1 – Building trust by establishing a relationship with the customer

2 – An easy sales journey

3 – Aftercare leads to loyal customers and Word Of Mouth

Running a business, or setting a business up, calls for a long checklist full of to-dos. Do you need staff? Have you established your brand? What manufacturer will you use? Have you deiced on a payment gateway? What tone will you use on social media channels?

Although there are so many elements to establish and decide on, there are 3 key touchpoints that need to be paid a great deal of attention.

Why? Because without these 3 touchpoints, your business venture may suffer from:

Bad first Impressions – which is never good for building trust and positive rapport with audiences!

Low conversion rates due to a lack of productivity

Negative, or no, customer feedback

So, budding entrepreneurs, CEO’s and single-person business owners listen up and grab a paper and pen.

1. Building customer relationships through experience

First impressions count. How many times have you heard that saying? And it’s so true.

In terms of setting up a business and exposing your brand to the public, it’s so important that you approach potential customers in a way that builds a positive connection.

Publish content to the public that is relevant, engaging, helpful and effortless.

By offering relevant, useful and inspiring content about your brand or just in general, it builds trust and forms a budding positive relationship – warming them up to start spending with you.

Whether it be an informative formal Q&A or fun video content about your brand created on Tik Tok, by publishing enough information about your brand, containing core values and embedding brand characteristics, you’ll be building and nurturing new customer relationships.

Methods to increase pre-sale customer relationships to build connection:

Blog posts (informative)

Offering free consultations (giving something in return)

Giveaways (expanding your audience)

Video content (offers something interactive and entertaining)

Social media (promotes interactivity and conversation)

Always give value. Value-first marketing is critical.

2. Ensure the sales journey is easy

So you’ve offered something of value. Now, you want to maintain this interest in order to make the sale or have your audience complete desired actions which meets company objectives.

How do you begin to do that? By making the rest of the process easy.

Answer the customer’s question before it even pops into their head.

Can they get it before the weekend? What time do the doors close? how much is delivery? Can they return the product?

If the answers are right there in front of them, it’s easy. The decision making part of the customer journey is made simpler.

Opt for a highly-functional, responsive and helpful chatbot, which encourages live chat so that should they run into any indecisiveness, it can be resolved swiftly – do not input a chat method if it’s full of bugs, lacks accessibility and appears dated though, the last thing you want to do is to deter customers!

Communication is vital, especially for smaller businesses.

Find out how your target audience prefer to be contacted, be clear on working and operating hours and be transparent in FAQ’s.

This second touchpoint allows you to let the tone of your brand shine through in every aspect, especially communicating throughout the customer sales journey.

3. Aftercare and support leads to loyalty and re-purchase

The thrid touchpoint is essential!

You’ve done the hard part, converting a lead and generating a sale.

But, now, it’s time for some impeccable aftercare and follow up, so that your customer feels valued, looked after and notes your brand as a brand they’d spend their hard earned money on again.

A nice way to glide into the aftercare stage of the customer journey is to express gratitude, and provide the customer with every single pice of relevant information about their order.

The tracking code, a digital recpit, and a thank you message within an email along with relevant social icons so that they can carry on their experience with you via other digital methods won’t go unnoticed – buyers favour being thanked for their custom.

Consider upselling, along the lines of “you may also like…” or “our customers liked this too…” for an increased chance of re-purchase.

Bring them in the loop, allow your first-time buyers to become part of your community.

By having an awesome aftercare and support stage, you can welcome with open arms loyal customers and re-purchasers.

Maintain the customer experience right until the very end, or until they decide to shop with you again!

Loyal and retained customers are the customers most likely to recommend you to kin.

And thus, you have Word Of Mouth promoting your brand.

Word Of Mouth marketing accounts for 13% of consumer sales – now that’s a hefty percentage.

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