Do you know one of the most effective ways to successfully build your business?

It's keeping an eye on your competitors. Yes, you read it right! In order to create smarter marketing strategies, you need to know your competitors really well.

Now, we all know that there are plenty of ways to spy on your competition. You can check their activities on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. You can even subscribe to their digital newsletters in order to stay abreast with the latest updates and promotions.

But all of these methods are extremely time-consuming and don't offer in-depth data on what your competitors are doing to increase their customer base and build their business.

So here's what you can do instead!

Stop wasting your energy on methods that don't offer enough output and take the route of technology. What we mean is ā use the best tools for spying on your competitors. Some of the tools out there also tell you if your competitors are spying on you.

In this post, we discuss the list of 19 best tools you need for the purpose of monitoring your competitors closely. Let's discuss each one of them in detail.

How Can I Spy on My Competitors?

As you operate in a competitive landscape, it's important to analyze both the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Here's a list of the top tools you can use to get a comprehensive view of where you competitors stand:

1. SEMRush

SEMRush is a famous SEO tool that helps you:

• Know about potential competitors
• Gather data on the marketing strategies of other businesses
• Analyze the paid traffic of your competitors

You can also use the tool to improve your current campaigns by recognizing content gaps and researching keywords. SEMRush also helps you perform competitor keyword research.

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As far as the pricing is concerned, SEMRush offers different packages between $119 and $449 a month, based on the number of brands you want to track. You can also check the broad range of add-ons they offer, such as market research tools, leads channel, etc.

2. Ubersuggest

Backlinks are crucial for any winning SEO strategy. Ubersuggest is a free tool that sheds light on how your competitors fare in this regard.

But why should YOU use the tool?

The answer is simple ā To build a foundation for a link building strategy that gets you ranked. Here's how you can leverage the tool for the same:

• Type in your competitor’s URL and click “Search.”
• Choose “Backlinks,” located in the sidebar.
• Go through the overview of the link profile of your competitor. Also check detailed data such as URLs, domain score, referring pages, and anchor text.
• Choose the “Traffic Analyzer View” to view domain score, number of incoming backlinks, and so on.

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After viewing this information, you can also make a list of sites that link to your competitors. Then, you can target these websites to get backlinks to your content as well.

3. Buzzsumo

One of the most popular tools for spying on your competitors is Buzzsumo. It provides you with some incredible ideas for your content marketing strategy by keeping a track of your competitor's content. It shows what content has gained popularity among your competitors' audiences.

Now, how to use it?

Simply open the tool and type in a URL in the search bar. It will display the most popular content for that website. You can even filter down your results by content type, date range, etc.

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After you use this tool and get to know what's working for your competition, you can adapt the same for your own target audience.

4. SimilarWeb

You also require a tool that effectively gauges the overall web performance of your competitors. SimilarWeb is one tool that offers you an overview of your competitor's traffic analysis. With the help of this tool, you are able to find out their monthly traffic, where these visitors come from, and which channels bring in the most visitors.

Here's how you can use the tool to spy on your competitors:

• Open the tool and enter a website of your choice.
• An overview of its traffic will appear. Here, you can check the traffic sources. Looking at the information, you will also come to know which is the most impactful channel for them.

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Another great feature of this tool is that you can compare traffic for different competitors.

5. Fanpage Karma

Fanpage Karma is a tool that allows you to track social media activity of brands on a simple-to-use dashboard. With the help of the tool, you can dive deeper into your rival's social strategy as you get to measure their engagement, response time, growth, and much more.

Another noteworthy feature of the tool is that it allows you to measure the success rate of the social media campaigns of your competitors. You can even view the posts that increased their followers.

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6. Adbeat

Adbeat is one of the best tools for spying on your competition. It helps evaluate the digital marketing strategy of any brand. Here's how the tool can benefit you:

• You can check which ad campaigns of your competitors perform well with their customers.
• You can learn how much your competitors spend on advertising.

The tool is perfect for brainstorming ideas for your future ad campaigns as well.

When it comes to pricing, Adbeat offers a standard package for $249 a month and an advanced package for $399 a month.

They also offer customer-tailored enterprise packages, which they provide to big companies that have specific business needs.

7. PlagiarismCheck

PlagiarismCheck.org is an easy-to-use online checker that helps you know if your rivals copy your content. In other words, you can use this tool to check if your competitors present your writings as their own.

Basically, this tool finds rearrangements in word order, poor paraphrasing, and any indirect matches of your content. All in all, it's a great tool to have in your arsenal.

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8. Copyscape

Copyscape is another effective tool that checks if someone has stolen your content. It even checks if your content is original enough to publish.

If you choose the premium version of the tool, you gain access to more powerful detection. This version even provides extra services like API, private index, batch search, and copy-paste checks.

Another noteworthy thing about the tool is that it scans the internet on a day to day basis and emails you in case it detects copies of your content.

