Grow Your Business With Customer Feedback
Growing your business is all about knowing what is happening. And one of the best ways to get the "pulse" of your business is to simply ask your customers. Their feedback can guide you in making your business better which will attract more customers.
Customer feedback will tell you what your customers like, and don't like. And from that information you can improve your business. Happy customers are more loyal, willingly spend more, and recommend more of their friends to businesses who provide what they want.
Be Better, Not Different
Every business is looking for an edge over their competition. What they don't realize is that their best competitive advantage is to simply do what they do better. In the book "Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers By Delivering What Matters Most" the authors, Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan, say that the secret to business success is simply providing "quality products, reliable services, and fair value for money". Nothing fancy, complicated, or unique is needed. Just everyday generic benefits such as "good service, on-time delivery, and quality products that any company can provide". But very few businesses see the importance of the basics and actually do it.
Grass Is Always Greener
Whenever I speak to business owners about growing their business the first thing they want to do is more advertising to find new customers. Wrong! So so wrong.
What they should be doing is getting the maximum from the customers they have before spending on finding new customers. Retaining and maximizing current customers is MUCH less costly. Attracting new customers seems like the logical solution to business growth. But advertising is very costly, and the results are marginal at best.
Before you spend on attracting new customers you should focus on keeping the customers you already have. The more business you get from them the less you have to spend on marketing. It is much less costly (easier) to increase trust with someone who knows you than with a stranger.
Easy Wins First
Your current customers know who you are, know what to expect, and have a level of trust in you. You are much further ahead building on that relationship than starting from zero with a new customer. The easy win is to improve the relationship and trust of the customers you have now.
Maximize Returns From Current Customers
The more trust customers have in what you provide the more they will buy from you. It is very simple. Stop selling and start listening.
Word of Mouth Marketing
Happy customers freely tell their friends about you. You can't force Word Of Mouth. It comes naturally when people trust you.
And Word Of Mouth is not just verbal. With social media the reach of what a single person says (recommends) can be huge. Your reputation footprint on the Internet is large.
Reputation Depends On Trust
Your reputation is very public. And that public image is what people use to judge you. Almost all new sales are based on what new customers read about you on the web.
Advertising Depends On Reputation
Results from advertising, new customers, depends on your public reputation. The first thing people do when they see your advertisement is check what previous customers say about you. The better it is, the greater they trust you, and the more new customers your advertising produces. Reputation, trust, and advertising are tightly connected and have a huge affect on your business growth.
Leverage Your Reputation
Pay attention to the customers you have now. Listen to them. Get them on your side. Then leverage their trust in you to attract more customers.
Check out our TrustBuilder story and what it can do for your business. It is the easiest and fasted way to grow your business.