There’s no doubt about it… going digital has enabled business owners all over the world to reach out and touch their customers more proactively, productively and profitably than ever before. So why is it then that so many of them are still invisible to their ideal customers, have less meaningful relationships with more strangers, earn far less than they are worth and working more hours for less money than when they had a full time job?

Yes it really is time to get personal.

Building your brand successfully in this digital world is entirely possible, as long as you keep all of your communications completely personal, honest and ALWAYS speak to your ideal customers using clear language they understand. If you can make your prospects and customers feel like they are getting a really personal service, even if you are delivering most or all of it digitally, then you have cracked it and your brand will build effortlessly.

Here are three successful strategies our team implemented into our own business, which helped us to build a completely customer centric digital brand experience that continues to support, serve and make money when we aren’t working.

Strategy 1: Lose the incontinent language…

I bet you’ve experienced this! You go to a website or receive an email and it’s all ‘we do this’, ‘we do that’, ‘we’ve been in business since xxx’, we, we, we, we, all the way home! There is so much ‘we’ in their content, that it immediately disengages you. You don’t feel at all like they are having a conversation with YOU to solve YOUR problem personally. It doesn’t matter that you are creating content for thousands of people to read it over the lifetime that people are going to see it. What really matters is that you create your content as if you are having a one to one conversation - many times over. So at the very least, start incorporating YOU focused language into your written and verbal strategy. You’ll soon start to reap the benefits of this small, yet personal change.

Strategy 2: Create a solid customer journey…

Your customer journey is an essential part of building your brand in this digital world. If you don’t have a clear process that kicks in from the moment someone first comes into contact with your brand online, to delivering your product and your aftercare strategy, then you will absolutely be losing customers. We meet so many business owners whose current strategy is to push people to just one core high value product straight away, without first building trust by serving them with a lower priced product. However, when you put at least four levels into your customer journey, you’ll start to see very powerful and profitable results.

Strategy 3: What if they say no?

A BIG thing you need to consider when creating your customer journey (strategy 2) is the ‘what if they say no?’ or ‘what if they don’t take that action I wanted them to take?’ The best way to overcome this is to create your perfect customer journey, as if they did exactly what you want them to do first time all the way through the process. Then go back through it and ask yourself ‘what if?’ at every stage. If at any point they could say no, or not take the action you want, you need to build in another step to get them back on track. For example, our one day course has 16 different customer touch points, from the point of booking onto it, to the moment they attend. This continually builds the relationship with our customers digitally, until we meet them face-to-face. There are then a further 21 steps to the journey after they’ve attended the course. This might seem like a lot, yet the results speak for themselves as our repeat sales that lead them up to the next level are at 92%. So if you haven’t already implemented this into your business yet, set to work straight away and get this nailed.

The greatest brand failures in history have always been when the business starts to think more about their own gain than their customer’s pain. However, when you put these three strategies into place and focus totally on how you are going to make your customers feel special at every touch point on their journey with you, you’ll see your customer engagement rise at the same time as your bank balance. Enjoy!

 

By Sammy Blindell, co-founder, How to Build a Brand

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