Erika Heald Marketing Consulting

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February 1, 2021 Content Chat Recap: Content Marketing for Customer Retention

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Content marketing is crucial for customer acquisition, but far too many marketers focus all of their energy on attracting new customers. This misguided approach neglects a very important part of your brand’s community: your existing customers!

Almost any content that a company creates should provide value to existing customers, especially if you co-create content with them—you just need to stay conscious of their needs throughout your content creation.

In this #ContentChat, we discuss the core elements of content marketing for customer retention. Read the full recap below, where we explain how content marketing can help with customer retention, the ways that companies can understand the content needs of existing customers, and how brands can co-create content with customers in a way that strengthens their relationship.

Q1: Why is it important to include customer retention as an element of your content marketing strategy?

It can cost much more money to attract a new customer than retain an existing one. But that’s not the only value of customer retention.

Research shows that customers judge brands based on the experience they provide, not just the quality of the products or services. And this experience continues well past when someone becomes a customer.

By focusing on your existing customer needs, your team can better serve your audiences and refine your content strategy.

Over time, happy customers are more likely to spend more with your brand or purchase products of a higher value.

And customer retention strategies can bolster your reputation and build trust with your communities.

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September 30, 2019 Content Chat Recap: Put Your Ideal Customer At The Center Of Your Content Marketing Planning Process

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Whether you’re B2B or B2C, your brand needs a customer-focused approach with your content. In this #ContentChat, we discuss the best strategies for putting your ideal customer at the center of your content marketing planning process, including a discussion of how to get executive buy-in on your approach, ways to actively and passively collect content ideas, and examples of brands that have taken risks that paid off because they know their audience.

Q1: Why should you put your customer—and not your brand—at the center of your #contentmarketing planning process? And how do you get your executive team onboard with that perspective?

Unfortunately, some companies take a brand-first approach with content (or in general), potentially due to internal pressure from execs or teammates that do not understand the value of customer-centric content. Regardless of the reason, we do not recommend this approach.

Content should be created with your customer needs in mind. Why? When you provide your customers with content that helps solve their problems and enables them to do their jobs better, you are more likely to earn their trust and loyalty.

If your content is not created with your customer needs in mind, then it’s not content marketing.

There are places for brand-centric content, including your company’s “About” page, press releases, case studies, and more. Even then, you’ll want to position your work as “here are the challenges we help you solve,” instead of “here are our great results and shiny new features, buy our product.”

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July 1, 2019 Content Chat Recap: The Modern Buyer’s Journey

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In our data-driven age, companies can know more than they ever have about their customers. Marketers can create data-backed customer journey maps that identify the touchpoints at play in the buyer’s journey and the actions needed to effectively move customers down the funnel with unprecedented levels of efficiency.

Despite the potential of this bright, shiny and prosperous future, the reality of today’s customer journey is incredibly complicated and marketers are drowning in data.

Arm Treasure Data’s The State of the Customer Journey in 2019 report—which our host Erika Heald partnered on—found that sales cycles often last at least 2 months and can span upwards of 10 different touchpoints. And even though marketers can access more data, that does not mean they can effectively use this data.

Building on the report findings, the #ContentChat community joined to discuss the modern buyer’s journey, the hurdles we face in delivering the optimal customer experience, and how to address the issues with our current attribution strategy.

Check out the conversation below, and if you’re interested in hearing more on the report findings, listen to Erika and Tom Treanor of Arm Treasure Data discuss the report and answer questions on it in this webinar archive.

Q1: Do you have a documented customer journey that details the path to purchase for your ideal customers?

Nearly half of our Twitter respondents do not have a documented journey.

The respondents that do have documented customer journeys said that customer journey maps help them prioritize efforts that drive action from the customers.

Those that don’t have documented customer journeys acknowledge they should build them.

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Using Social Media to Enchant Your Customers

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How to use social media to enchant your customers...
…Even if It Means Steering Them to the Competition

That’s the premise @MattSingley from #Caesar’s shared with attendees at a recent social media conference I attended a while back. He was speaking about his team’s social media strategy for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in their main marketplace– Las Vegas.

Matt started out by noting that Facebook unsubscribes peak within the first hour after you make a post. This makes it imperative that when you post to your social media channels you make sure you have something relevant and interesting to say that engages your audience. You need to stand out from your competition by finding your own niche.

Matt’s team’s differentiator was their depth of knowledge about what was happening in Vegas year ’round. And this turned itself into a powerful way to connect with potential customers during CES.

Matt’s social media team was on the lookout for folks talking about Caesar’s and their properties, but they also had a task force looking for folks talking about CES. As you might expect, folks used social media channels to get recommendations for places to eat, where the best parties were, and where they could meet up with other CES attendees to unwind.

The team took a concierge approach to interacting with those folks. They gave info on places that could be a good fit and cool happenings around town—including those happening at their competitors’ properties. The idea is that by being seen as in the know of what’s cool and happening around Vegas, it builds their brand’s prestige and the idea that Caesar’s has its finger on the pulse of Vegas.

The amount of interaction and buzz generated about Caesar’s during this concentrated effort (Note: Matt had a larger than normal staff manning the social media channels around the clock for CES to capitalize on the opportunity) has led Matt to try the same approach for other large-scale events that affect cities within their markets.

I came away from this presentation with a few key takeaways:

  1. To engage your customers on social media, you need to know where they are and what they are talking about.
  2. Next, find a way to add actual value — not just self-promotion– to those conversations, to build those relationships.
  3. Don’t be afraid to try something a little bit out of your comfort zone.
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