Customer Experience - Hijinx Marketing

Exceeding Expectations: The Path to Stellar Customer Feedback

by hijinxmarketing | Marketing Best Practices, Customer Experience

In the world of business, feedback is gold. It is the compass that guides our decisions, the barometer that measures our success, and the mirror that reflects our performance. But let’s face it; your customers will not tell you if everything went right in their interactions with you unless you ask them. The average consumer is bombarded with countless interactions daily, from the barista who makes their morning coffee to the online store where they shop. If every experience is “fine” or “as expected,” it doesn’t warrant a mention. Only the peaks and valleys, the extraordinary and the disastrous, compel customers to share their stories.

How can you improve those peaks of positive customer feedback and reduce the valleys of negative feedback? How do you stand out in a sea of your competitor’s content and create memorable customer experiences? Whether through proactively requesting feedback after a sale or organic reviews online (think Yelp! Or Google business reviews), there are ways to improve your customer’s feedback about your business.

Dare to be Different

In today’s competitive marketplace, where businesses frequently emulate successful models and heed the advice of “influencers” on best practices, positive customer feedback cannot be elusive. By daring to be the exception to the status quo and actively seeking and implementing customer feedback, you can distinctly set your business apart from the competition. This differentiation doesn’t always require a complete overhaul or reinventing the wheel. The essence lies in being authentic, staying true to your brand’s core values, and consistently offering something fresh and tailored to your customer’s feedback. In doing so, you stand out and foster a deeper connection with your audience. Ways to be different include:

Unique loyalty programs: Tailor rewards and incentives using direct input from customers. This ensures that the program is appealing and relevant, fostering increased brand loyalty and engagement.
Organizing community events: Host events that resonate deeply with your audience. Understanding their interests and values can create memorable experiences that strengthen community ties and enhance brand perception.
Showcasing products innovatively: Instead of traditional marketing, present your products in fresh, creative ways. This captures attention and highlights your brand’s commitment to innovation and staying ahead of the curve.
Communicating with your audience in unexpected places: As I wrote in a recent blog post, many businesses neglect to meet their audiences where they are talking about their businesses online. If you communicate with your customers online on their terms, you will learn new things and create new connections.

Go Above and Beyond

Meeting basic expectations is the baseline for your customers. Exceeding them is where the magic happens and where you have the best opportunity for positive customer feedback. Think about what you currently do. Everything from how you communicate with your customers to the products you order and services you provide. What could you amp up or improve upon? Here are some suggestions:

Personalization: In an era of automation, a personal touch can make all the difference. This could be a handwritten thank-you note with an order or a personalized recommendation based on past purchases. Depending on what data you have on your customers, you could even send emails with more personalization than just their names.
Responsiveness: Quick and effective responses to queries or complaints can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one. It shows customers that you value them and are committed to resolving their issues. Even swift responses to positive public feedback will show potential customers you are an active and engaged business.

Added value: Offer more than what your customers expect. This could mean giving free samples of your products, adding services to help ease the customer’s usage of your product, or educational content related to your product or service. Read my recent blog post about how Home Depot does this with its melding of online and in-person experiences.

Embrace the Unexpected

Surprise is a powerful emotion. When customers encounter the unexpected (in a good way), it creates a memorable experience. In my book, The Content Puzzle, I discuss how emotions play an important part in successful marketing. Humans don’t always make decisions based on logic or reason. Giving them something to feel can give them the impetus to act and hopefully purchase your product or service. Here are some ways to sprinkle unexpected delights:

Random acts of kindness: Occasionally upgrade a regular customer’s order for free, send a surprise gift to loyal clients, or offer a complimentary service out of the blue. Small businesses are good at doing these types of things, but even big companies can build in “kindness” points in their interactions with their best customers.
Show them how it is done: Share behind-the-scenes looks at your business, tell the story of how your products are made, or share customer testimonials creatively. People love to see how things work, and behind-the-scenes videos or articles are good, evergreen content to keep in your back pocket.
Host unique events: Organize unexpected pop-up events or workshops in locations that your customers frequent that offer attendees genuine value. These could be educational sessions related to your products, fun interactive experiences, or a space to relax and enjoy complimentary refreshments. The surprise element of discovering a brand they love in an unexpected place can create a lasting impression.

