Your Customer is More Powerful Than Your Favourite Influencer

The hype surrounding influencers is everywhere. Take the recent Fyre Festival situation as an example of the power that influencers wield today in attracting attention for a brand, nevermind whether or not they know anything about the brand they’re promoting – good or bad.

The average person sees 5000 ads every day. For a small to medium business owner, it can seem daunting to get your message across to the right customer for you through all that noise.

While I do think that influencers are powerful agents in the right cases, and that the rise of the micro-influencer is helping to open doors for medium businesses to play more fairly in the space, any company’s most powerful “influencers” are still it’s existing customers.

Leveraging your Customer Experience

Small businesses with minimal budgets can’t afford to do everything. By far the most important place to focus energy is on your customer experience. Happy existing and past customers are hands down the most accessible, effective and least expensive marketing tool that any business has for three important reasons:

1. Referrals: Happy customers tell their friends, and people are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. Satisfied customers mean more customers.

2. Reviews: Consumer reviews are nearly 12 times more trusted than descriptions that come from businesses. When honest opinions from real users of a product or service, echo what a business sells itself as, trust is built and potential customers become paying customers.

3. Cost of Acquisition: It costs 6 – 7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one – Bain & Company

If you need help training your team for optimal customer experience, or auditing your total customer journey, please reach out!

Additional Reading/Watching:

Influencer Marketing Has Become a Massive Waste - inc.com

Fyre on Netflix

American Meme on Netflix