How to Use Client Feedback to Drive Your Content Marketing Strategy
When’s the last time you’ve spoken with your clients? To some marketers, talking to clients might sound like an unconventional idea. When we think of client-facing roles, sales might be the first one to come to mind. After all, they’re usually the ones responsible for building relationships and getting clients in the door. However, as social media became a regular part of our lives within the last few decades, the lines between marketing and sales have blurred. Through the myriad of social channels available, marketers can tailor messages to wide audiences. Engaging social copy speaks for brands, and can help nudge prospects in the right direction.
Creating the right content requires product or service knowledge and insight into clients’ minds. Marketers often get this information from other people like their managers, sales teams, and business analysts. All of these are valuable resources, but one source marketers often overlook is their clients themselves. First-hand client feedback is a valuable tool for marketers. StudioPod founder TJ Bonaventura sat down with LASSO’s Head of Content Jess Cook to talk about why marketers need to get in front of clients more often, and how to capture feedback to create content.
Gain perspective from client feedback
You can improve marketing efforts by using client feedback to better understand their perspective. Once you know how clients perceive your brand, you’ll get a clear picture of what matters to them the most. “Ask them questions that get them to tell you a story,” explains Jess. “My favorite question I like to ask is, ‘What happened on the day that you realized you needed a solution?’ That will get them to start talking about the process.” Those answers should resonate with similar target audiences. You can create social copy or video clips to address those pain points and show how your brand can help.
Develop the client relationship
Sometimes companies convert a prospect and move on without checking back in. “They don’t converse with them anymore because they might assume that they're happy, and it’s a wild concept,” says TJ. Gathering and implementing client feedback shows that your brand values their input. “If you talk to three customers and you hear kind of the same pain point over and over, or the same frustration over and over, there's something there,” says Jess. “We need to either deliver them a tool or some sort of article or how-to help solve that for them.” Taking action based on that feedback can strengthen the client/brand relationship.can lead to client loyalty, repeat business, and quality referrals.
Inspire new marketing ideas
Client feedback can help guide new content ideas. You might pick up on interesting phrases or descriptions about your brand. Sometimes, that might be just what resonates the most with audiences. “I also love just taking actual phrases customers say and testing that as copy,” says Jess. “If I hear a customer describe us in a way we've never described ourselves, I'll take what we currently have in our headline on our homepage, and I'll drop in this other version that I heard a customer say.” Using client feedback to drive new copy can potentially open the door to new opportunities because it might hit home for others that view your brand the same way. For Jess, this strategy has worked wonders. “I've had a couple instances where we see as much as a 40% increase in people going to request a demo. And that's the only thing that has changed, is this little nugget or phrase that the customer said.”
Why B2B marketers might be reluctant to talk to clients
Talking to clients may not be an activity that most marketers are used to. It might seem off putting, especially when you’re not used to it. “For a while, I never did,” says Jess. “So at that point you're kind of guessing at what [clients] need to hear from you. Or you’re making a best guess based on what the SMEs in your company are telling you or what leadership is telling you.” That third-party feedback might not be as impactful as getting it straight from the source.
Getting in front of clients and engaging in conversation by asking how they’re feeling about your product or service might make marketers nervous, but it’s undoubtedly worth the time and effort. “It's almost like we're afraid to go there,” explains Jess. “Because then it looks like we don't have the answers. But what we're actually saying when we do that is you have the answers. Our fear is actually the opposite of what it does for us, which is funny and ironic.”
There are multiple ways for marketers to have direct access to clients. Webinars, for example, are a great way to answer questions and see what clients are thinking. Social media is another great tool marketers can use to talk to clients and get feedback. At StudioPod, we value our clients’ feedback and use it to produce their own B2B podcast. Interested? Drop us a line here.
Takeaways
One
Client feedback is a valuable resource to help guide better business decisions. However, as marketers, client feedback can also be efficiently leveraged. We spoke with Jess Cook, Head of Content at LASSO, for insight into the strategies she has successfully implemented in the past after having productive conversations with her company’s clients:
Host a webinar and interact with your clients for a first-hand account of how your product or service has made an impact. “My favorite question I like to ask is, ‘What happened on the day that you realized you needed a solution?’” says Jess.
Use that feedback for inspiration, or if your marketing spidey senses start tingling, try it out as copy. If Jess hears customers describe her company in a unique way, she’ll take that phrase and test it out as her website’s headline. The result? She’s seen as much as a “40% increase in people going to request a demo” after changing up the copy!
Two
How often have you successfully engaged your prospects through your marketing efforts and then passed them off to the sales team, never to hear from them again? Many marketers are guilty of this, but why? For some, it’s a little intimidating to know the “truth.” Asking follow-up questions might make us sound disconnected from the customer experience.
The irony of this situation, says Jess Cook, Head of Content at LASSO, is that “what we're actually saying when we [ask follow-up questions] is that [we] have the answers.” In other words, that feedback, no matter how harsh, is crucial for optimal business development.
Embrace the fear and ask all the questions, but do so from a “Let me know how we can improve” perspective rather than “What did we do wrong?”
Three
As marketers, when we think of strategies to develop the client relationship, we might go into marketing campaign mode, drafting up email drips using segmented lists that can send clients highly customized promos based off of their behaviors which a sophisticated analytics platform generated for you. That’s a mouthful!
“If you talk to three customers and you hear kind of the same pain point over and over, or the same frustration over and over, there's something there,” says Jess Cook, Head of Content over at LASSO. Take that pain point and create content to address it.
Analytics and automation are wonderful tools, but sometimes a regular conversation is more effective. Why? Because it’s personal. Asking clients for feedback directly shows them that your company values their input. Implementing that feedback into action is even better. Don’t just rely on social media ads that seem to eerily read your clients’ minds; have a chat instead!