9. Followerwonk

Next in our list is the Twitter research tool called Followerwonk. The tool offers you insights into the kind of audience your competitors have.

Now, you may be wondering how the tool can benefit you?

It lets you access demographic data about your competitor's followers and helps you find new followers. You can also use the tool to understand how to create content that strikes a chord with your customers.

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10. Hootsuite

While researching different ways on how to spy on your competitors, we recommend you use a popular tool called Hootsuite. It is considered as the best tool for tracking social media analytics.

The incredible thing about this tool is that it integrates with more than 35 social media networks. Pretty cool, isn't it?

To use the tool, set up streams and follow your competitor's activity. You can also track specific hashtags and keywords.

11. Moat

Moat Ad Search is a tool that helps analyze the ad creatives of your competitors. You can call it the largest digital-ad search engine.

To use the tool, open it, add a brand, and check and analyze the ads they have used in the past.

Here are the results when you search for Coca-Cola.ā

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Also, when you hover over a particular ad, you can know the dates during which it was active and its dimensions.

Note: The tool also allows you to create deals alerts every time your competitors create a new ad.

12. Sprout Social

When you talk of the most famous social media spying tools, Sprout Social deserves a mention. It monitors your competitors' campaigns and helps you improve your social media strategy.

Here's what you can do with the help of this tool:

• Know the recent changes/trends in your industry.
• Get valuable insights from your rivals.
• Research upcoming trends and sharpen your marketing plan.
• Manage your social campaigns from a single platform.

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When you talk of pricing, Sprout's premium packages start at $89 a month, enabling you to monitor five social profiles. If you need to track more accounts, you can choose their enterprise packages for $149 and $249 a month.

13. Ahrefs

Next on our list of tools for spying on other brands is the widely known tool Ahrefs. You can use it for every aspect of competitor analysis.

It provides you with all this information on your competitors:

• Referring domains
• Domain authority
• New referring domains

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Armed with this information, you can check how long it is taking for your competitors to gain new links. If they are gaining 90 links in a day, for instance, then you can set your own goal accordingly.

14. Kompyte

Kompyte helps you learn about any changes on your competitor's website. It also enables you to know about their ads and digital marketing campaigns.

If you go ahead and register for this tool, you will get an alert every time your competitor puts up a fresh banner, posts ads, or makes even the smallest modification on their site.

Another noteworthy feature of the tool is the hidden updates a feature. It monitors the changes that aren't even visible on your competitor's site. An amazing feature, isn't it?

Note: The pricing of the tool is not known, but you can always request a demo to know more.

15. Ontolo

While looking for effective ways on how to spy on your competitors, consider using a tool called Ontolo. It provides useful graphs and reports to let you easily understand the information it shows.

Essentially, Ontolo is a tool that lays key focus on content marketing. But, it's also a helpful backlink tool. With the help of this tool you can:

• Prioritize your content and get improved results
• Discover authors who link to your content
• Get tips and recommendations for link building opportunities

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16. SpyFu

SpyFu offers you detailed insights into the marketing campaigns of your competitors. For instance, you get to look at their Google Ads activity. This means, you can see every ad variation, every organic rank, and all the keywords they bought on Google Ads.

If you want to get a detailed rundown of your competitor's Google Ads campaign, all you need to do is open the tool and enter the brand you want to analyze.

This helps you check what they are doing correctly. You also get to see any improvements that they need to make.

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All in all, SpyFu offers you some great ideas you can use to improve your advertising campaigns.

SpyFu packages start from $39 a month. They increase according to the number of keywords you need to research.

17. iSpionage

iSpionage is one of the most powerful competitor analysis tools for spying on your competitors. It helps research keywords and examine your competitors' marketing campaigns.

Basically, this tool helps you dive deeper into the marketing activities of your competition. You can use it to obtain data on your rival's paid advertising budgets and check the keywords they are using for their pay-per-click ads.

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When you talk of pricing, iSpionage packages are priced between $59 and $299 a month. Companies requiring advanced competitor reporting features can contact iSpionage for custom subscriptions.

18. Serpstat

Serpstat is a highly reliable SEO competitor tracker tool out there. Top brands such as Shopify and Samsung use it to keep a check on their rivals and hone their SEO strategies.

Apart from this, businesses also use the tool to keep a check on their competitors content strategies. One can even access it to know any upcoming keyword trends.

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As far as pricing is concerned, Serpstat's packages are priced from $55 to $399 a month, based on the number of daily searches you require.

19. KW Finder

KW Finder helps you carry out competitor analysis on the SEO strategies of other brands. All you need to do is type in the domain of a brand, and the tool will present you a breakdown of its top-ranking keywords. This data comes in handy to produce SEO-driven content that helps in getting more users to your website.

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When it comes to the pricing of the tool, packages fall between $29 to $79 a month, depending on the brands and number of keywords you wish to research.

Wrapping It Up

In this day and age, you need to stalk your competitors to find out ways to outsmart them. The tools we've discussed will allow you to keep an eye on your competition more closely. All these tools offer quick and smart insights, giving you the latest data on your rivals. Use the valuable insights you gather from these tools to create a plan that sets your business up for success. Ensure you use a combination of the tools we've discussed to connect the dots and view the bigger picture.

Now that you are armed with the knowledge of the top tools for spying on your competitors, you are in a well-informed position to move ahead in the game.

Get cracking!

To sustain your business, you need to upsell your services. Upselling is the second most crucial phase of running a successful business by creating loyal customers.

Your journey as a business begins by helping your clients reach their goals, but to sustain them in the long run, it is crucial that you retain them. To do that, you need to understand their goals and pain points.

However, upselling is not as straightforward as it sounds, regardless of your agency's strategic advantage over others or the service quality you offer.

Luckily if you are a data-driven marketing organization using marketing analytics and a web analytics dashboard, you can quickly identify the critical areas of improvement in your campaign. Accordingly, you can offer additional services to your clients to plug in the loopholes and further improve the KRAs.

What Is a Marketing Dashboard?

Marketing dashboards are powerful tools to evaluate your campaign performance and check analytics in real-time. Data visualization and intuitive graphs help your client understand the campaign performance for different marketing channels.

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It helps a lot in the decision-making process, especially when you decide to add new agency services. Here are ways to use a marketing dashboard to upsell your clients.

1. Understand Your Clients' Goals and Setup Goal Tracking

The overall goal of any marketing agency is to help scale your clients' businesses by using different marketing strategies. You must set goals to evaluate your performance and keep track of your direction.

To achieve this, you must first understand your client's specific needs and priorities. It helps you decide your strategy in a better way. Make a sound proposal after identifying these particular needs. You can set your goals based on those needs and achieve them in a coherent and organized manner.

You should prioritize the tasks your client desperately wants to accomplish and move on to other low-priority tasks that most clients are reluctant to pay for. The advantage of using goal-setting is that it prevents analysis paralysis and gives your client a precise idea of how they are performing.

DashClicks provides clients access to their marketing dashboard when they sign up for their white-label platform.

It ensures a higher degree of agency-client transparency. Your clients can easily track their performance in real-time just by logging into their DashClicks account. They can also use their dashboard to check other analytics using software integrations.

2. Identify Your Clients Who Need Additional Services

It would help if you explored your clients' needs as it is comparatively easier to sell a service to an existing customer than to a new one. That's the reason most marketers stress selling to existing customers.

"Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70% while selling to a new customer is 5-20%."

Source: Outbound Engine

If you have a retainer, you can look for more opportunities to add additional services apart from the existing ones.

For example, if you grab a brief PPC project, you should find an opportunity to expand their traffic and revenue using SEO and content marketing.

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Sometimes setting extensive goals lead to failure because they don't get the required marketing support.

When you review your clients' marketing goals, you identify the discrepancies between your services and their goals.

Do you have bigger traffic goals but aren't planning any PPC campaigns to achieve those goals? Maybe all you want is a website upgrade.

If you thrive on email marketing, you must worry about your bounce, open, and click-through rates. So, if you want to improve your email campaigns, you can take the assistance of an intuitive marketing dashboard like DashClicks.

However, not all of your customers need that upsell. You'll get multiple opportunities to upsell if you can conduct result-oriented conversations with your clients using the digital marketing dashboard.

It would help if you positively tried to impact your clients. Even if you're using automated reporting to save time and schedule, your agency should meet your clients monthly to discuss their issues and find opportunities for upselling.

Furthermore, it gives them a personal feel which brings extreme customer delight. Keep your communication line open and carefully listen to them to discover their core objectives and pain points. It will also prevent you from appearing overly salesy.

3. Audit Your Clients' Content and SEO Strategy and Offer Complimentary Services

Digital marketing uses several variables such as devices, channels, landing pages, campaigns, etc. A lot of overlap happens here as well. You can find multiple opportunities to offer complementary services.

For example, your campaign analytics reveals that the Google Ads campaign is going great, but a particular landing page is not yielding conversions as desired. Your agency can offer an additional service to optimize that page to achieve its objectives better.

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All you need to do is to use Google Analytics integration. Analytics gives you a comprehensive picture of your digital marketing campaign with different marketing KPIs and metrics. Most dashboards use SEO metrics as part of their marketing KPIs.

Together, landing page optimization and SEO will boost your rankings, page views and conversions. The key to upselling is using logic, a data-driven approach, and goal-oriented strategies.

Your client should be under the impression that you are catering to each of their business interests. You should also be able to deliver quick wins. To achieve this, audit their content and SEO strategy and identify the problem areas in their website. The next step is to get them fixed. It creates a fast sales funnel.

