Last updated 2 days 15 hours ago
What do all of your social media fans and followers have in common? They follow you on your social media sites. Aside from that, your social media fans can range dramatically – from the fans who like, retweet, or repin every one of your updates seconds after you post it to the angry “fans” who follow you only to share their bad customer experience.
However, by understanding the different types of consumers on social media, you can determine the best type of engaging content to post in order to get them to take action and share your content. This infographic features seven of the most common types of fans, and what they mean for your business on social media.
What types of social media fans do you have, and what kind of content do they like the most? Let us know in a comment!
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About the Author:
Tara Banda writes about how small business owners can reach local customers through online marketing for the ReachLocal blog. You can connect with her on Twitter.
Last updated 5 days ago
As much as every business would love for each of its customers to have an excellent experience each time they do business with them, in the real world, that’s not always how it works. Even the best brands and businesses have customers who, from time to time, have a less-than-positive experience – for a variety of reasons. So, here are seven tips for how to recover when a customer has a bad experience with your business.
1) Address the Complaint Quickly
Today, a customer may complain at the time of service or wait to make a phone call or email the business. Whenever and however a customer contacts you about a negative customer experience, it’s important to resolve their issue directly and as quickly as possible, for a number of reasons. First, you want the customer to know you care about their business and want them to return, so being quick to resolve their problems helps them feel more positive about your company while they are most concerned about their experience. Also, quickly resolving customer issues is critical in helping keep negative reviews about your company from showing up online. That’s because often, customers turn to review sites, social media outlets, or even blogs to express their frustration about a bad customer experience. So, not only does quickly resolving their issues help make the customer happier – it can also help nip negative reviews in the bud, protecting your online reputation.
2) Identify the Root of their Complaint
When a customer complains about a bad experience, they may mention a variety of issues when they speak with you. They may wander off topic and also share about their overall bad day, or an awful experience with a competitor, or anything else that’s on their mind. But, it’s important to respectfully listen to what they have to say, paying careful attention to the specifics they mention pertaining to your business. Did you miss your appointment window? Were your products or services below the level of quality the customer anticipated? Were they overcharged for their purchase? Did your staff or partners provide poor customer service? There are many potential issues that can arise, but it’s important to identify the root of the problem so you can respond to their specific issue and not just offer a blanket response to any and all complaints.
3) Offer a Resolution Immediately
If a customer is unhappy with your products or services, try to solve their problem and make sure their anger is resolved as soon as you hear about it, before they ever leave your business or, for service companies, before you leave them. The longer it takes for their issue to be resolved, the more upset they are likely to become. To make sure you can consistently offer immediate resolutions to customer complaints, create a system, procedure, or policy for each of the different types of bad customer experiences your business has faced so that you’ll have a go-to way to handle issues as soon as they arise.
4) Take Responsibility for their Experience
Is every customer complaint your fault? Probably not, but it’s important to take responsibility for whatever contribution you have had in the issue. Don’t blame the customer, because that is likely only going to make them more upset. Instead, identify the parts of the issue that your business played a part in, and let the customer know you are aware of your responsibility in the matter.
5) Offer a Heartfelt Apology
Next, make sure to apologize for the customer’s bad experience. Be sincere and genuine, and stay professional in your response. Let the customer know you appreciate their business and are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Don’t be snarky, frustrated, or terse in your conversation with the customer. Instead, put yourself in their shoes and let them know you care. A heartfelt apology can go a long way in helping ameliorate any animosity the customer may have and in keeping a negative review at bay.
6) Provide a Tangible Resolution
In most cases, an apology alone, while nice, is not enough to truly recover from a bad customer experience. In order to fully resolve the issue with the customer, it’s usually best to offer a tangible resolution. For example, many businesses offer a discount, refund, or complimentary future product or service package, depending on the severity of the issue. If your business has caused harm to a customer or their property in some way, you may need to seek expert counsel on how to resolve the issue to avoid potential legal action.
7) Empower Your Team to Resolve Bad Experiences
“May I speak with a manager?” This is often one of the telltale questions that a customer has a complaint about your business. But often, the chain of command, authority, and approvals to get customer complaints resolved can make the process take more time and ultimately make the customer feel more frustrated instead of pleased at the outcome. So, to the best of your ability, empower your team to be a part of the complaint resolution process so that issues are handled at the front line instead of having to escalate them up for a true resolution. Of course, some situations are more severe than others, and due to the varying nature of customer complaints, they are ultimately handled on a case-by-case basis. But by getting your entire team trained on how to provide great customer service and finding consistent resolutions you can offer for the most common customer complaints, you can help reduce the number of customer complaints that you or your management has to deal with – and help ensure that your customers are happier as well.
