Every marketer will tell you to look at your copy, or obsess over your visuals, and pour your heart and soul into content. It’s this dedication to detail that drives leads, grows funnels, and inspires customers to buy.
But there’s also a truth that even great marketers ignore.
The truth is this: ultimately, no matter how much effort goes into building and refining your marketing strategy, something else will always have a bigger impact on buyers. There is one voice that speaks louder than any blog post, captures more attention than any ad, and inspires people like no expertly crafted video ever could:
The voice of your customers. In today’s age, the customers are more informed than ever before. They have seemingly limitless options at their disposal to gather information about your business or product, and unprecedented clarity into how businesses treat their customers. These changes have translated to a sharp shift in power from business to customer’s and has dramatically raised customer expectations from businesses. The eCustomers are less trusting and less patient than they’ve ever been.
No amount of time, energy, and resources poured into your marketing efforts can override the negative impact of poorly executed customer service. Providing personalized and predictive customer experiences is crucial to achieving sustainable business growth in today’s customer-centric world, and marketers will play a crucial role in this shift.
Even the best marketing is still just a starting point when it comes to building customers’ trust. Your customers have never been clearer about what they expect from your brand, and it’s time to give it to them.
Changes to search, social, and other channels we’ve grown comfortable depending on is making it more difficult for marketers to earn and hold the attention of their target audiences. But something else is driving this change as well: customer behavior.
People today are less patient and more skeptical, and it’s never been more difficult to build trust as a marketer. In a 2018 survey, only 3% of respondents said they considered marketers to be trustworthy:
Giants like Amazon have set a new standard for customer service, and people expect that same level of convenience and personal attention no matter where they buy. We expect overnight shipping, algorithms that can read our minds, companies who know our history with them, and conversations that take place wherever we happen to be.
For companies that aren’t Amazon, that’s a lot to deliver on.
But before you decide to completely throw in the towel and look into early retirement, consider that there’s been an untapped growth opportunity hiding in plain sight this whole time:
Your customers.
The stories your marketing team needs to tell now start with the people who already trust you: your customers. Every marketer should be allocating significant time to speaking with customers, and truly listening to what they have to say.
You’ll get more leverage from case studies, customer testimonials, and video interviews than you’ll ever get from a marketing-authored blog post or an email. Stop wasting the majority of your time and energy talking about your selling points, and instead amplify the best of what’s already being said.
No matter how good, nothing you can ever write or create will be as trusted, as motivating, or as influential to potential customers than what your current customers have to say about you. Marketers, maybe more than any team, should be thinking about how they can help turn more customers into active promoters — and those active promoters into content creators.