4. Use Your Digital Marketing Dashboard to Share Relevant Data With Your Clients

Data is an integral part of your agency's value. You can establish your clients' trust by achieving minor successes and gathering the data to prove it. The data will speak for itself with your chosen metrics and a user-friendly dashboard like DashClicks. You can customize your dashboard to highlight the most crucial KPIs and metrics. Always focus on your client's ROI, especially when trying to upsell. It will justify the additional spending required.

Remember, it's not hard to convince the client to pay for an additional service, but there should definitely be a genuine reason. If data supports it, that would be the icing on the cake. When you have the data to display how your additional service will help them achieve their goals faster, they will happily accept your offer.

Final Words

Your marketing strategy is assessed based on your client's goals. Numerous marketing metrics are used to evaluate the success of your marketing strategy.

DashClicks' marketing dashboard is a powerful reporting tool that eliminates the use of lengthy and confusing spreadsheets and challenging-to-understand metrics. Specific KPIs support it.

DashClicks dashboard's data visualization and stunning graphics help your client understand the campaign performance in a better way. It is also used to demonstrate your agency's performance and increase client retention.

Your team can also use these reports to upsell services that are essential for your campaign's success, and your clients will be grateful for that.

Goal tracking is a valuable exercise which you can do through dashboards. Precise goal tracking will help you address your client's needs and pain points.

As a business owner, your natural instinct may be to expand your operations and scale your business. However, not all business owners put in the required efforts and dedication to attain this goal, making a difference. Regardless of the business size or the industry you operate in, you must invest adequate time and resources in the essential processes, market research being one of them.

Market research is a significant process that can make or break your small business. If done right, you may experience success like never before; otherwise, things can go downhill. The importance of market research is no mystery! Therefore, conducting productive market research can accelerate the growth of your small business.

Importance of Market Research for Your Small Business

Market research helps identify and analyze essential information that can guide your future business operations. You get an understanding of the target audience's needs, untapped markets, competitors and strategies, and the ideas that work and produce desired results.

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Some reasons to conduct market research include:

• Understand the Consumers’ Preferences and the Market
• Explore New Markets and Target Audiences
• Have a Thorough Understanding of the Competitors and Their Actions
• Identify New Opportunities to Increase Revenue
• Determine What Works and What Does Not
• Uncover Trends
• Brainstorm Ways to Generate Traffic
• Develop Effective Strategies
• Identify Prospects
• Develop an Effective and Efficient Business Model

Steps to Conduct Market Research for Your Small Business

Conducting small business market research using the secondary research method is ideal, as it is cost-effective, productive, and less time-consuming. Follow the below-mentioned steps when conducting market research for your business:

• Determine the primary objective of research and the ultimate goal.
• Shortlist all the resources you want to use, like industry data, reports, competitors’ information, etc.
• Gather the data
• Combine and mold all the data in the most useable format
• Analyze all the data and look for the solutions to the questions you defined at the beginning. If you cannot find them, look for other resources and restart the process.

The secondary research method is a pretty straightforward process that is most likely to bring success to your table. All you have to do is set questions and employ different techniques to find the answers to those questions. If you follow this process, you will ‌uncover all the growth opportunities.

How Frequently Should You Conduct Market Research?

Ideally, due to the dynamic market forces and frequent fluctuation in consumer behavior, conducting market research every two weeks is a feasible plan to get a competitive edge and for stable growth. Moreover, for in-depth analysis and reporting, utilizing research paper writer services can provide comprehensive insights and professionally crafted documents, enhancing the quality of your market research.

Otherwise, you will be vulnerable to threats and not likely to stay abreast with the trends. Regular market research will help you explore new opportunities faster than competitors.

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Small Business Market Research Tools You Can Use

Here's a list of some invaluable market research tools for your small business:

1. Online Surveys

Businesses can utilize various online survey tools that are easy to use, affordable, and help understand the customers and their preferences. You can share these online surveys through tools like Survey Monkey, Typeform, and DashClicks' Forms app, customer mailing lists, websites, or social media channels.

2. Dimensions.ai

It is an online library of academic research papers and publications. Through Dimensions.ai, You get access to various authoritative publications to help you make better decisions.

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3. Answer the Public

It is a free website that helps you determine the most commonly asked questions about a specific topic online. Answer the public can help you develop your content strategy, introduce new offerings, and modify your website content.

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4. BuzzSumo

Most content marketers use this tool for conducting market research for small businesses. BuzzSumo helps you understand the consumer needs and content they like the most and engage with. You can set up alerts for industry-relevant keywords, comments, or social mentions.

5. Digital Intelligence Software

You can use tools like the DashClicks' Analytics app to conduct market research for your small business. It can analyze any website's or app's performance and help you understand its performance in terms of traffic source, reach, and size.

6. Think With Google

It helps uncover and analyze the target audience's insights and characteristics.

Tips for Small Business Market Research

Below are some easy tips for doing small business market research!

1. Consider Your Direct and Indirect Competitors

You should know what your competitors are doing and act accordingly. While conducting market research for your small business, you might miss out on indirect competitors and overlook them. However, the fact that their target audience is similar to yours makes it imperative to perform their competitive analysis to avoid missing out on potential audiences.

