Great Ways to Get Feedback From Your Customers

One of the main themes on this blog is that people respond to marketing messages that focus on them, not on the product being marketed to them. If you want to be successful in marketing, if you want to cut through the advertising clutter, you need to give your readers what they want.

But how do you find out what they want? How do you determine what's important to them? How do you uncover what they don't care about? It's simple. You ask them! You get feedback from your current  and potential customers who haven't bought yet – members of your email list, for example.

“Strike It Rich” Through Customer Feedback

Feedback from your customers and prospects can be an absolute goldmine for your business. It can help you fine tune and target your marketing messages for maximum persuasiveness; it can help you make ecommerce sales you might otherwise lose. It can win you new customers and increase their lifetime customer value (LCV) to you. In short, it can make your business a lot more profitable and your job a lot easier.

But, customer feedback only helps you if you seek it, preferably on a regular basis, and if you act on the information you get.

There are several different ways you can get this valuable customer feedback. Let's talk about them, as well as some mistakes you need to avoid.

Methods For Gathering Feedback

The first (and perhaps most obvious) method is to run a survey online. Through an email to your list of current customers, you could send a brief survey to determine what they like about your product, the way you market online and your post-sale customer service. Perhaps more importantly, you could find out what they don't like, what you need to improve.

You could also segment your email list based on who on the list has purchased and who hasn't. You could then survey those who haven't yet bought. When you do this, pay close attention to what your respondents say. Most won't respond, but those who do probably share many of the same feelings about your product and style of marketing as those did not.

They will give you valuable information that will help you refine your marketing copy and content in order to appeal to them more persuasively.

By being proactive in your feedback gathering, you can solve and even prevent a lot of problems.You can give your customers and prospects the impression that you care about them. But keep in mind that most people won't respond. So it's important that you try to “sell” them on giving you their feedback.

First, show sincere appreciation when you are asking them to complete your survey. Tell them how filling it out will benefit them. To do this you could mention how you want to make your products and service even better for them.

Keep The Process Simple 

Make the survey short and simple, and TELL THEM in advance it will be that way. Put yourself in their shoes. They're busy and distracted. Their natural assumption is that this survey will be a long drawn out hassle. Assure them up front that it will be very short and simple, and keep your promise. Make sure it consists of just a handful of quick, relevant questions.

An email campaign can be a useful tool for acquiring customer  and prospect feedback. You could also  put a widget on your website that lets your customer take the initiative to send their feedback to you. Chances are you have some customers who are already thinking of ways you could make your service better for them.

But they probably won't contact you unless you make it easy for them. So give them a voice. Make it easy for them to reach out to you. Put a simple feedback form on each page of your website. Ask them how you can make their search, shopping or overall user experience easier, more productive and more enjoyable.

It's very important you make this whole process simple for them. Don't show them a feedback form that is confusing or will require a lot of work for them to complete. Keep it simple!

A small website user experience problem may not seem like a big deal, but if your customers experience enough of them, their enjoyment of your site will be severely diminished. Simple, page-specific feedback forms can help you keep small problems from becoming big ones. An added benefit is that you can give your users and future site visitors an even better user experience.

You can send a broadcast message on your social media channels asking for feedback from your customers and followers. You could get their feedback on a number of things, your new website design for example. You could show two product package designs side by side and ask which they found more appealing.

Online support forums are a great way to ask for valuable customer feedback and to increase  engagement at the same time. Other customers besides the one who submit their feedback to you can see the solutions you respond with and can see that you are actively involved with your customers. This will help build their good will toward you.

Keep in mind that in this age of social media and “web 2.0”, people go online and talk. And they talk a lot! If your company has a widespread reputation of engaging with your customers and taking their feedback and crafting solutions to problems with it, it can only help your sales, including repeat sales to  current customers.

So what are some of the online tools you can use in your customer feedback campaigns?

Qualaroo allows businesses to set up brief surveys on their website's pages and target users with page-specific questions as they navigate the site. In other words, it lets companies ask the right questions at the right moment to get the valuable customer insights they need.

Survey Monkey offers a free online questionnaire tool. It enable users to produce customized online surveys. They can then send a link for the survey to their email subscriber list, embed the link on the pages of their website or send it out through their social media channels.

Feedbackify allows your site visitors to give you private feedback in real time. It enables website owners to create a feedback form they link to from a very small, yet easily seen, customizable  “Feedback” tab that displays on the edge of the webpage.

Get Satisfaction offers software programs to set up online support forums where you can get feedback from your customers. They can feel a sense of community based around your company and product from interacting with each other. They can also clearly see how sincerely engaged you are with your customers and how committed you are to their satisfaction.

ProProfs survey maker helps you capture real-time customer feedback to improve customer satisfaction and customer retention. One can plan and create a wide range of quizzes, surveys, forms, pop-up surveys, and polls. Surveys can be easily added to your company’s website, mobile app, blog, Facebook page, or can be shared via email.

Regardless of which tool or tools you use to gather feedback, when your customers give it to you, thank them sincerely. They've just done you a big favor. They've taken time from their busy schedule to volunteer valuable information that can help make your business a lot more successful, if you will use it.

So once you've gathered your feedback, use it! It will do you and your customers no good if you don't leverage it to improve your products or services.

Keep in mind that not all feedback will be positive. When you get feedback that isn't, don't let it upset you. Be grateful to the customer(s) who gave it to you, and use it to improve. When you preemptively take action on the feedback they give you, they'll be much happier, and you'll solve the same problem others were experiencing as well.

A Powerful Way To Use Customer Feedback To Increase Your Conversion Rate

If you provide a great service for your customers, eventually you'll get positive feedback in the form of testimonials.Testimonials are a powerful form of “proof”; your prospects are much more likely to believe your current customers than they are to believe you, regardless of how persuasive how copywriting is.

So when you have glowing testimonials from your current customers, use them. Here's a powerful way you can deploy them to increase your conversions: include testimonials in the marketing copy on your landing pages.

When you direct your prospects to your landing pages, you are trying to compel them to make a decision. Your message needs to be persuasive. A handful of solid testimonials on your landing pages may be just the boost you need to get your prospects to say “YES!” to your offer.

You can also include customized landing pages as part of your feedback gathering process. Whether by email, social media or a link on your webpages, you can funnel traffic to a landing page that has feedback forms, embedded surveys, etc.

Just remember what we said earlier: In order to get maximum participation in your feedback campaigns, you need to “sell” your customers on taking part. Tell them how they stand to benefit. Make the process, including your landing page copy and content as simple and uncluttered as possible.

It's critical to your long-term marketing success that you gather and act upon customer feedback. There are lots of valuable tools available to help you do this. Lander is pleased to offer you highly customizable landing page templates you can use in your feedback gathering and other parts of your online marketing too. And you can try them out for free!

Happy Marketing!