by Fronetics | Feb 23, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Responding promptly and effectively to negative feedback online shows your commitment to customer service and transparency.
“Don’t ever read the comments” is a well-known adage in today’s world of Internet trolls. It’s good advice for the preservation of your Internet psyche — negative online comments can be really draining. If you’re a business with a digital presence, however, it unfortunately doesn’t apply to you.
Blog comment sections and social media channels offer an open avenue for customers to discuss their thoughts about your company for all the world to see. And, unfortunately, one negative comment can be infinitely louder than one hundred positive ones. The potential impact it could have on business is scary.
But that doesn’t mean you should delete or ignore every unfavorable tweet, post, or comment that someone posts on your digital platforms. In fact, companies can use negative online comments as an opportunity to exhibit top-notch customer service and much-appreciated transparency in the way they do business.
Even on platforms where you can choose whether or not to enable comments, opening the comments feature indicates that your business is interested in hearing from customers and engaging with them in meaningful dialogue. And while you’ll inevitably receive some negative feedback, you will most certainly learn about problems that you would never have known about otherwise. You may even win back customers if you handle things correctly.
Here are some tips for managing negative online comments.
1. Establish a written policy for comments.
When it comes to a forum like a blog, set clear boundaries with your readers about what you consider appropriate. Let them know that comments will be reviewed before being published and that hateful, derogatory, off-topic, or spam-y submissions will not be approved. That way, if someone complains about his/her comments not being published, you can point directly to your policy and how it is being violated.
Tip: Requiring commenters to use their real names (instead of initials, pseudonyms, or business aliases) is a good way to encourage an environment of mutual respect because people must own the words they post. Just make sure to include this requirement in your policy if you decide to go that route.
2. Distinguish between the purposefully hostile and the legitimately concerned.
Public forums, especially those online, are the ideal place for the disgruntled to vent their frustrations with the world. But that doesn’t mean you have to right all their wrongs.
Comments that seem to be particularly malicious just for the sake of being so probably don’t merit a response — you won’t be able to win with some people. For example, someone who tweets at you regarding the physical appearance of one of your employees or uses derogatory language does not merit your attention. These incidents should be reported, and you should not engage with them in any way. Your time and energy is much better spent on someone with a legitimate concern.
Tip: If you seem to have a recurring problem like that mentioned above, or if a troll’s comments seem to be getting some attention among your customers, it might be helpful to send (via whichever channel it is occurring) a blanket message that your business does not engage with hateful speech and point to your comments policy online.
3) Respond within 24 hours.
The advent of social media has drastically increased the speed of life. Customers now expect you to be open and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they will sit with hands poised over their keyboards, refreshing their Twitter feeds until you respond to them. And if you don’t acknowledge them within a (perceived) reasonable time frame, they’ll assume you’re ignoring them. Cue further dragging your brand name through the mud.
Even if you are a small shop, having a designated person on call to respond to all comments within 24 hours is a good idea. That initial response may be mere acknowledgement — “We are sorry to hear about your experience. We have someone looking into it and will get back to you when we know where we messed up!” — but letting that customer know that you heard them is half the battle.
4) Don’t be a robot.
Having designated scripted responses for certain problems may actually negatively impact your efforts. Since anyone can do a quick search to see how you have responded to people in the past, they’ll know when you’re copying and pasting, and it will come off as disingenuous.
Instead, respond as a person, rather than a corporation. Training customer service reps or your social media person to write back to commenters within your brand’s tone is a good idea, but ultimately you want to give them leeway to make a human connection in solving the customer’s issue. That means treating each negative comment individually — which is something your followers will notice. It shows that your business cares immensely about solving problems and taking care of its customers, which will build trust and loyalty with your followers.
Tip: Is this something you can outsource? Hiring someone to manage social media and blog comments could alleviate stress from your internal team and allow them to focus on doing their jobs well. It would also ensure someone can give their full attention to negative comments on an as-needed basis.
5) Move the conversation offline.
After you acknowledge that you have received the customer’s comment on the platform on which s/he sent it, your goal should be to move that conversation away from the public eye. Ask the commenter to send you a private message with a phone number you can call to talk things through. It may take some time to resolve a particular issue, so it’s best that the rest of the world not see the play-by-play.
6) Admit when you are wrong, and do your best to make it right.
