Solidify Customer Relationships With Content Marketing During COVID – 19

“When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters – one represents danger, the other represents opportunity.” – John F. Kennedy

With this global pandemic crisis, we’ve entered a new world order that calls for prompt but compassionate measures to keep businesses afloat and, dare we say, thriving.

Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. Well, we say and strongly believe that it’s your demeanor through the times of crisis that would create a lasting impression with your customers and a lasting effect on your brand. Keep it compassionate, considerate, and sensitive. Several organizations are already demonstrating a considerate and sensitive demeanor and you should too.

In these trying times when cynicism is in the air, what efforts have you made to keep your loyal customers and, more importantly, keep them happy? Don’t hunker down, reach out! The best way to reach out at this time is content marketing. Let’s quickly dive into how this underrated gem can help you sail through this phase. Shall we?

Delighting New Customers Through Content Marketing

At this time when the global economy has taken a massive hit, the idea of new customer acquisitions, especially in a B2B environment, seems like a miracle. Acquiring new customers at this time is a godsend that you just can’t take lightly. A “set it and forget it” approach just wouldn’t do.

How you onboard your customers sets the tone for how you want your relationship with them to be. The advantage you have is that your customer already likes your product/service, you’ve just got to put a shine on it enough to create a lasting impression. The essence of onboarding lies in making your new customer realize that your brand is every bit as awesome as the sales process they went through. Here’s the kind of content you should create for your new customers:

• Personalized Welcome Email: In your first email to your customers, congratulate them for their purchase, express gratitude for choosing you, and tell them how excited you are to have them on board.
• Greeting Message: This email should have all the information for the customer to set up their account (set passwords, alerts, etc). Layer gratitude on top of this information to make them feel valued, and mean it.
• Product/Service Set-up Collateral: In this step, create a set-up wizard or tutorial to guide the customers step-by-step through their implementation process. This could be a whitepaper or a video, you choose.
• Interactive Product Walk-Throughs: Train your customers on how to use and extract value from your offering. This, again, could be a whitepaper, an eGuide, or a simple product video.
• Comprehensive Knowledge Base: Provide your customers with a knowledge base with solutions and FAQs around your offering to truly put them in an auto-pilot mode.
• Satisfaction Check-Ins: Constantly check in with customers to ensure you care about their progress through surveys, interactive content, etc, because technology can automate everything but relationships.

A solid onboarding program infused with the relevant content is the first step to turning a customer into an advocate for your brand.

Reviving Loyalty in Dormant Customers Through Content Marketing

There’s no denying that COVID – 19 has taken the world by storm and several organizations have lost a considerable number of customers, sadly. To ensure that your business remains lucrative, you’ve got to take control of your customer base, compassionately so.

All smart business owners know that retaining existing customers is easier and costs a lot less than acquiring a new one. When customers don’t engage with a brand as expected, many people make the mistake of abandoning them and going MIA. In our books, even if a customer hasn’t responded in a while, they’re still your customer and spending your marketing budget on dormant customers still holds precedence over customer acquisition cost (CAC).

You have spent valuable time and, needless to say, a solid amount of money in getting the attention of your customers. It’s content marketing that’s perfectly suited to help you resurrect inactive customers. Here’s what you should do:

• Determine customer interests based on previous engagement for a better, personalized content strategy
• Create re-engagement content based on their previous purchase to nurture dormant customers
• Provide subscription options, promotions, free demos, etc, keeping a sales-y tone miles away
• Measure content touchpoints bringing in higher engagement for better insight into the customers’ content preferences

Customer dormancy is a hard fact for each business but how you handle it makes all the difference. Getting creative to revive loyalty in dormant customers through killer content is the new black.

Despite isolation and social distancing, you’ve been handed a silver lining to communicate better with your customers. Make your quarantine about physical social distancing while virtually strengthening business relationships. Let content marketing guide you through it because, in time, this too shall pass!

Want to put your content marketing in sixth gear? We’d love to pitch in!