How does your business handle customer complaints? Do you have a system or process in place to address bad customer experiences? What do you expect from businesses when you have a poor experience?
Share your thoughts in a comment!
Need help overcoming negative reviews customers have posted about your business online after a bad customer experience? Get our free ebook to learn how.
About the Author
Tiffany Monhollon shares practical tips and insights about reaching consumers across the web as a blogger for ReachLocal. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.
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Last updated 6 days ago
Getting a searcher to visit your website or landing page is only half the battle when it comes to search engine advertising. Once someone visits your site, you now have to incent them to contact you. From a marketing standpoint, this means converting them from a prospect to a lead, and from a lead to a customer. But, this isn’t always easy, nor is it a single-step process. In fact, conversion requires some time and effort on your part to optimize your site to drive contacts, track your results, and follow up with your best leads so they buy from you. Whether you are trying to get more calls or close more business, the following website tactics and marketing technologies will surely improve your search advertising ROI.
1. Conversion-Optimized Landing Page
Did you know that your landing page is a vital component of your search advertising campaign? It’s probably more important than you realize. Creating a specific landing page for your search advertising campaigns – especially if you are running multiple ad groups – can help you improve your quality score while improving the customer experience, because the language on your landing page will match the content of your text ad and the keywords you are bidding on. It’s also an easy way to test different landing page elements without having to re-engineer any parts of your website.
Whether you decide to create a campaign-specific landing page or send searchers to an existing page on your website, the end goal is always the same: to get a conversion from the visitor. This means either a phone call – which is probably the most common and highly sought after type of conversion – a form submission, an email, or some other action you want the visitor to take. There are many ways to design and architect an effective landing page, but it should always include a prominent phone number, a clear call to action, and a strong value proposition that guides the visitor toward contacting you.
2. Mobile Website
Still think you can get by with just the desktop version of your website? It may be time to rethink that stance. Today, 84% more Web traffic comes from mobile devices than it did just a year ago. According to the Mobile Path to Purchase study by Nielsen, nearly half of consumers rely exclusively on a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet to conduct research about a product or service they were intending to purchase. And, 74% of smartphone-related purchases are completed offline, with 1/3 of smartphone users looking specifically for a business’ phone number or location on their device. So, it’s important to have a mobile-optimized site that provides accessible information about your business like a click-to-call number, map, hours, and product and service information to help mobile searchers to not only find you, but to contact you easily.
3. Live Chat
Live chat is a simple yet effective technology you can use to capture contacts from your website visitors. In addition to offering a contact number or email address, providing a live chat option can help you capture information from prospects who visit you after business hours or who prefer not to call you. Live chat, unlike a phone number or email address, proactively prompts the visitor to contact you, so they may be more willing to engage with the chat agent, spend more time on your website and potentially provide their contact information for a follow up from you.
4. Tracking
One of the most important features your website needs is a way to track visitor activity, so you can tie actual leads and sales back to your marketing tactics. This helps you determine the ROI of your marketing so you know what methods work the best for your business, and where you may be losing money. There are many ways to track search campaign results, but one of the most important for small business is call tracking, since a phone call is one of the central goals of your site.
You can implement call tracking technology that records the calls made from your website, including caller details, so you can determine which marketing tactic brought them to your site, create a contact list, classify contacts as leads or customers, and follow up with them so you can close more sales from website visitors. You can additionally track emails, form submissions, and completed Web chats to more accurately determine marketing ROI.
5. Lead Management & Nurturing
Getting a lot of calls from your site, but from prospects that aren’t ready to buy? Using an automated lead management system is an effective way to remind customers of your business after their first interaction with you. If you’re too busy to look at your contact list on a regular basis – like many small business owners and marketing managers – you can invest in technology that delivers alerts to your email or smartphone that remind you to reach back out to leads who have recently contacted you. You can additionally use a lead nurturing system that sends a series of automated emails to your leads. These emails would contain information about your products and services, industry tips, or special offers that encourage them to choose to buy from you.
In what other ways are you using your website to increase conversions from your online prospects? Stay tuned for the final part of our series to discover which additional marketing tactics are the best for boosting your search advertising results.
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About the Author
Tamara Weintraub helps equip small business owners with information about local online advertising, social media, and content marketing as a writer for the ReachLocal blog.
Last updated 13 days ago
Is your online reputation helping you win more business or causing you to lose potential customers? You may think you know the answer, but how can you be sure?
It’s time to evaluate what your reputation looks like, because your online reputation matters to your potential customers. That’s because today, 97% of consumers use online media when researching products in their local area, according to BIA/Kelsey.
Let that sink in – 97%.
What do your potential customers see when they search for your business online? What do they discover about your business when they visit review sites? What about social media, blogs, and other websites? What are customers saying about your company online, and what can you do about it?