Justifying why an employee treated a customer a certain way, making excuses for a late delivery, or other such explanations will fall on deaf ears. Most of the time, a negative commenter just wants to hear you say that you messed up. And that’s exactly what you should do. It’s refreshing, and it shows the rest of your followers that the commenter’s experience is not the norm.
And then you should try to make it right.
In the same way that a negative customer comment can adversely affect business, a favorable one can attract positive attention to your brand and build customer loyalty. Above-and-beyond customer service experiences go viral all the time — like when a Southwest Airlines employee drove a woman’s lost luggage three hours, or when online retailer Zulily refunded a customer for a coat that didn’t work but told her to donate it to someone in need instead of returning it. Imagine how that kind of exposure could impact your business.
How does your business handle online comments?
Related articles:
by Fronetics | Feb 10, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
A good call to action will help potential leads feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’ offers.
If you feel your marketing campaign falls short in generating quality leads, you are not alone. Typically one in 10 marketing professionals questions the effectiveness of their lead generation methods. While you may have some of the components of a strong campaign in place, it is possible that you are leaving out a very important ingredient for success: a call to action (CTA).
CTAs are vital in any tactical marketing campaign. This is where you actually ask for your potential customer or client to take some form of action that moves them one step closer to your objective: connecting them to your company.
Say that you offer potential customers a high-value offer — like an ebook, whitepaper, free consultation, or discount — as a lead nurturing tactic. If you do not include an actual call to action, the customers have no direction for obtaining the offer, and you are probably missing out on a myriad of quality leads.
What makes a good call to action?
Not all CTAs are created equal. You are competing with every other brand in a fight for the attention (and choice) of consumers, so it’s critical that prospects feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’.
- Calls to action are the secret sauce to driving people to your offers. If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing people’s attention and persuading them to the click, then no matter how impressive your offer is, it is rendered useless.
- Typically, a good call to action can be used on product pages (non-landing pages), in display ads, email, social media, direct mail, and pretty much anywhere you can market your offer.
There are several tricks of the trade to creating a highly productive CTA:
Location, location, location
Just like with important news, the placement of your call to action should be “above the fold,” or, high enough on the page so the reader will not have to scroll to see it. It is also good to have a second CTA located further down within the offer.
Clarity is key
Do not try to be so clever with your words that your offer gets lost in translation. State the offer very clearly and be specific. Don’t just say “download now,” but rather, “Download you free e-book.”
Make the CTA stand out
Choose contrasting colors for your call to action so that it draws the attention of the eye and does not blend in on the page.
Link to a landing page
Send potential customers to a targeted landing page that is relevant to what they are looking for. Your call to action should send them to a page that will convert them into a lead. Landing pages are one of the most important elements of lead generation. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s research, landing pages are effective for 94% of B2B and B2C companies.
There are many innovative methods to increasing the number of quality leads a marketing plan generates. The trick is in knowing how. For more proven tips, download The 30 Greatest Tips & Tricks That Will Change The Way You Nurture Leads to learn the best ways to improve the productivity of your marketing strategies.
Download guide
Related articles:
by Fronetics | Feb 8, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Enticing potential customers with exclusive, high-value offers is an important component of lead nurturing and lead generation.
Your strategic marketing objectives boil down to one basic mission: to generate a high volume of quality leads. This will drive tomorrow’s revenue and an increase in sales and profits. Yet, only one in 10 marketing professionals feel they have an effective lead-generation strategy in place.
Since a productive lead-generation campaign consists of many interconnecting layers, it can be hard to pinpoint what is limiting your success. But, if you are seeking more leads for your business (and who isn’t?), consider these proven tactics for achieving successful lead generation.
First, for tactical reasons, your overall campaign must contain these components:
- Something To Offer. An offer is content that is perceived to be high in value. Offers include ebooks, whitepapers, free consultations, product demonstrations, or discounts.
- A Call to Action. This is either a small paragraph of text, an image, or a button that links the potential customer to a landing page to download what you have to offer.
- An Awesome Landing Page. This is a specific page designed to allow the potential client to download your offer.
- Forms to Gather the Lead Info. Essentially, they get the download; you get their contact information.
These four valuable components set the stage for capturing exponentially more lead information than ever before to grow your business.
Creating the Most Inspiring Offers
Just because you have identified leads does not mean they will convert to customers. Lead nurturing helps build a relationship with your potential customers, gain their trust, and raise their awareness about your business and products. The four steps above are critical to the lead nurturing process. But, unless you offer something that your potential customers want, you will not get past the first one.
