HOW CUSTOMER BEHAVIORS, SERVICE, AND EXPERIENCE ARE CHANGING

Topic: 7 Simple Ways to Incentivize Customers and Inspire Them to Take Action

Scenario: It’s hard enough for a business or brand to get noticed in an age where audiences are exposed to thousands of marketing messages with each passing day. But as tough as it can be to stand out from the crowd, even harder – and more important – is finding ways to inspire audiences to take action on the information that you are presenting, eg to make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter. Luckily, applying a few simple strategies can help you better incentivize customers and get them to perform desired tasks and take positive action.

Insight: Any major or meaningful request that you make of a customer should be coupled with a promotion or offer that rewards them for taking part in the activity. These rewards may be financial in nature (eg a coupon code, discount, or limited-time offer). But they might also be nominal as well, and come in the form of spotlights and recognition, advance access to new products and programs, or inclusion of their commentary or video submissions in new research reports, eBooks, and ad campaigns, in just a few simple examples. In effect, every action that we ask audiences to take comes with a tradeoff of time, energy, and effort that they could be applying elsewhere. To capture and hold their attention, and convince them to aid us by providing insight or completing a sale, we need to offer something of equally compelling value in return – even if it’s just a simple way of showing our appreciation for their support.

Topic: How to Determine and Address Your Customers’ Pain Points

Scenario: Businesses succeed by meeting pressing needs that customers have which manifest in the form of pain points – ie the need to be able to quickly and securely make purchases online or to have access to simple, cost-effective ways to get work done. Learning to identify these pain points (which can often change frequently depending on the market landscape, economic climate, and individual factor) and better speak to them is the single most effective and reliable way of building a business. Moreover, because top customer pain points can change in an instant (see 2020’s pandemic and the sudden shift to online and delivery-based commerce), you’ve got to strategy reinvent yourself and your product offerings as a company at regularly intervals if you want to stay competitive.

Insight: Customers are often happy to share their insights and opinions, especially when in need, and are proven time and again year after year to be the #1 best, most reliable source where innovative new ideas spring from. It’s important as a business to implement tools (eg polls, surveys, focus groups, panels, early trials, product prototypes, online communities, etc) that can help you surface their feedback here. Once in hand, you can use these insights to repackage, reinvent, and reposition your company’s offerings to more effectively meet and speak to rising areas of concern for clients. This may mean introducing more affordable versions of current offerings, adding new features and capabilities, or finding ways to expand or contract your focus as a firm to better serve these audiences. Armed with this information, simple tweaks (and easily modifiable technology tools and business strategies) can help you stay flexible and stay top of mind with your target market.