Survey Your Customers

Almost every receipt I get from a restaurant or fast food place has a link or a phone number to a survey. I’ve also noticed that a lot of stores and businesses are doing the same thing on their receipts. Some cashiers or waiters/waitresses even purposely circle and point out the survey when they hand the receipt to you. I’ve been noticing that surveys have become a great thing of interest to businesses lately and for good reason.

Don’t you, as a business owner, want to know what your customers feel about their experience with your products, services, or business? Don’t you, as a business owner, want to learn more about who your customers are and what they are looking for? This type of information is extremely important to businesses as they can use this to improve their services as well as better understand how to market to your customers and prospects. Information is important to many businesses and it should be important to you too.

This topic is very similar to my previous post about earning credibility through testimonials and reviews from your customers, except this one is more targeted towards learning about your customers and using that information to your benefit. Next week I’ll follow up with a post about the types of questions you can ask your customers.

Yahoo Search Marketing Tries Out Favicons

Favicons are the little icon that shows up in your browser next to the address bar. For example, if you look up at your address bar right now, you’ll probably see this:

That little B in the orange box is Blogger’s favicon. It’s showing up because we are using them to host this blog that you’re reading now. If you visit our website, http://www.pens.com/, you’ll see this as our favicon:

Favicons are an excellent way for brands to distinguish themselves and establish an identity of their own. Yahoo Search Marketing, earlier this month, started a test of showing an advertisers favicon in their Search Marketing ad. This is great because it will let customers know whether or not the site you are going to is the true owner of the brand or company you are looking for. For example, here is Nike’s ad:

Notice the favicon of the famous Nike logo we all know. This way if I was looking to shop from the authentic Nike site, I could. The other listings that show up on a search for Nike are Zappos, Kohl’s, Finish Line, and a few others. They would each have their own favicon.

While Yahoo Search Marketing is just rolling this feature out to certain advertisers during its testing period, I think it’s a move in the right direction. This will help customers when they shop as they will be able to easily identify your brand. Establish your logo, your look, keep it consistent, and use it everywhere. This way, people will learn to recognize you just by your logo or favicon.

On another note, have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

I Want to Buy Something on Your Website, But I Need Help!

Most of the time when I shop online, I start browsing the site, looking at the products, and realize I have questions. I’m sure this has happened to you too and surely it will happen to your customers. What types of questions/concerns might your prospective customers have? Well, there are many, they can range from simple questions to more complex ones. For example: How do I know if this shirt size will fit me? What is the return policy? I have questions about the product, is there someone I can ask? Is there a guarantee?

Your prospective customers are bound to have questions when shopping, so you, as a business, should provide a customer experience that will answer all these questions. You want to make the prospect feel comfortable about buying from you. With that said, it is extremely important to have a help center or customer care section on your website.

This help center needs to be easily seen, easy to access, and easy to use. It may just be a simple phone number that customers can call. You may have an email address or live chat. It is even better to have multiple ways for customers to contact you. This is because some people would rather bypass the phone call with a rep because they prefer to email, others may like speaking directly to a person. Another important section to include on your site is “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs) where customers can get answers to all their questions. This is a good place to talk about guarantees, returns, shipping/billing, sizing, and any other important information for the customer.

I would say the most important thing is to make sure this “help” is available on each page of the site. Don’t make the customer leave what they are looking at to go hunt around for help. If I am looking at a product and have questions about it, I want to be able to ask questions while I can refer the representative to the page/product. If you make your customers navigate away from what you are trying to sell or offer, you may lose them completely.

A good place to put a help phone number or contact information is somewhere near the top of the page. It is also good to keep it in the same spot on every page – keep things consistent. This way, no matter where on the site the customer navigates to, they will know that help is right there on every page.

Bottom Line: You end up helping yourself when you help your customers.

Mother’s Day Marketing

It’s Mother’s Day this weekend. It’s a holiday which means it is a perfect opportunity to promote your business. Utilizing holidays to promote your products and services is great because it will draw people to your business. It will help you boost sales over the weekend where sales might normally be soft.

People generally like to go out to eat on Mother’s Day, so offer a Mother’s Day special! Maybe it’s a discount, maybe it’s a special once-a-year dish. Since Mother’s Day is on Sunday, it might be quite crowded. Offer a discount for people to come eat on Friday, Saturday, or even Monday! People will likely visit because they don’t want to wait long.

This same strategy can be used with services or products. Offer something special, limited time, to women only, or give away a gift to customers for them to share with their mother’s or someone they know that is a mother.

Of course there are always last minute shoppers, so offer great discounts or creative gifts and ideas for people to purchase, build, create, or make for their moms.

Show your company’s love to moms all over.

Free to Try – Engaging Your Customers

If you are confident about your products and services, prove it. Businesses who believe in their products will stand by it and are convinced that if you tried it, you would come back again. This shows off a company that is bold, willing to take chances, and believes in what they offer.

Earlier this week, two popular fast food restaurants offered their version of flame grilled chicken to anyone who asked for FREE. The keyword here is FREE, KFC and El Pollo Loco both believed their product was better and they were willing to sacrifice the cost of the product to have people try their food – fully believing that if you tried it, you would see how great it is, and come back for more. KFC offered one piece of chicken while El Pollo Loco offered two pieces including two tortillas.

This type of head-to-head competition is great. It shows that these businesses are trying to put up a fight for themselves and are willing to take a risk to prove that they are the best. This also engages the customers. It makes people go out of their way to get your FREE item, try it, and then give their feedback. They’ll tell their friends, family, they’ll blog about it, post it on their Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace accounts resulting in a lot of Word of Mouth marketing.

Another company jumping into the scheme of this social media, word of mouth, creative marketing, is Ford. Ford created a social media contest to find 100 people from the US to try out their new Fiestas (a subcompact car that has been popular in Europe). They are hoping to stir up interest in the US with their Ford Fiesta Movement. The 100 were chosen from YouTube videos they submitted explaining why they should be chosen. They were also looking for people who were well connected in the social media realm: YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, etc. They wanted people who had many followers that would be able to hear about the experience these winners had with the cars. The 100 will get to drive the car for 6 months and go on monthly missions and then record their adventures in their social media realms for all to see.

This is a smart move for any business, getting connected with those who are the most connected. The great thing with social media these days is that you don’t have to wait to see what people are saying about your business and products. It is all at your fingertips. Businesses should consider taking more of a risky approach in their marketing to see what the return may be. If anything, you will create a lot of buzz around your business which leads to traffic and eventually conversions. Plus, people love FREE stuff.

Image Courtesy of klabusta