communicates what you do and who and where you serve, using terminology your customers will actually search for. Beside making sure this is all correct on your website, ensure that your Google Business Profile is also complete and up-to-date.

2. Can Customers Quickly Understand What You Do?

Don’t make people hunt for basic information on your website. Once they do find you and click through, make is easy for them to find your location or service area. Clearly explain your services so they understand whether you can help them with what they are looking for as well as share information that makes you different or the best choice for your industry. Keeping your potential clients clicking through your website is only a good thing if they are learning/ shopping/ exploring, etc. If they can’t find your phone number, that’s a problem.

3. Do You Give People a Reason to Trust You?

Use your website to paint the positive reputation you know you have. Use reviews and testimonials throughout the site if it makes sense so your potential customer can relate to other real people who have use your company. Use as many real photos as possible along with examples of your work. People love people, so introducing your team or employees can be a great way to be more relatable to your customers. If your business is in an industry that requires training or certifications, share those as well. You can also include business, community and industry partners that might help you connect with those who are learning about you.

All of this information will help you to show people your company is good and trustworthy without just telling them they can rely on you.

4. Is It Easy to Take the Next Step?

This is really an extension of making sure your information is correct and easy to find. If it is, you’re already ahead of the game. Once someone is on your site and they are ready to book or take the next step, it needs to be simple. Besides making sure your phone number is readily available, you’ll also want to lead your customers around the site in a way that makes sense. Have contact form located on several pages of your site, have a clear booking button if they can do that directly from your website, share your hours near you address and be sure to tell the customer the best way to take the next steps.

5. Are You Answering the Questions Customers Have Before They Ask?

Although it is difficult to anticipate every possible concern ahead of purchase, as time goes on in your business you’ll find there are questions that pop up more frequently than others.  Pricing expectations, true service areas, typical time to perform the duty or ship the product, etc.

Using these questions, often referred to as FAQs, make great content for blogs, social media posts, YouTube videos and more. Not only do you support the process for your client, using keywords you know customers are asking will help to create a more robust SEO strategy. In general, it brings people to your company who want to know the answers.

6. Does Your Marketing Look Like Your Business?

This is called Branding and it is one of the cornerstones of what we here at Green T Design do for our clients. Having a consistent logo, colors, messaging and voice creates instant brand recognition among your community, customers and even your competitors. You can achieve this by using professional and authentic photography, removing old logos, slogans or colors from all of your marketing pieces and by creating branding guidelines that are written down and shared among teams. Know your font and colors and use the same ones every time. Your website, social media and Google presence should feel like the same company. This needs to touch on everything, including your employee’s uniforms, your company trucks, etc.

7. What Happens After Someone Reaches Out?

Here’s your bonus tip: How quickly do you respond when someone reaches out? When you do so much work to get the customer through the door or onto your website, you want to make sure your follow-up and customer service is consistent. Don’t let them leave because of a faulty form or a rude receptionist. You also want to re-target those inquiries who may not be quite ready to purchase or who are just doing research. Keep them in your loop through email communications, reasonably timed follow-ups, etc.