A consumer’s experience is the most important criterion in any marketing campaign. Almost 90% of businesses are competing solely on the criteria of customer experience or CX for short. Seven out of ten consumers say the experience they have is their deciding factor in completing a purchase. 

Is that not convincing enough? Almost half of consumers will pay more if they are provided with a friendly, engaging, experience. A third of consumers state they will walk away from a brand they love after just one lousy experience. You might not think 32% is that risky, but keep this in mind. Nine out of ten will abandon a company if they have two or three negative customer experiences.

CX is defined as all of the interactions a customer has with your brand. It’s the touchpoints that start from the first encounter to the first purchase, the use of that product, and all of the touchpoints after that. It’s how your marketing team responds to negative feedback, how they interact with loyal customers, and how they secure additional purchases and product use.

Your CX marketing campaign should drive sales, engagement, and awareness. Is your marketing campaign focusing on a positive consumer experience? If not, you’re making a big mistake. You could be inadvertently losing the trust and commitment of current and new consumers. How do you make the customer experience a key feature of your marketing campaigns? 

Tips for Establishing a Positive Customer Experience in Marketing

It’s clear that you need a positive CX marketing campaign, but how do you do this? Here are our best tips.

Make the Most of Social Media

Use social media to engage with customers. You can share special discount codes or provide free samples to several people. Make sure you have the rules clearly posted. You don’t want to offer a free item and then have so many people ask for it, that you run out.

Your followers on social media will love things like quizzes, contests, and surveys. Use this feedback to figure out other exciting ways to connect with your customers. But, don’t focus solely on social media. There are people out there who are getting away from Meta and Twitter and using other platforms instead. Make sure you have a website, too.

Share Customer Stories and Testimonials

People won’t always take you at your word, so have plenty of personal stories and testimonials from purchasers who have used your brand’s products. Videos or photos of them wearing or using items are even better. Encourage consumers to share reviews and testimonials by offering a discount code for future purchases.

Partner With Influencers

There are influencers out there on almost every channel. If you can get an influencer to wear your product during a TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube video or image, everyone that sees that may be tempted to purchase. It’s worth considering a partnership to get the traffic influencer marketing delivers.

Ensure Your Website Is Easy to Use and Flows Well

Have you ever been on a website and clicked a link to end up with a 401 error? Worse, an expired certificate flags a security suite’s alert that there might be a virus or malware if the person continues past the warning. 

Make sure every link in your website goes where you want it to go. Verify that certificates are up-to-date and that any advertisers on your site are legitimate and not bad players.

You also need to consider the user experience. If someone who goes to your site is color blind, do you use colors that might make it hard for them to see text or images? Do you have any video content close captioned for people with hearing impairment?

Be Personable and Personal

When you are interacting with consumers, make sure you are personable and mention them by name. Have you heard about keyboard warriors? They’re the business owners who feel they must respond aggressively to negative reviews. Instead of listening to the feedback they’re being given, they get defensive and even rude. It’s not a good look for your business.

If you ask for reviews, make sure you are ready for the good and bad. Take the negative feedback to heart. Share with customers that you understand the concerns and use it as a means to open communications and learn more about what could be done to avoid issues like this in the future. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s important to understand what steps led to the issue and how to prevent someone else from running into that.

Make sure your marketing message does what you hope and targets the right people. Suppose your brand specializes in women’s vitamins. Offering free samples to men may not be the best move. They may have a girlfriend, sister, or spouse they can share them with, but they might not and end up putting the vitamin in the trash. Targeted marketing takes time and requires you to find the right audience for the products you’re hoping to sell.

How Do You Track Success?

As you put your marketing plan into action, how do you know if it’s successful? Why not ask?

Run A/B Tests

You might not know how to best market your brand. Try some A/B tests with consumers and see which gets the best feedback. You’ll end up with a lot of advice on what works, what doesn’t, and what consumers wish you’d done differently.

Get Feedback

Ask people what they think of your new products, offers, discounts, and sales. Use social media and collect and analyze their feedback. If you’re not connecting with them, you might hear crickets. You’ll know that your changes aren’t working and can go to plan B.

Pay Attention to Analytics

You have a CX marketing campaign in place, but have you come up with the criteria to use to determine if your plan is working? You need to know how to measure success. Some of the ways indicators include:

• Increased website traffic or social media likes and follows
• Increased sales
• More positive reviews
• Higher conversion rates
• More newsletter or email sign-ups

Know Your Strengths and Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help

You must put everything you can into a positive, memorable customer experience. A comprehensive CX marketing campaign does this. What if your team has strengths in some areas, but lacks strengths in others? You’re not alone. One out of ten businesses fail due to their inadequate marketing campaigns. Three out of ten companies use tools to help with marketing but don’t use them effectively.

It’s time to partner with an expert in CX marketing. Factory 360 has a diverse team that knows what consumers want, what they don’t want, and the best ways to connect with customers during all touchpoints. Reach out to Factory 360 to learn more about developing a strong CX marketing campaign that does everything you want it to do and makes customers keep coming back.