Ask, Listen, and Act

Lastly, while it’s true that customers might not always vocalize their satisfaction, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek their feedback. Regularly ask your customers about their experiences. You can use surveys, feedback forms, or even direct conversations. But asking is just the first step. Listen to what they have to say and act on it. This continuous feedback loop and improvement will enhance your offerings and show customers that their opinions matter. Furthermore, by actively addressing their concerns and implementing suggestions, you refine your products and services and foster a sense of community. Customers feel valued and integral to your brand’s growth, leading to increased loyalty and trust. Oftentimes, business owners become myopic about their products and services. Your customers often have great ideas for improving your offering. And all you must do is listen.

Customer feedback is more than just comments or ratings; it’s the lifeblood of continuous improvement in the business world. In an era where many brands might seem indistinguishable, those who prioritize and act on customer feedback distinguish themselves. By actively seeking out and valuing this feedback, businesses can pinpoint areas of enhancement, innovate based on real needs, and solidify their customer bond. It’s not just about meeting expectations but about evolving with them. In the end, a brand that listens to its customers and iterates based on their feedback is one that’s poised for sustained success and growth.

That’s a Wrap on Content Marketing World 2022

by hijinxmarketing | Content Marketing World, Customer Experience, Strategy

This year’s Content Marketing World conference did not disappoint. Two years after going entirely virtual due to COVID, the conference was back in full force in 2022. With more than 100 sessions, there was something for everyone in the content marketing industry. Whether you focus on writing, SEO, strategy, content creation, or AI, experts from across the spectrum presented the latest information on a wide variety of topics designed to make us all better marketing professionals.

With this year’s theme of “Drive Forward,” we’re taking a look beyond the finish line with some thoughts on this year’s conference from several of the attendees. Buckle your seatbelt and read on to learn what several content marketing experts took from this year’s conference.

A Killer Sales Strategy That Won’t Kill Your YouTube Channel

There is no magic formula to sales on YouTube (darn!) but Tim Schmoyer’s 3 bucket strategy comes as close as you can get.

In Tim’s Content Marketing World session “Creating A Sales Strategy for YouTube That Doesn’t Kill Your Channel” he laid out three content buckets you should focus on creating videos for:

Discoverable
Community
Sales

Similar to how you might approach email marketing, Tim’s 3 bucket strategy helps nurture your audience into a sale through a series of videos.

Single-handedly the best slide he shared, Tim laid out what the goal of each content bucket is, the style the video should emulate and the CTA that should be used (thank you Tim!):

Seems easy enough but where do you start? Tim kindly gave guidance on where a business should begin depending on the current standing of your YouTube channel:

New channel gaining momentum → Create mostly discoverable content
Channel has grown and received views but the number of views is very low → Create more community content
Brought people in, have a community, and now are looking to monetize → It’s time for sales content!

If you still need some guidance, consider checking out Tim’s latest blog article with CMI, “Try These 5 YouTube Video Tips and Watch Your Results Improve (or Not)”.

Now, go create!

– Ashley Baker, Coastline Marketing LLC, (Twitter | Website)

Create for an Influential Audience

“Why does content marketing take soooooo loooooooong to work?” – Andrew Davis, CMW 2022

“Because you’re wasting your best creative energy answering frequently asked questions.” – also Andrew Davis, paraphrased from memory, CMW 2022

Instead, he says, consider answering RARELY ASKED QUESTIONS.

Why?

Because instead of battling it out trying to get end user attention in a sea of same (publishing the same keyword-focused SEO articles that everyone and their grandma is creating) you could be creating content for the C-suite and executives who heavily influence buying decisions. He calls it a top-down approach (see influence pyramid).

As someone obsessed with creating truly meaningful content—and repulsed by unoriginal, undifferentiated fluff—it felt like Andrew was sharing a massive secret with me during his keynote. WHICH IS WHAT GOOD CONTENT MARKETING SHOULD FEEL LIKE, RIGHT?

There’s so much pressure to create more content.

To fill in content calendars.

To publish, publish, publish.

But a refreshing theme bubbled up at CMW 2022:

More content isn’t the answer.

More meaningful content is.

Content that resonates specifically with decision influencers—like secrets revealed.

Content that feels like it was written by a person / company with a strong POV and voice (thanks, Ann Handley).

Content business leaders recognize as dramatically different and instrumental in helping them win in tomorrow’s conditions.

See ya later commodity content. You’re no longer relevant.