So, what entices people to click “yes” to an offer?
The majority of us want anything that is considered exclusive, scarce, or in high demand. Suddenly, something becomes more desirable if it appears like we are getting the scoop on a special deal or valuable information.
The higher the perceived value of your offer, the more irresistible it becomes. So, whether your offer is whitepapers, downloads, free trials, memberships, or sales promotions, these irresistible elements can overcome a lead’s typical friction, doubt, or concern.
The elements to creating a feeling of exclusivity and special value in your offer include:
- Limited-time offers. This creates scarcity to your offer.
- Limited quantities. What you are offering is unique and has exclusive value, and procrastination may mean missing out.
- “X number of people have seized this offer.” Human nature is to follow what others do. State how many people have downloaded your offer or benefited from your information to encourage others to do the same.
- Content that matches current news trends. Content tailored to whatever is trending in the news (or to whatever is in high demand at the moment) is more relevant and relatable to potential customers, who are likely engaged with those trends in other ways as well.
- A title that hooks interest. People actually do judge a book by its cover and will not want to see more if you bore them.
- Several Call to Actions, offered at different stages. Pursue buyers at different levels of readiness with different CTAs. People often do their own research before even engaging with a sales rep, and every prospect is at a different stage of exploration. Develop different offers at different stages in the buying cycle, and include a primary and secondary CTA to these offers on various pages throughout your site.
- Avoid professional jargon. Terms and phrases that have been over-used and abused are meaningless and won’t hook potential buyers. They include: groundbreaking, cutting-edge, scalable, flexible, and robust, just to name a few.
To further ensure enticing more leads, your offer should provide something that is considered of high-value. Not all offers are created equal. Some “formats” perform better than others at converting leads. Here are a few of the top-ranked offers, in order of performance, when it comes to generating leads:
- E-books or guides
- Templates or presentations
- Research and reports (e.g., State of Inbound Marketing)
- Whitepapers
- Kits (multiple offers packaged together)
- Live webinars
- On-demand videos
- Blogs (including offers in the nav or sidebar)
- Blog posts (if there is a CTA in the post)
There are many more ways you can capture successful leads and fine-tune your marketing plans in a way that turns leads into customers. For more proven tips, download The 30 Greatest Tips & Tricks That Will Change The Way You Nurture Leads, which offers dozens of other techniques marketers should follow to increase leads and revenue.
Download guide
Related articles:
by Fronetics | Feb 4, 2016 | Blog, Leadership, Strategy, Supply Chain
When it comes to leading during difficult times in the supply chain, planning is critical. So is flexibility.
Winter storm Jonas is estimated to have cost $1 billion USD, although some believe the cost could go as high as $3 billion USD, as it paralyzed a large swath of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Some 30 inches of snow touched down on several East Coast cities, which cancelled over 12,000 flights and kept people out of work for days.
When difficult times strike, having a plan is critical. For example, with electricity still working, business doesn’t need to come to a close for days on end. Researchers who did a study at Chinese company C-trip encourage people to work from home during storms: “We encourage companies to do a trial the next time an opportunity presents itself — like bad weather, traffic congestion from major construction, or a disruptive event (such as a city hosting the Olympics or the World Cup) — to experiment for a week or two. We think working from home can be a positive experience, both for the company and its employees, as our research with C-trip showed. More firms ought to try it.”
The supply chain can be disrupted in many ways: natural disaster, terrorism, fluctuation in materials. When the problem hits, it’s good to have a plan, but one can’t always be prepared for every scenario. According to the president of global public affairs for UPS, Laura Lane, who had her share of difficult times when she was a young foreign officer in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994, “You have to make decisions that will result in the greatest good — and from that perspective, every decision becomes crystal clear.”
Lane shared her thoughts about how to handle difficult situations in the supply chain with The Wall Street Journal recently.
Look for leaders everywhere
Lane believes that it’s not only C-suite managers who can handle disaster. Being open to ideas and letting specialists rise from the ranks could be a game-changer in critical situations. “Don’t judge people based on their years of experience. Greatness can emerge from anyone on your team — people with decades of experience, or those just starting out.”
Don’t let fear stop you
When you are ultimately responsible for a huge decision involving lots of people and money, fear can infiltrate the mind and body quickly. Remember that you’re in the position you hold for a reason. Don’t let self-doubt or uncertainty about how things will play out delay your decision making. See boundaries and obstacles are new opportunities to find alternatives. Lane says, “Challenge how things are done, and rewrite the rules, if needed,” she says.
