Why a Good Customer Journey Is the Best Marketing Strategy?
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Why a Good Customer Journey Is the Best Marketing Strategy?

What’s so important in providing a good customer journey in your business? In this post, you will find out why this is the best marketing strategy for long-term growth.

So many businesses struggle with their marketing, whether they need to get more leads or increase their sales. The problem is that a lot of them do not pay enough attention to providing a good customer journey to their customers.

That way, not only will it be hard to get more clients, but keeping existing clients will be nearly impossible.

If you have an independent business and want to grow it besides having a good customer journey, reading this post may help.

Here are the main reasons why a good customer journey is the best marketing strategy for every business:

1) Deep customer understanding

If your business has a good customer journey, it probably includes having a great connection and deep understanding of your client.

When you understand your client well, it’s possible to map the customer journey and understand your audience’s needs, motivations, and pain points at each stage.

It helps you enhance your marketing effectiveness by writing more precise ad copies, creating relevant creatives, using the right marketing message, knowing the audience you aim to, etc.

2) Increase in loyalty

Happy customers = Loyal customers
Loyal customers = Business growth

Every business needs to have the largest loyal customer base possible. It contributes to long-term growth.

If your customer journey is good, interacting with your business provides a smooth experience across all interaction points.

From the moment someone views your business for the first time to the moment he purchases, uses the product, and then returns to purchase it again.

3) Having more brand advocates

A good customer journey ensures that your customers stay happy.

If your customers are happy – in addition to keep purchasing, they can become brand advocates by recommending your business to potential clients, which can bring you many leads.

The best thing about your customers recommending your business to others is that they do the sales pitch for you and convince people to purchase your product/service.

That way, your sales call/meeting will be much easier as the deal is already 90% closed.

4) Standing out in the crowd

In today’s world, most people are used to having awful customer service, which is a part of the customer journey of any business.

You can differentiate your business from the competition by providing amazing customer service.

There are so many businesses that claim fake statements like:

“The best service guaranteed”“Get the best customer support”“100% satisfaction guaranteed”

 

Sound familiar, right?

But let’s think about it for one moment, how many of those businesses truly stand behind those statements? Unfortunately, not many.

That’s your opportunity to be the business that provides the best customer service and stands out.

5) Improved employee morale

If your business has a satisfying customer journey, it can also impact your employees.

A good customer journey enables employees to focus on business development without wasting time on angry customers, technical problems, etc.

As a result, your employees will become more productive and happy, contributing to business growth.

To conclude

Many businesses make the mistake of investing in aggressive marketing without fixing inner problems like improving the customer journey.

It is almost impossible for a business to grow if the customer journey is poor.

There are cases in which you may not want to work with potential customers. Read more about it in this post.

The post Why a Good Customer Journey Is the Best Marketing Strategy? appeared first on Ultraise.

What PR Pros Should Expect from the Media Landscape in 2024  
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What PR Pros Should Expect from the Media Landscape in 2024  

Integrated earned media has been a core offering of The Bliss Group since its founding in 1975. While relationships with reporters and journalists remain critical, Bliss uses the term “integrated” to refer to three core components that distinguish our approach to earned media and reflect the evolution of best practices: 

Strong relationships with key reporters 

An analytics informed approach  

Paid, shared, and owned considerations (aligned with the full PESO model)  

Bliss uses analytics across practice groups and offerings, and our approach to earned media is no exception. And the data we collect and analyze doesn’t just sit around — we turn these insights into action. This is especially critical in a media landscape struck by reporter layoffs, shrinking the pool of journalists and outlets. 

What Are Journalists Up Against? 

Geopolitical tensions rose in recent years and became especially salient when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The 2023 Israel-Hamas war further exacerbated a dangerous environment for journalists and their peers across the world. According to The Committee to Protect Journalists, 99 journalists and media workers were killed in 2023 and 11 have been killed in the first two months of 2024.  

In addition to life-threating danger, journalists are also confronted with an uncertain economic climate, which has impacted around two-thirds of media professionals. 2023 saw a record number of media jobs cut, with notable layoffs at Condé Nast, Vox Media, NPR, BuzzFeed and Jezebel — just to name a few.  

Other top concerns for the industry include lack of funding and disinformation, according to Muck Rack’s State of Journalism Report. 

Journalists are also in competition with major social media platforms. Today, roughly half of Americans say they regularly consume some form of news via social media platforms. Facebook leads social media platforms in news consumption, followed by YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). 

Analytics Behind Earned Media 

Relationships are critical, especially in a bleak newsroom environment where many reporters are up against tight deadlines, an increased workload, and know peers and former colleagues who have been laid off. 

While it’s not the full solution, PR professionals can utilize data and analytics to support a more productive and sensitive relationship with reporters, helping to smooth the pitch process. 

To do just this, Bliss examined takeaways from three major media data organizations — Cision, Memo and MuckRack:  

Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report 

Data Drives Coverage: 68% of journalists want to receive original research, such as trends and market data.  

Competing Noise: The average journalist is sent up to 100 pitches per week, meaning each pitch we send needs to cut through the noise, appeal to their audience and say something different.  

43% of journalists cover five or more beats and 29% file 10 or more stories per week. 

Memo’s State of the Media & Readership Report 2023 

Wednesdays are the busiest news days. 

Readership around brands spikes on Mondays, Fridays and weekends. In fact, articles published on the weekends get 63% more readership. 

Some publications drive consistently high readership around surprising topics (e.g., midterm elections results, Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, Russia-Ukraine war, shooting in Uvalde, Texas). 

Muck Rack’s The State of Journalism 2023 

The number of journalists who say they’re more likely to respond to pitches now compared to last year has increased by about 7%. 

Fewer journalists find CEOs to be credible sources — 74% found them credible in the 2021 report versus 62% this year. 

Millennials and Gen X are the most commonly cited target audiences for journalists. 

By combining the above insights with our own original analysis, we identified best practices to guide the media outreach process. The Bliss Group’s Media Specialist team partnered with our Innovation team to analyze a representative sample of 967 media pitches to understand what metrics guide a successful pitch. Of the 967 pitches analyzed, 452 (46.7%) were successful and accepted by a reporter. Key highlights include:  

The average subject line character count of a successful pitch was 69 characters. 

87.6% of successful pitches were less than 301 words and 38.9% had a word count between 101 and 201.  

The word “Executive” is used 40% more in successful pitches, highlighting the importance of executive visibility.  

The word “Research” is used 44.8% more in successful pitches, emphasizing the impact of primary research when pitching new stories.  

What’s in Store for 2024 

Some of 2023’s top trends — layoffs at major media outlets, journalists leaving X and newsrooms unionizing or negotiating better contracts — will hold steady into 2024. We also expect to see new media outlets launched by veteran reporters, an escalation of the debate over the ethics of AI and continued discussions around compensation for reporters and editors. 

As we move further into 2024, communications professionals looking to secure earned media placements for their clients must be aware of the hurdles facing journalists and actively seek out ways to make their lives easier. 

Keeping broader political and economic events in mind, with specific regard to how they may be impacting reporters’ jobs, will be increasingly important. Taking the time to consider sensitivities related to geopolitical conflict, unionization efforts and industry layoffs could make all the difference in forming a mutually beneficial relationship with a reporter. 

To learn more about supporting the work journalists do as a marketing communications professional, read this Bliss Blog next: Building Meaningful Media Relationships. 

By Bill Smith and Ananya Vijay 

The post What PR Pros Should Expect from the Media Landscape in 2024   appeared first on The Bliss Group.