– Ashley Guttuso, Chief Strategy Officer, Simple Focus Software | Audience Ops (LinkedIn | Twitter | TikTok)

2 Big Podcasting Myths… Busted

Companies often shy away from starting podcasts. Rob Walch, from libsyn, spoke at CMW on podcast creation and promotion. I’ve done podcasts for companies before and I’m always curious about how the process can be improved. While I listened, it struck me that there are two big myths associated with podcasting that may be holding you back from starting a podcast.

Myth #1: The podcast “airwaves” are completely saturated. There’s no way to cut through all that noise.

Truth: Yes, there are a couple million podcasts out there, but over 616,000 of those only have one episode. And, of the ~ 1 million podcasts that have produced 10 or more episodes, less than 400,000 are active.

Realization: There isn’t as much competition as you think. It’s probably worth it to start a podcast and move through any initial intimidation.

Myth #2: It’s too much work to start and maintain a podcast.

Truth: Yes, podcasts take time and resources to create and maintain. But— there are parts of a podcast that you can easily outsource. Teaming up with an agency experienced in creating podcasts reduces the amount of time your team needs to spend, while positioning you as the expert and making sure you continue to produce way more than those first 10 episodes.

Realization: There will be work, but you can minimize your time and maximize the impact of the podcast by getting some help to launch and regularly produce episodes. That way, you’re set up from the start to become one of the podcasts that lasts.

Busting these two big myths is great, but I skipped something important:

Why start a podcast?

You’ll have a fantastic series of asset that highlights your brand and your voice
You can establish yourself as a credible thought leader in your space
There is so much repurposing you can do once you have the podcast created

Podcasts can feel like a lot of work for a “saturated” space. If you put those negative and inaccurate beliefs aside and consider how you can use a podcast to your advantage, you might be surprised by the impact.

– Sara Robinson, Director of Operations, Audience Ops

Enough with men, let’s quote women in our content

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” (Peter Drucker)

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” (John Wanamaker)

In articles and presentations, these two quotes are used all the time. There are similar quotes from Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates that we use frequently. Did you ever stop to wonder: what do all of these quotes have in common?

They’re all from men!

In a Content Marketing World talk titled “Quote a Woman: Adding Women’s Voices to Your Content Marketing,” Penny Gralewski called out this issue and urged us to do something about it. The Senior Director, Product and Portfolio Marketing at DataRobot, Penny covered the following in her talk:

Why women’s buying behaviors and engagement trends matter
What unconscious bias may be lurking in your content
How to find and validate women’s quotes and research
When to convince leadership or clients that it’s time to add women’s voices

Penny shared ideas for adding relevant women’s voices to our content to better engage, motivate, and convert our audience. I loved this slide from Penny that provides a list of women you can quote from:

Later in the conference, I attended a talk by Jacquie Chakirelis titled “Creating Content to Change the World” and one of her slides contained this quote:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world.”

The quote is from Margaret Mead. Way to go, Jacquie! Perhaps Penny’s pleas are already making a difference.

– Dennis Shiao, Founder, Attention Retention (Twitter | website)

When People Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real – The Real World: Content Marketing World

The Teams and Culture and Career Skills tracks offered at Content Marketing World were chock full of honesty and #RadicalTransparency (shoutout Inbar Yagur for making this a weekly hashtag in my LinkedIn feed!).

As I sat in sessions about marketing burnout and imposter syndrome, I couldn’t help but nod my head and think “Me, too,” over and over again. I related greatly to the same challenges faced by Maureen Jann in her attempts to “balance” her work and home lives (is that even possible?!), and also to Divya Bisht who openly shared her experiences feeling like she didn’t belong in a new role.

While the struggle is real, there’s hope. Amy Higgins offered strategies and examples on how to build a happy and productive team. She recommends building “rules of engagement” for your team by having REAL conversations about how each teammate works best, accidental diminishers, and boundaries to help teams work better together – what a refreshing approach that is often ignored because it can be, well, uncomfortable. But we NEED to have these conversations to build trusted, safe environments for our teams.

My takeaway? We’re all human. Have those real conversations. Be open and honest with yourself and your leadership. Doing so will help you bring your best self to your work, and your life in general.

– Amy Fair, Content Marketing Manager, SpyCloud (Twitter | LinkedIn)

Why the Magic of Innovation Starts with Process

Processes… ugh. For some content marketers, it’s an ugly word. Maybe it feels inferior to the sparklier, shinier, more “creative” work that drew us into marketing.

But I can’t stop thinking about Robert Rose’s quote from his keynote: “Lack of process, ironically, locks us into ruts.”