Think of the larger vision
Remember what the goals of the company are, and that people have been put in specific roles for reasons. Remember that your situation most likely involves teamwork, and that you can rely on the support, ideas, and voices of others, especially when the vision of the company becomes foggy in the stress of the moment. “Delivering on your promises and grounding your actions in your values is what is needed to be a great leader. You have to believe in the greater good of what you’re doing and then bring others along with you in realizing the bigger vision.”
You may also like:
by Fronetics | Feb 3, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
A blog post not only stays around longer than a print ad, it can better engage potential customers.
The 24-hour news cycle has evolved into the 24-second news cycle with the rise of online media outlets and social media. So, when it comes to advertising your business, generating leads, making sales, and being perceived as a thought leader, you must consider the lifespan of your print ad and its purpose, versus the lifespan of a well-orchestrated blog and its potential.
Though often confused, there is a distinct difference between advertising and marketing. With a print ad, you are obviously advertising your business concisely, with a limited number of words and images. But, this form of advertising has a limited lifespan (only as long as that piece of print media is in the hands of a reader). So, it should be only one small piece of your marketing puzzle.
In contrast, a blog bridges advertising with progressive marketing techniques. It reaches your target demographic in a different way by conveying knowledge and building trust. It works on improving your “image” as well as branding your company as a thought-leader. A blog makes a more personal connection with the reader, while an ad is very obviously trying to sell something — and consumers gravitate toward knowledge rather than a simple sales pitch.
Looking at Longevity
A blog can live on indefinitely. What you post today may still be relevant and a popular read several months from now. Because of this, your company can reach a larger number of consumers within its target demographic for a long period of time, surpassing a print ad’s capacity for results. A blog also reaches consumers in a more relevant, memorable way. Marketing experts would agree: Getting your clients or customers to remember you is half the battle.
Your company’s advertising can include the placement of an ad in print media like newspapers, magazines, or direct mail. Print ads through community newspapers or direct mail flyers are useful for specific purposes, like targeting customers in a localized area.
But, you will find that advertising of this kind comes with a sizable price tag and has limited benefits. According to a Marketing Profs digital report, print advertising ranks as the largest expense of most marketing plans, with public relations and marketing strategies rounding out the important trio.
So how long will a print ad live? According to a marketing study published by Fast Company, a newspaper ad has a maximum lifespan of 2-3 weeks, and an ad placed in a monthly magazine may live up to three months.
In contrast, when a blog post goes live, it may generate the most hits within the first week, but it will continue to serve as available content that consumers will access for months, or even years, down the road. If the blog is well constructed, you may find that a year later it is still ranking in the top five search results for certain targeted long-tailed keywords.
So, it is important to consider the “quality of life” of your blogs and print ads. A blog feeds consumers’ need for more information before they commit. In fact, prior to contracting your services or buying your product, your potential customers will research the topic online and read blogs posts that present information in a vendor-neutral format.
Successful businesses react to this by creating a constant stream of this fresh content, organized into a library of posts (that stand the test of time), then use that content as bait to attract potential prospects. One study revealed that when it comes to blogs, the combination of proper timing and useful insight can result in a 33% higher lead conversion rate and a 38% increase in revenue over the prior year.
Blogs’ Benefits and Social Media
When you publish a print ad, you’ll never really know what your readers think about it. With a blog, you get feedback and you engage the reader, who is also a potential customer. It creates a more viable connection and provides greater insight that you can leverage to garner more customers through:
- Tracking and analytics: Feedback is a powerful tool. Google Analytics can tell you what types of articles are capturing your readers’ attention. You can learn how much time they spend on a page and how they share it. You can leverage this information to determine what sort of content you need to create to reach more customers and generate more leads.
- Shares and comments: Readers love to interact with online content, reading and commenting to express their opinion or thoughts. The comment section of your blog can become a community of readers. If a reader found your blog insightful or inspiring, they may also share it with their contacts or friends through social media. Your business becomes a part of a larger community that is connected through dialogue.
Advertising in any form, digital or print, is only a single component of any complete, multi-level marketing process. Innovative marketing today must include several different components, like well-articulated blog posts that utilize SEO, and connect potential customers to your company by offering information they can use. Blogs are a long-lasting porthole to your business, the product or the services you offer, and your professional insight or vision.
Related articles:
