Copywriting & Lead Generation

Interviewing your customers

A theme we’ve identified is the surprising disconnect between brand and customer.

Brands don’t always seem to have a detailed understanding of what they’re particularly good at or the solution they provide their customer. Linked to this, we’ve discovered that the way they talk about their service differs to their customer. It’s easy to use internal jargon, when you’re surrounded by a team. Understandably it becomes a feature of habit.

The impact of addressing ‘what we do’ and ‘how we say it’ has been fundamental to how we’ve helped clients generate leads, build out their funnel and drive purchase.

Our ideas are driven by customer evidence or data, to help grow the business (of course they are). Interviewing customers has always helped decipher the problems they have, the solutions the brand offers, as well as unearth some gems we hadn’t considered.

After a few thorough interviews themes appear; key messages or phrases can then be used across different customer touch points. It’s important to use the words exactly as they’re reported, rather than deferring to the old internal way. We even see the impact of amending the approach to the existing database, driving purchase with ostensibly small changes of language has had significant commercial impact and benefit.

Equipped with intel and language that resonates with existing customers, it can now be used effectively to acquire new leads in paid media.

For more complex and/or higher value purchases, typically in the business to business space; it can involve a longer lead time and that means more content is required to convince prospects to purchase. We have seen success through providing free high quality content, this ensures a positive perception of the brand from the outset.

Free material is a chance to showcase credible expertise. The good news is, armed with lead data, the journey to purchase is underway. As mentioned, leads may need a few more examples of ‘you’re good at this’ to get to ‘I trust you and I’ll buy’, but you can track their interactions and see how many comm leads typically require until they purchase. Trends appear and will help you decide where to place your future time and effort.

High quality content takes time and effort to create. It is easy to acquire lots of emails, but we’ve seen from inherited databases, often perceived success translates as – poor leads. We’re also not into cheating the process by supplying loads of poor-quality web traffic.

Even with our new customer language that drives action, we have found that creating a customer experience to drive purchase on first interaction or as we say, ‘shooting for a hole in one’ while possible, is expensive.

For a business in its early stages, when average customer lifetime is uncertain or still

growing, it’s particularly important that it’s agency is accountable for the

return on investment. That includes the Agency’s time and the Client’s media spend.

Brand language leading to customer disconnect is not an uncommon challenge. Perhaps the more visible impact is a reduced number of leads. By going to the source of the issue, you can enhance your comms and grow your customer base.