2. Develop a Framework

While conducting market research for your small business, you gather a lot of information and data, which can be cumbersome to process. Therefore, develop a framework with a specific outline that will help you keep your information structured and organized in an easy-to-understand visual model.

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3. Formulate the Right Strategy

Post-pandemic, the number of small businesses has been rapidly increasing, making the entire business space competitive. However, formulating the right strategy for your small business enables you to invest your time and efforts in processes that will help you generate greater revenue. Choose strategies that will boost the traffic of your website and online shops. You can compare your traffic vs. your competitors in the industry.

4. Connect With the Audience

With so many small businesses, consumers have numerous options to choose from. Customer is the king, and you should treat them likewise only. You should mold your offerings to address their needs and offer value to them. It will help you connect and build a sustainable relationship with them.

5. Study Your Audience

Do a comprehensive analysis of your target audience to understand their needs, wants, shopping behavior, demographics, and other characteristics. You can use Similarweb to gain these valuable insights about your audience. Then, study the data you get and accordingly alter all your activities. For instance, if you find out that your audience prefers seamless customer service, invest in that. Make sure you deliver the best customer service to them. It will boost your small business's growth and success. You should have all the essential knowledge about your target audience in order to develop effective strategies.

6. Study Your Market

Market trends and forces are highly dynamic in nature and keep changing constantly. Therefore, it is imperative to look out for these changes and trends to help you overcome the threats and grab valuable opportunities. Always analyze the trends in your industry and keep a tab on all the top players. Determine where they get their maximum traffic from and keep track of the changes.

Market research will help you understand the impact of changes and act accordingly. For instance, lately, users want to engage with businesses through their apps. Therefore, you should also develop apps with an excellent user experience to succeed.

Note: You can also work with a white label company to make things easier and allow yourself the time to focus on other core competencies.

Conclusion

Market research is essential for the growth and success of every small business. It offers uncountable benefits in the short-run and small-run. Research produces a lot of reliable data, which can help you make informed decisions for the business to sustain. You can build your own data library and grow your business. Therefore, you should understand the importance of market research and invest your time and efforts into it.

The client onboarding questionnaire is key to starting a business relationship off right.

While you may feel like celebrating and kicking back after crushing that sales pitch, the pressure is on more than ever. The client signed the contract, laid down their first payment, and now they want results.

However, in marketing, few things are instant. That's why you need to prove you're on top of your game by getting the ball rolling.

Let's dive into the process of creating an onboarding questionnaire. Then, we'll list out the best client onboarding questions you can have on your form.

What is a Client Onboarding Questionnaire?

A client onboarding questionnaire is a physical or digital form designed to collect information that's crucial to the success of a project.

When done right, your onboarding form should benefit both parties.

First, a questionnaire with well-articulated questions should give your client pause for consideration. The last things we want are overly-general answers. We want the brand owner to honestly reflect on their company's strengths and weaknesses.

No one is going to understand a company better than someone who works on the inside. They have a deeply vested interest in its success whether it be for personal or monetary gain. Coming to your agency should be a sincere request for professional assistance in achieving that goal.

With that in mind, you want your onboarding questionnaire to focus on key details such as:

• The company and its offerings
• The company’s mission, values, and approach to customers
• The primary business objective of a marketing service
• Competitor offerings & behaviors
• The ideal audience demographics

With these factors in mind, you have the bedrock for an excellent onboarding form. However, you can and should modify your form as necessary to consider the specific digital marketing services that the client is requesting from your agency. For instance, if you're designing client-focused onboarding questions for digital marketing services that highlight SEO strategies, incorporating an "SEO-focused intake form" can be invaluable. This ensures you gather all the essential insights needed to optimize search performance from the get-go.

Your onboarding form will help save time, guide the client on what they need to provide, and establish a permanent record. That way, you'll be able to fall back on their responses when it comes time to discuss progress and results.

Without further ado, let's dive into 20 of the best questions you can use to guide your initial client onboarding questionnaire.

The Best Client Onboarding Questions

1. Who is the primary point of contact at your company regarding your digital marketing services?

This will lay out a clear line of communication. You want the client to provide a name and their preferred method of contact. This helps you ensure that you can obtain a quick response at any time throughout your business relationship. It also helps you avoid bothering the wrong individuals during their regular responsibilities.

2. Does your company have existing marketing assets? (Logo, preferred fonts, color hex codes, images, etc.) If so, please upload them here.

A company that's prepared with its branding material is a godsend. It's a great indicator that your client has a clear image of their company and how they want you to present it. Getting your hands on these assets from the start will ensure that your creative team can get to work as soon as possible.

3. What is your primary business objective with our services? (brand awareness, lead generation, sales, remarketing, etc.) Select multiple if necessary.

