What’s wrong?
If you really want to be a customer-centric marketer, you need to ask your customers that question. Believe it or not, those two words can completely reframe your company’s approach to marketing because it will make you more empathetic to their struggles.
Lots to cover, so without further ado…here are a few steps you can take to better understand your customers’ pain-points:
- Go one-on-one. This is the simplest, but most time-consuming step. You’ll want to actually talk to *gasp* your customers. Pick up the phone. Send them an email. That will help you view your customer as a person, rather than a persona. Sometimes personas boil your customers down to just data and numbers.
- Put emotion on your map. What emotions are your customers feeling at the awareness level of your marketing? What about as they move further down your marketing funnel? If you haven’t taken the time to identify the emotions and feelings of your customers at each step, now is the time to start.
- Seek out complaints. We all hate this one. It’s easier to hide and avoid any and all criticism. But, hiding and ignoring the truth does nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s not a good thing. Use social media to find out what people are saying about keywords you target, the industry you work in, your products, etc.
- Poll throughout the process. It’s a little pricey, but you can use a tool like Qualaroo to ask your customers specific questions on specific pages. Or, go the old-fashioned route with emails and surveys to ask them questions after the sale.
- Steer into the pain. This is a complex topic, and we’re running out of words to fit it in. To boil it down, steering into the pain basically means you need to ask deeper questions of your customers when you’re polling them. It’s a powerful tactic and can really get your customer to connect with you.
Tons of good insight in this one…
