You hear it everywhere. Customers are the reason your business exists. You should put yourself in your customers’ shoes. The list goes on.
Yet ironically, not all companies rely on their customers to drive their marketing. Instead of allowing customers to be the driving force behind it all, business owners often create whatever matches their own preferences. Or whatever their marketer has suggested.
That’s not the way to go – at least not if you want satisfied customers.
Your customers are always communicating with you, be it through comments, questions, or testimonials. As the creator of a solution that drives them away from pain and closer to joy, it’s your job to sit down and listen to what they have to say.
Today, we’re going to show you how you can harness the power of listening to supercharge your customer-centred marketing content.
Listen to Your Customers!
It’s easy to forget about your existing customers when you have a well-established content strategy in place. While your strategy may be spot-on, it may drown out what your existing customers are saying to you.
It’s like they’re waving their hands at your face, begging you to listen to them. But you’re so focused on other data that you can barely notice them.
So take a step back. What are your customers saying about your solution or solutions like yours? What are their pains? Their desires? And what type of content can you create to tap into those things?
There are countless ways you can gather that kind of qualitative data. You can do it by:
- Looking for honest opinions on Reddit, Quora, or Twitter.
- Interviewing your customers.
- Sending customer surveys and polls.
- Reading both positive and negative reviews on your Google Business Profile.
The more you listen and find out about what your customers want from you, the better you’ll be able to connect with them.
Ask the Right Questions
Testimonials, discussions, and reviews won’t always give you the answers you need. That’s where asking questions through surveys and interviews go a long way.
You may be thinking: “That’s cool, but I don’t wanna bother my customers with an interview.”
Although that’s a valid concern, don’t forget that you’re doing this for them! If your questions are intentional and have their best interests in mind, they’ll be happy to answer them. Besides, you can always offer an incentive before or after an interview or survey.
Make sure to ask open-ended questions that give you a lot of information, such as “What brings you to X today?” or “What was going on in your life when you decided to start using X?”
This way, customers will be answering a lot of your questions by replying to a single one.
In other cases, you’ll want to use a good old poll to grab the data you need – such as when you need to figure out and rank the features your customers value most.
Promote Popular Content Your Customers Will Resonate With
The laziest thing you can do is share memes you or your team think it’s funny. Yes, even though they may be related to your business.
If you haven’t been listening to your customers, certain content might not yield the interactions you’re looking for. What type of content does your audience engage with the most, and why? What do they like to scroll past during their free time? You can ask them!
“These people get me” is the reaction you want to trigger when you promote content that’s not yours.
Feature Customer Stories
Do you care about what your audience has to say? Then prove it by sharing their stories.
You can share their stories on blog posts, social media posts, or even customer success interviews if they’re game. As long as the stories are honest and reflect how your solution has changed them for the better, they can give you amazing original content.
Not only is sharing customer stories a great way to show your appreciation, but potential customers may relate to them. This is an essential part of helping them realise your product fits perfectly into their lives.
We create answers to these questions in videos and publish them to our blog and YouTube channel. This creates a double benefit, we answer the client question and have a reusable asset for when it comes up again in the future.
Create More, and Publish Frequently
Once customers notice you’ve created content in response to their feedback, they’ll be excited to share their opinion more often. Also, simply knowing you’ve paid attention to them can boost that trust factor.
The best part is: the more often they share their point of view with you, the more data-driven topic ideas you’ll gather for future content. And you won’t have to spend nearly as much time brainstorming ideas or agonising over what to write.
Wrapping Up
You could have the most beautiful website design in the market. You could use the nicest testimonials as social proof. But if your content doesn’t include what your audience needs to see in order to say “yes,” then what’s the point?
There’s a reason your product or service exists: to transform customers into a better version of themselves. If you don’t let them take the reins, then you’re not serving the people who keep your business alive.
So, what are your clients telling you? And how can you address those exact points in your content?