If your content marketing team is looking to level up their innovation, or to “be more creative,” the answer lies in process. Innovation doesn’t just happen. It has to be baked into the content marketing operations and workflow, so that every innovation can actually go from creative brainstorm to flawless execution in a sustainable way.

Robert reinforced this idea with another humdinger: “Content itself can be copied. The competitive advantage is not the content: it’s creating a strategic, scalable comprehensive content operations function in your business.”

And I heard this idea reinforced through a plethora of other great sessions. Andi Robinson’s session on localizing global assets. Jenny Magic’s talk on getting team buy-in. Andrew Davis’s keynote on Rarely Asked Questions and the Influence Pyramid. And many more, all about the critical work of picking (or creating!) a process and then seeing it through to completion.

The glitz and the glam (and the results) will come in time, but only after you’ve done the gritty work of establishing, documenting, and executing your content processes, from planning and creation all the way to operations and measurement. That right there is the real, roll-your-sleeves-up, hard work of content marketing. And then watch the magic of innovation happen!

– Ali Orlando Wert, Director of Content Strategy, Qlik (LinkedIn)

Community helps build trust

According to Jacquie Chakirelis, “Content can’t change the world, but community can.” Several sessions at this year’s conference focused on building communities to help support your content marketing efforts. Jacquie’s session focused on how we are moving to a system where not just one person holds the mic and speaks the loudest, but many people have a say in the conversation. Community builds advocates because they have “skin in the game” and a vested interest in the success of others in the community.

Kim Olson from Land O’Lakes was a keynote speaker and talked about their farmer co-op structure and how that builds a sense of community, particularly in rural areas of the United States. Her main point was about asking why you are doing what you something before you decide what you will do. One of their key initiatives is bridging the digital divide. It has nothing to do with making butter or selling pet food, which are what they are known for. But it created a sense of community among their co-op members and others in greater physical communities. It was something that was very important to their customers and garnered a sense of trust.

Building community not only helps the company that is leading the community-building efforts, but it benefits those individuals that participate by creating relationships that have value to them above-and-beyond what a brand can do.

– Andi Robinson, Consultant, Hijinx Marketing (Twitter | Instagram)

We encourage you to follow #CMWorld on Twitter for more conference wrap-ups and information throughout the year. You can follow Content Marketing Institute on their website, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We look forward to seeing everyone for Content Marketing World 2023 in Washington, DC, September 26 – 29.

The details matter

by hijinxmarketing | Customer Experience

I use my phone for everything. It is probably not healthy, but I’m a big fan of anything that makes my life easier. I have the apps for all our favorite restaurants so that I can easily put our name on the wait list or order carry out. I have all of my travel apps so that I can easily scan my flight tickets or order my hotel room door with my phone. I have health apps, productivity apps, even apps to control appliances in my home.

Why am I telling you this? The other day, my husband was working around the house and needed more spackle. He asked if I could go to the hardware store and pick up some more. I live in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana and we have a lot of hardware store options around here. The big three are Menards, The Home Depot, and Lowe’s. Then there are some smaller ones like Ace hardware and True Value. So we have lots of options. But anytime I can, I choose The Home Depot. Why? Because their mobile app (and even their mobile site) is so very helpful.

To start off, they provide an option to either scan or take a photo of the item you need to find. As you can imagine, with hardware, not everything has a bar code. In this case, I was able to scan the pack of the bucket. Right away, the app displayed the item I was looking for as well as some very helpful information. It told me in which aisle the item was located. But not only that, it told me exactly which bin to look in. Most importantly, it told me that there were 47 of that particular item in stock. How many times have you gone to a store only to find that they item you were looking for was out of stock? This provided me peace of mind knowing that I would actually be able to purchase the item when I got to the store. When I got to the store, the app showed me exactly where in the store the item was located.

Inside the store, everything is clearly marked. It literally took me less than 5 minutes to find what I was looking for in the store. The only thing that slowed me down was that they didn’t have tap and pay. I had to dig in my wallet and get my credit card out and actually put it in the machine to pay.

What lessons can be learned by this?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think about what your customers need from you. What are the barriers to them making a purchase? Get rid of those barriers.
KISS. Yes, that is Keep It Simple, Stupid. Make things as easy as possible for your customers.
Every touchpoint is an opportunity. It doesn’t matter if it is in the mobile app or in-store, the experience was easy for me, the customers.

Now think about your business. How can you make every touchpoint easier for your customers?