You likely have a solid idea of this from the initial meetings with your client. Nevertheless, allow the client to reflect on what they truly hope to gain out of this business exchange. You'll have a record of the primary objective as well as any other tertiary goals that your team can strive to work toward.

4. What is your brand's unique value proposition for the consumer?

This question is critical for successful marketing. However, you'd be surprised how many companies fail to have a solid response to this question. No amount of marketing can help a brand avoid this question for good. After all, if someone at the company can't identify a reason to shop there, how can the consumer?

5. What are your core company values and your mission statement?

Asking this allows your team to gain a solid understanding of what the company represents to the public. Every brand should have an available statement as to what its company aims to provide to the consumer and the community. The values represent how the team might go about achieving that mission.

6. What everyday problems do your offerings help the consumer solve?

Many brands go about reciting a list of benefits that their products or services provided. While that's helpful, it's not the most direct way to win over a customer. Instead, ask the client to think about the everyday problems their average customer faces. Then, explain why the offerings address that problem directly.

7. What is your preferred manner of speaking with the consumer? (professional, humorous, laid-back, etc.)

Your client should help establish the tone of the marketing materials you create on their behalf. Help your team avoid any tonal confusion by establishing how your client wants to be viewed by the consumer in everyday interactions.

8. Describe your ideal buyer persona.

While the prior question describes how you should talk, this one explains who you should be talking to. The ideal buyer persona describes the individual that is most likely to benefit from and purchase the brand's offerings. Try to retrieve as much qualifying data such as demographics, habits, or related interests.

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9. What is your primary weakness as a business?

Time for some brutal, honest reflection. Every person and every company has a weakness. It's being honest about those failings that allow us to eventually overcome them. When your client describes company weaknesses, you can devise ways to address them and alleviate customer concerns through your marketing efforts.

10. What are the most common reasons you hear from customers that lead to lost sales?

The response will likely be a continuation of the last question. While the former asked the client what they thought, this question asks them to reflect on how well they are listening to the customer. Crafting a way to address customer complaints and concerns head-on is the best way to condition potential customers to convert.

11. What is the main reason that customers cite as motivation for being loyal?

After some tough self-assessment, your client gets to reflect on their quality aspects. Returning customers almost always have a consistent reason for sticking with a brand. This could be pricing, customer service, or product quality. You'll want this information so that you can highlight it as a strength.

12. What other demographics do you believe could benefit from your offerings?

The client may or may not have an idea of this. Of course, they're going to want to appeal to as many groups as possible. However, try to obtain some insight as to where you might be able to direct marketing efforts to expand the company's reach and grow.

13. Is your company active on social media? If so, please list your profile handles. If not, would you like us to create these for you?

Social media is vital for marketing in 2022. Whether you're leveraging sites like Facebook for paid ads or using Twitter to share content, there's a place for it in every brand's strategy.

Use your questionnaire to identify the correct social accounts for the brand. If they exist, you can review their social activity to gain a better understanding of their messaging. You can also identify strengths and weaknesses early for future improvements.

14. Do you have a website? If so, please list the URL. If not, would you like us to create one for you?

A quality business website is even more important than the former. Have your client list the URL for you, so that you might avoid locating the incorrect domain. On the other hand, it's important to identify the absence of a website early, so that you can sell the benefits of one to the customer for future project success.

15. Who are your primary competitors?

Now that we have a solid understanding of the client, it's time to attack the competition. Your agency needs to understand exactly who you're competing with so that you can plan your strategy. Understanding competitor strategies is going to be key to succeeding in a variety of digital marketing channels.

16. What do your competitors do better? What strengths do you hold over the competitor?

This may or may not tie back to the client's responses about their company's strengths and weaknesses. However, it's important to ask this in light of the direct competitor. It's vital to address the pros and cons head-on because the customer is going to research it themselves regardless.

17. What makes your product or service a superior choice over the competitor?

This helps your agency examine the key offering comparisons as opposed to a direct competitor comparison. We want to understand both the company as a whole and the actual offering being delivered to the consumer's hands.

18. Do you plan to utilize paid ad campaigns? If so, what is your expected monthly ad budget?

You may or may not have an idea if the client wants this based on your initial meetings. If paid ads are off the table, eliminate this from your onboarding. Otherwise, it's important to establish guidelines early on regarding anticipated ad spending. If there are any anticipated issues, you can hash them out before the paid ad work begins.

19. Can you reference other ads, websites, or marketing materials that you like? What features do they have that can benefit your brand?

We like this question as it can provide a better indication of the client's tastes. The better you can satisfy the client with your early drafts, the more likely you are to establish a trusting relationship moving forward.

20. Are you currently performing any marketing efforts in-house? (SEO, paid ads, blogs, etc.) If so, please describe them.

There's little sense in ignoring the client's hard work to date. This can tell you if the client has anything from a website blog, a Google Ads account, a Facebook Ads account, or anything else related to their online presence.

