Well, what a year it has been so far. The last six months have seen innovative resourcefulness, creative reorganisation and swift adaptation of businesses as they endeavour to meet the changing needs of their clients during the pandemic rollercoaster. The world continues to anxiously await an effective COVID-19 vaccine. Until then, what remains of paramount importance is to create, connect, and nurture your customer relationships throughout the disruption and build for the longer term.
So how can you re-energise the way your business communicates with its customers?
1. Listen to your customers on all your touchpoints
When and where do your customers communicate with you?
With the great online shift and rapid entrance to the multifaceted digital arena, businesses are now facing many more opportunities to receive feedback from and to chat and connect with their audiences to find out their real and timely needs. Businesses need to embrace conversations and nurture their customer relationships on their many digital media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. This can be time-consuming but a truly worthwhile investment.
2. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
Take time to consider your different target customers. Create customer personas to understand exactly who your customers are and how they are feeling at this time. Your customer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience and has the characteristics of your customers including demographic details, interests, and behavioural traits. This helps your business to understand their goals, pain points and buying patterns and to create communication that better targets your ideal customer.
3. Manage and consider your communications carefully
Now you are thinking like your customers, you will be able to thoughtfully and attentively communicate with them. It is important to strike the right tone. Avoid hype, shouty, insensitive or time-pressured marketing messages and instead focus on being friendly and supportive, personal, keeping safe, and offering good value for money. Your customer’s priorities may have shifted over the past few months and it is important that your communication changes to continually resonate with them. Ensure you are responsive and engaging. Whilst customers were sympathetic to reduced company resources at the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, their patience is now wearing thin and expectations are rising for an immediate or timely response that is considered and engaging.
4. Nurture your loyal customers
More so than ever, loyal customers are your priority. On average, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, and during the COVID era it is likely to be significantly higher as customers are more cautious and tightening their purse strings.
Take time to understand your customer’s loyalty and plan retention strategies that can safeguard against customer churn. What makes your customers feel valued and loyal? Why do they trust and confide in your business? Nurturing by engagement and personalisation are effective customer loyalty initiatives. Put your customers’ interests first. Let them know how much you appreciate them and care about them. Can you offer these valuable customers any special services to encourage their loyalty? Working more closely with your customers during the pandemic will help forge stronger relationships that are likely to endure for many years to come.
Wrapping up
It is difficult for businesses to juggle everything that is required to navigate through the COVID 19 disruption. There are many uncertainties including how long until a vaccine is developed that will allow us to return to some sort of normal and what will that new normal look like, changing and localised lockdowns, and the economic turmoil. Yet, it is a time to focus on clear, consistent and connecting communication as a commanding tool with your customers and traverse it together.
Create supportive, understanding and responsive communication throughout all of your customer channels to help retain your customers and emerge a stronger business.
As a freelance copywriter, I can support your business through these turbulent times. For some business owners, outsourcing website copy, social media or blog posts, or email campaigns and knowing that customers are being effectively communicated and engaged with can be a huge relief, as well as freeing up precious time to focus on the running of the business.
If you have writers block or you need some expert copywriting to ease the pressure and get the right messages across to your customers, then just let me know.