It’s important to know the answers to these critical questions. Our latest ebook, Navigating Your Online Reputation: Your Complete Guide, will help you navigate the tricky process of reputation management so that you can identify any potential reputation issues your business may have on search engines, reviews sites, and the rest of the Web. It also helps you understand how to monitor your reputation and address any issues that you discover. Plus, it offers practical tips and advice you can use to build your reputation and help consumers find great content, reviews, and testimonials about your business.
Get started learning how to manage your reputation online by downloading the free ebook today.
Last updated 16 days ago
Now that you’ve started a search engine advertising campaign for your business, you’re probably wondering what you can do to get the most out of it. You may be wondering how to maximize campaign performance. Or how to drive down cost-per-clicks while reaching more targeted consumers. In the first part of this series, we’ll take a look at five ways you can boost your campaign performance to improve the return on your search advertising investment.
1. Test Text Ads
Text ads are the backbone of your search engine advertising campaign, so it’s crucial that they are compelling enough for someone to want to click on them and visit your site. You should already have one text ad, but running multiple ads at once can tell you which elements of your ads are the most effective so you can maximize their performance on the search engines.
When writing your ads, take the time to think about the kinds of things that will get potential customers to click, like a descriptive headline, special offer, or a great call to action. You could also try dynamic keywords – a technology that automatically replaces your text ad headline with the exact keyword phrase that was typed into the search engine – which can be effective way to drive more clicks from your campaign. Then, when you know which ads work best for your business (it may take a few weeks or months to really tell), you can use only the ones that bring the most people to your business. And if you’re running search advertising with ReachLocal, our technology will do this for you automatically.
2. Bid On Your Business Name
You’re probably already bidding on top business keywords such as the products and services you offer along with geographic modifiers, like “kitchen cabinet installation Orlando,” to reach consumers in your local area. But have you thought about bidding on your own business name? It might seem counterintuitive, but this practice is actually very common among big brands. Plus, not only does it help you own more real estate in the search results at a relatively low cost, but it also helps prevent your competitors – who may also be bidding on your business name – from showing up when someone searches specifically for your business.
3. Review Your Quality Score
Knowing your quality score can help you make changes that can improve the performance of your search advertising campaign. Your quality score is influenced by the how well your keywords generate clicks, the relevance of your text ad to the terms you are bidding on, and the content on your landing page. But most importantly, your quality score is affected by how effectively all these elements relate to one another, because they can directly influence the user’s experience with your brand.
One way to do improve your quality score if you are running your own search advertising is to make sure you’re bidding on relevant keywords for your brand. For instance, using long-tail, geo-targeted keywords can be much more effective for your search campaign than broad keywords. That’s because less-specific terms like “braces” can quickly use up your budget without producing great results, since your ad may be showing up for searchers who are not really interested in your business. So, something like “where to get braces Plano” might be a better option.
When it comes to your quality score, it’s also important to make sure your text ads and landing page copy align with one another in order to create a consistent experience for both consumers and search engines. By making these tweaks to your, keywords, text ads, and landing page content, you may start to see an improvement in campaign metrics like cost per click, minimum bid amount, frequency at which your ad is shown, and the position of your ad on the search engine results page.
4. Segment Your Ads
If you’re running multiple, disparate text ads (for different products or services), you can use ad groups to segment the them into smaller, more specific groups – such as one group for an A/C tune-up and one for general handyman services. This way, the ad being displayed for a specific product or service-related search is more relevant to the business-related keywords entered into the search bar.
You can use ad groups to create different ads for specific products and services, seasonal offers, deals and discounts, or events. When it comes to running multiple ad groups, it’s important that the keywords you are bidding on, the text ad copy, and the landing page you’re sending traffic to are all focused on the same topic, which can improve the user experience as well as your quality score.
5. Use Sitelinks
Sitelinks are a type of ad extension that search engines like Google use to display additional content about your business within your text ad. In addition to your website or landing page, your text ad can also show up to six links for additional Web pages you want to drive consumers to, such as a store locator page, deals page, or specific product page. This can be especially useful for driving conversions, because it gives you a larger presence on the search engines.
In addition, sitelinks also give consumers more flexibility over what information they see from your business website, driving more clicks and reducing bounce rates once they land on your site. Remember that each landing page you send consumers to from your text ad should be optimized for conversions, including information like your business hours, location, and a call to action and phone number so that prospects can easily contact you.
What other tactics have you used to improve the performance of your search ads? In the next part of this series, we’ll cover five ways to drive more conversions from your search advertising landing page.
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About the Author
Tamara Weintraub helps equip small business owners with information about local online advertising, social media, and content marketing as a writer for the ReachLocal blog.
