As we’ve worked our way through the inbound marketing methodology, so far we’ve looked at attracting visitors, converting them into leads and worked on closing the loop that turns them into customers. You might think that now they’ve bought something, that’s the end of the line for your relationship with them, but no. It’s just the start of another chapter.
Over the next four blogs, we are going to look at how to continue the engagement, which will not only allow us the opportunity to up-sell, but also to continue their journey, going from satisfied customers to active promoters, who will evangelise about your business and products to draw others into your inner circle, which lets the process start again.
Even though we’re on the final furlong through our journey, there’s plenty more to discuss. The last four blogs we have for you will focus on the final ‘Delight’ segment, starting with the use of surveys.
In the internet age, you’d be hard-pressed to have avoided online surveys of some description. They seem to be everywhere. The rise of review-based websites have played a huge part, but for their omni-presence, they are still an incredibly useful way of finding out what your customers actually think of your product or service. It’s for this very reason that they play such an important part in inbound marketing.
For all the engaging, original and attractive content you’ve been posting, how do you actually know that it’s hitting its mark? Sure it may be generating visitors and leads, but does that mean it’s exactly what people are looking for? What if you’re only just scraping the surface of the visitors you could get? Without asking them, you’re probably never going to know, and there’s no better way of finding out than with a survey.
Of course, surveys don’t just help you understand what people think of your content. They are an extremely versatile tool for any marketer to have in their arsenal. Surveys can work in a number of different contexts and can be used in a variety of different ways. However you use them, their purpose within inbound is deceptively simple. Obviously you can gain more insight into your customers and prospects, but they also allow you to collect valuable market research data that you can use to learn about less obvious pain points customers may have. These can help influence the content you deliver going forward, but also allow you to feed the findings into your sales teams which may influence how they do their job.
Surveys not only work to analyse what customers might want in the future, they can also be used to understand their experiences of your customer support. How you handle problems that may occur is often more important than the problem itself. People will naturally expect that sometimes, things don’t go as planned. It’s their rite to be able to question that, but how you handle their experience of support can often dictate whether they’ll remain a satisfied customer or leave unhappy, never to return. Being able to understand their feeling towards your customer services teams is a vital step in customer retention.
If you’re thinking you’re now going to have to add ‘writing surveys’ to your already growing To-Do list, then don’t worry. One of the many joys of working with us here at WhiteHat, together with our own inbound partner at HubSpot, means that when you’re looking to send out and analyse the surveys, you can utilise the power of the HubSpot platform to help you.
Within this powerful system, you can integrate the world’s leading online survey system, SurveyMonkey. If you’ve completed an online survey, on almost any topic, chances are it will have been built and distributed using SurveyMonkey. They provide you with more than just questions, but the ability to segment contacts based on whether they have completed a survey, or not, or by the answers they’ve given. This means that you will be closer than ever before to what your customers really think and can adapt your strategy accordingly.
If you want to delve into the inbound customer mindset through surveys, then the team at WhiteHat are always on hand to talk you through them. If you’ve got a question, our inbound marketing agency will have the right answer.
Other blogs you might like...
- Inbound Marketing: CLOSE - Marketing Automation
- Inbound Marketing: CLOSE - Email
- Inbound Marketing: CLOSE - Closed-Loop Reporting
- Inbound Marketing: CLOSE- CRM
