How Manufacturers Can Generate Referrals Through Customer Delight

Hey Sales & Marketing Professionals!

We all know that a referral is one of the easiest sales to make, because we have a strong recommendation from someone the prospect trusts, giving us implied trust. But for some reason as sales and marketing professionals, our focus is always NET NEW business.

Luckily, there’s a way to turn more of our prospects and customers into promoters with the Delight Stage of your Online Marketing Plan.

In this video, we’ll take a look at your online marketing plan’s impact on producing delight for prospects, and talk about 4 key components that will ensure your customers tell their friends all about you.

Here's a list of the other steps in this series on Building and Online Marketing Plan for Manufacturers:

• Step 1 - Overview of the Process
• Step 2 - Setting SMART Goals and Understanding Key Metrics
• Step 3 - Building Your Buyer Persona
• Step 4 - Applying the Buyer's Journey with Examples
• Step 5 - 3 Month Plan to Attract Visitors to Your Website
• Step 6 - How to Convert Website Visitors into Leads
• Step 7 - Close More Website Leads into Customers
• Step 8 - Generate Referrals Through Customer Delight

Generate Referrals Through Customer Delight

According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, it costs businesses 6-7 times more to attract new customers than to retain existing ones.

Unfortunately, most sales and marketing efforts are focused on NET NEW business, versus creating an experience that keeps customers on board, and even buying more.

The pioneer of Inbound Marketing, HubSpot, recommends, 4 key components to delivering delight:

• Solve Current and Potential Customers’ Problems
• Be Helpful
• Help them Achieve Goals - this spans marketing, sales, and service
• Be enthusiastic - In every interaction with prospects and customers

Are these 4 things that you do well, across the board? Meaning in marketing, sales, and service? Like any business, you probably know of some areas that you should tune up a bit.

The good news is, by following this video series and building Your Online Marketing Plan, using Inbound Marketing as the foundation, you’re already working on the delight stage.

Think back on the approach we’ve taken in previous videos to thoroughly understand:

• our buyers’ problems,
• how we can be a source of education and support for them, and
• how we can build as much context around their situation as possible to better serve them in the sales process.

Our plan makes sure we’re building an experience of delight from their first touch point with our manufacturing company.

But, let’s look at a few more details for the 4 key components, shall we?

Solve Current and Potential Customers’ Problems

You are in business to do this, right? You offer a solution to a problem. Your online marketing plan offers guidance to your prospects to help them find the right solution for their problem.

Taking this a step further though, do you always direct your customers and prospects to the solution that’s truly best for them, versus what’s best for you? If not, are you earning referrals and turning them into promoters? Probably not.

Be Helpful

Your online marketing plan will certainly deliver prospects helpful information. How are you adding value for your existing customers? Are you continuing to provide them with information that will help them succeed? Even outside of your business relationship?

You may manufacture a component for them, but wouldn’t they also benefit from some overall manufacturing best practices? You could easily share content with them that is helpful, further delivering delight beyond when they sign a PO for you.

Help Them Achieve Their Goals

What is your customer’s end goal on having you manufacture something for them? If you said, “To get a part they need, at the right quality, in the right lead time, at the right price.”, you have a small piece of their end goal. You are probably making a piece of something much larger. What’s the goal with their project? It’s not just about your dealings with them.

Are there aspects of their project that you could help them be successful with, EVEN IF you don’t do the work on those aspects? Could you be offering valuable support to your customers? That’s the type of effort that delights a customer.

Be Enthusiastic

I’m not talking about ODing on Happy Pills and bringing pom-poms to work every day. I’m talking about making sure your company’s voice is enthusiastic, fun, and welcoming, in every prospect or client interaction.

This might mean faking it to hide a case of the ‘Monday Blues’. That’s OK. The idea here is that enthusiasm is contagious and leaves your prospects and customers with a positive feeling.

Delight is a Different Type of Strategy

Unlike the rest of this video series, Delight covers a lot of intangible things. Things that you need to build into a regular training regiment with your marketing, sales, and service people. The whole goal here is to have a dedicated effort to turn more of your customers into referrers, promoters, and bigger customers.

As the stat I mentioned above shows, this investment of time and effort can mean spending much less on growing your top and bottom lines in the future.

How to Start the Delight Stage

So, How do you get started with this stage of the Inbound Marketing Methodology in your Online Marketing Plan?

Step 1 - Get this Online Marketing Plan in action. You’ll be helping prospects and customers to Solve Problems, and certainly being helpful to them.

Step 2 - In the middle of Month 2, I’d recommend bringing in the heads of Sales, Marketing, and Service, and having a constructive, open dialog about what you can do pre-sale, post-sale, and ongoing to deliver an exceptional experience. You may want to start with furthering your educational content experience. Should you start a knowledge base for existing customers? Should you proactively connect with your clients to see how else you can help them? Make a list and decide what you can realistically start on now.

Step 3 - Communicate your standards for enthusiasm in your all of your interactions. Explain the why, how your team will be held accountable.

Recap

So, to recap, The Delight Stage is about making your customers raving, referring fans of your company. Starting all the way back to when they first engage with your marketing, through their post sale interactions and experience with your manufacturing company.

Your Online Marketing Plan for Manufacturers

This was part 8 in our series on Building an Online Marketing Plan for Manufacturers. I’ve put links to the other parts below:

• An Overview of Your Online Marketing Plan for Manufacturers.
• How to set SMART Goals, and which metrics matter.
• How Buyer Personas kick Target Markets’ ass, and how to create them.
• How to map out your Buyer Persona’s Buyer’s Journey, using examples.
• How to Attract high quality visitors with content marketing, and a 3 month plan to get started.
• How to Convert more of your website visitors into leads by thinking beyond the RFQ and Contact Us forms.
• How to Close more website leads into customers with Lead Nurturing.