There is nothing more valuable for digital marketers than feedback. Feedback provides us with useful information that can be utilized for important decisions. You want to always be looking for ways to make your best even better.
We spend countless hours researching, building out, and then executing our digital marketing campaigns. Why not take the extra time putting together mechanisms for collecting this much needed feedback so that we can improve our current campaigns, set all future campaigns up for greater success, and retain happy clients?
There are 2 parts to this feedback equation that are important to highlight. One is actual feedback from your target audience that you are focusing on within your specific campaign. The other is direct feedback from your client that you are executing these campaigns for. Let's explore these in greater detail.
Customers: Why Customer Feedback is Important
Listening to your customers is very important and it makes them feel involved and important. Customer feedback gives you insights into your products and/or services that allow you to provide the best overall customer experience. Customers can point out imperfections in your products or ways in which you can improve your services offered. Look at this data below around customer feedback. It proves how important collecting feedback is and why you need to immediately take action to resolve any issues.
- For every customer who complains to a business, 26 other customers don't voice their feelings.
- 45% of customers share negative reviews on social media.
- 90% of customers who write reviews do so to help others to make better purchasing decisions. More than 70% want to help companies to improve the products they build and carry.
- 83% of all consumers have completed at least one survey in the past 12 months, with an average of three to four being completed in that same time period.
Customer feedback also provides you with information on how your target audience is consuming your digital content. Just because someone downloaded an offer from a landing page or read a blog post or email doesn't mean that they actually found value in the content. Soliciting feedback from your viewers as to their satisfaction with the content allows you the opportunity to quickly make subtle tweaks that will improve conversions and customer happiness.
How to Collect Customer Feedback
Data and analytics tell us a lot about what your customers want from your business. When we match customer feedback to what we’re seeing in our analytics, we get a much clearer picture of what’s going on. Then we’ll know how to fix problems and go after the right opportunities. There are many ways to collect feedback. Here are some of the best ways:
- Surveys: Surveys are one of the most common and easy to use tools for collecting feedback. Whether you want to know if people found your new ebook educational or if your customers are enjoying your new product, surveys allow you to quickly collect feedback from people at their own pace.
- Live Chat Support: Chat support can help you get a better understanding of your customers' needs and challenges. It can also help identify patterns in recurring issues and then helps find long-term solutions.
- Website Feedback Forms: Provide a dedicated form on your website where people can provide feedback. Place this form on a highly visible area of your site so users can easily find it.
- Interviews: Sometimes you want to collect feedback and information that a survey just can’t accurately describe. That’s where a personal interview comes in. This method is proactive and usually generates the best responses. To get the most out of this method, contact customers at appropriate times. Studies have shown that customers are more likely to respond between 8 am and 9 am and between 4 pm and 5 pm.
Clients: Why Client Feedback is Important
Your client hired you to be the expert for them when it comes to executing digital marketing campaigns for their business. A big reason for digital marketing failure is due to poor client feedback. Set expectations from the beginning of the campaign that you will need their feedback on all aspects surrounding their campaign so that there are no surprises and you can stay on track.
This feedback will help the team to understand the needs and preferences of the client and help determine how well the team is meeting the client's expectations. It will help you assess how well you are achieving the goals set between you and the client for the campaign and will make it easier to adjust strategy when needed.
How to Collect Client Feedback
There are a few different ways to collect valuable feedback from your clients. The digital age has made it really easy to email, text, or ping your clients. However, nothing should replace the personal touch that picking up the phone does. Reach out to your clients regularly and get a feel for how they think the campaign is going. Don't be afraid to ask for areas in which they feel you can improve. This is a partnership and it takes contribution from both sides to be successful.
Surveys are not only a tactic used to gain customer feedback but can also be very valuable for more in-depth feedback on the relationship you have with your clients. Think about sending out quarterly feedback surveys to your clients. This is a great way to gather more honest responses as to how they feel the digital marketing campaign is going and the how your team is performing overall. There are a lot of people that feel more comfortable responding to performance-based online surveys than doing it face it to face or over the phone.
When you get praise from your clients for a job well done, don't be afraid to use that to your benefit. Post their positive feedback on your website and make short client testimonial videos. It's okay to pat yourself on the back for being a digital marketing rock star!
As digital marketers, we are fortunate enough to have a whole host of tools that allow us to quickly and easily collect invaluable feedback from every person our campaigns touch. Getting negative and positive feedback from both our target audience and our clients are equally important as we can learn something from each piece of feedback. Use this information to fine-tune your digital marketing campaigns for happy customers and clients.