Creating an Onboarding Questionnaire

You can utilize any form-building software in existence such as Google Forms to craft your questionnaire. However, there are two unique methods of delivering onboarding to clients through the DashClicks platform.

Method 1 - Utilizing the Forms App

DashClicks features a proprietary forms builder software that allows you to build and publish customized forms.

You're able to create your queries, customize columns and rows, and modify a variety of style options. You can also send and manage form invitations from within the same platform. Finally, share the onboarding form directly with an embed, iFrame, or direct share link.

A free account grants you the ability to create one form with the drag-and-drop builder. There's no cap on the number of form submissions you can track, while many other providers set limits based on your existing plan.

You may also resend lost invitations and cancel pending invites at any time.

Method 2 - Automated Onboarding with White-Label Fulfillment

This method is not for everyone as it focuses on agencies looking to benefit from our white label fulfillment services.

Account owners get access to our fulfillment store. This allows you to purchase essential digital marketing services such as Facebook Ads or Social Posting for your client.

When purchasing a service, our system automatically sends the appropriate onboarding forms to the requested party. We can send the white-labeled form to your client or send it to your email directly. Clients and agencies alike enjoy this as it means even less for the client to do, leading to a better first impression.

You can then track and revisit onboarding forms at any time directly through your account's project management software.

If you want to expand your agency's offerings, and want to avoid the hassle of going back and forth with onboarding, this method is for you.

Build Your Ideal Client Onboarding Questionnaire

The client onboarding questionnaire is a necessary form to get your business relationships off on the right foot. You eliminate the guesswork and let the client know exactly what your agency needs to get the job done right.

If you're looking for an easy-to-use form builder, sign up to DashClicks now and take advantage of the free Forms app. If you don't like it, you're free to log out and take advantage of the numerous form builders around the web.

As a final note, don't be afraid to play around with the suggested question format. If your agency is selling a particular marketing service or package to the client, shift the questions to capture the necessary key details. These 20 questions are meant to serve as a guideline that helps identify essential facts that are meaningful for every business-marketer relationship.

If you think CRM is just another work tool and a way to keep track of your sales team's targets, you are wrong. Selecting the right CRM software and scaling your business through it are the two most crucial things ensuring the success of your enterprise.

The right CRM is a prerequisite for boosting sales. According to a Martech Zone study conducted in 2020, 50% of sales teams boosted their productivity using mobile CRM.

A CRM tool will help you manage data and automate follow-ups. It will also help you run better-optimized campaigns by maintaining a high degree of accuracy and giving you crucial sales stats. With dynamic reporting, DashClicks' white-label platform will simplify your business and help boost your sales and productivity.

Here we will discuss how you can use your CRM software to maximize sales and growth for your agency.

We will also share the features you should look for when choosing CRM software for your agency. After going through this article, if you feel your CRM is not offering these features, it's time to switch to a better CRM software.

1. Improve Lead Generation Process

CRM is a crucial source of customer information, providing you with a 360° view of the customer data, including leads. All you need to do is to integrate it with marketing automation software. It will boost your sales effectiveness. A CRM system will also help you identify the hottest leads and target them. It will immensely help your sales team by minimizing their frustration and wastage of time. Improved sales processes increase the overall enterprise productivity.

CRM competently monitors form fills and hence informs you about the fresh leads. The data you gather from CRM also helps in lead nurturing. According to The Annuitas Group, nurtured leads make 47% higher order value purchases than non-nurtured leads.

You can prioritize your current leads in your CRM software.

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You can easily differentiate the best quality leads from not-so-good leads and appropriately allocate the resources. You can also set reminders for follow-ups with those prospects. The CRM goes one step ahead and allows you to tag your teammates to take care of the leads to complete the sales.

2. Improve Customer Service

Customer data holds enormous power, and harnessing that power can significantly improve the customer experience. It will also help you keep your customer journey personalized and offer tailored services to match their needs. Timely support can dramatically improve the overall customer experience.

Data-driven customer support heavily relies on available information to help you deliver efficient and personalized customer service. Modern CRM systems use this information to issue customer support tickets for timely action.

A CRM system will also record all the customer interactions, purchases, and significant customer issues. It helps the customer service representatives quickly understand their problems and resolve them on priority.

Your customers may judge your brand on various parameters and experiences, including handling their complaints. So, you need to take their complaints and issues seriously and resolve them promptly. For businesses that also manage on-site jobs or service crews, integrating CRM with a Field Service Management platform ensures seamless scheduling, dispatching, and real-time customer updates.

Chat support is an excellent way of offering great customer support to your website visitors. Some of the complaints can be resolved on the spot, whereas for specific issues, you need to divert the user to the relevant department.

However, most customer service requests and interactions are related to inquiries for a new sale or basic information about products and services. The chat option can also be used for lead capturing so that the sales team can act on it.

You can also tap into the real-time information provided by the CRM to provide an enhanced customer experience, especially during the complaint resolution on call. Your ability to handle grievances helps you build your brand image, build trust, and bring stability to your business.

3. Increase Sales Opportunities

You can get strong buying intent signals if you have access to customer data. This data can be easily transferred from your CRM to other cross-functional teams, especially the sales team. It helps you identify many sales opportunities and quicken the process by acting on these signals without any delays. For example, if a customer constantly asks about a particular product or its features, it reflects a strong buying intent. You can instantly identify it and communicate it to the sales team.

You can boost sales and increase revenue by using CRM software. The built-in tools of a CRM will help you better manage customer relationships and promote engagement. You can identify decision-makers and influencers to boost your sales.

According to a Demand Metric survey, 78% of the customers feel a bond with a brand that uses custom content and personalized interactions. So, personalization is the key to success for companies. A robust CRM software helps you handle personalization on a massive scale so that you can push your revenues with more certainty and consistency. The software also enables you to recognize and grab the best sales opportunities and further expand them. The sales team receives extensive data about customer interactions and history. These insights can multiply their sales many times over by helping you in the following ways:

1. Boost engagement and establish rapport with your customers
2. Establish regular communication through updates and custom content
3. Identify and explore customer needs and personalize their buyer journey
4. Don’t miss the opportunities to cross-sell or upsell
5. Launch well-times referral programs

Various studies reveal that retaining a customer is comparatively cheaper and more accessible than acquiring a customer. Therefore, customer retention is pivotal to your success as a business and revenue growth.

The right CRM software can help you boost conversion rates and minimize the cost of sales through customer data.

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4. Create a Standardized Sales Process

Rather than shooting in the dark, your CRM can help you build a detailed blueprint for closing sales deals that your sales team can bank on.

The objective is to decrease the sales cycle and maximize the value of each transaction. When you have a pre-defined sales process to follow, you can access vital data to review your performance and analyze different sales methods.

When you have access to the customer data, you can quickly identify the reasons for lackluster sales performance. You'll also find methods to resolve these issues and prompt the sales team to deliver their best performance.

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Standardized processes also help sales managers make accurate sales forecasts and suitable marketing and promotion plans for the future. It gives you better control of your business and ensures profitability. It also helps you efficiently train new sales recruits to start performing better by learning customer insights.

5. Review Your Marketing Strategy and Improve Campaigns

A CRM system records customer data and also includes information about how the customers found your business. So, you can easily track the best marketing channels with the highest ROI.

Your marketing team may use the CRM data containing customer history and their previous interactions with your brand to study their buying behavior. They will also be better positioned to answer their prospects' FAQs and address their concerns.

Furthermore, content marketers can use these insights to create relevant content for their prospects in other sales funnel stages.

6. Improve Team Coordination

We have already discussed how CRM can be a game-changer for the sales department, but it's not limited only to sales. The customer data provided by CRM software can be tremendously helpful for marketing and customer service. You gain many valuable insights and information during customers' interactions with your business. If your marketing department is proactive and alert, they can capitalize on this info.

For example, during the COVID-19 lockdown and following work-from-home culture in 2020, businesses registered high demand for frozen but nourishing food, sanitizers, masks, ergonomic chairs and tables, business-grade laptops, tablets, office stationery, printers, exercise equipment, inverters and batteries, and casual clothes. Most people were working from home, and smart businesses made massive money because of the rising demand for the products that people needed to make their work-from-home lives easy.

For example, suppose your audience starts showing interest in a specific product, such as ergonomic chairs. In that case, marketing can start their advertising blitzkrieg, and procurement teams can focus on sourcing quality office furniture. When all units come together, businesses flourish beyond your imagination.

So, you can integrate your CRM with cross-functional teams. As a result, every department will benefit. If you share CRM data with production, finance, marketing, and sales, you can connect inventory with purchasing to ensure uninterrupted supply and maintain the required stock. Similarly, you can connect sales with finance and automate the ordering process. You can also differentiate the profitable parts of your business from the non-profitable parts.

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7. Use CRM Data to See the Big Picture and Current Trends

The Reports and Analysis section of your CRM offers immense value to the managers of different departments. If sales managers get proper access to the analytics data and track each stage in the sales funnel, they can get hold of their sales process and scale it as they want.

Analytics data also provides you with crucial information about your customers, so you may identify loyal customers and the ones you should focus on for your marketing efforts. It also gives you insights into how to bridge gaps and improve sales.

8. Accelerate the Sales Lifecycle

Is your sales team performing up to the mark, consistently meeting their targets? Are you able to swiftly move your prospects through the sales funnel? What information and clarity do the prospects need to move ahead in the funnel?

You can get all such information through the dashboards built into a white-label platform such as DashClicks. DashClicks' InstaReports tell you what's working and what's not. These reports also suggest you the strategies you can implement for improvement.

Through InstaReports, you'll also get to know where the prospects are drifting out of the sales funnel and abandoning the sales process midway. It will help you take the corrective measure for the issues in the sales funnel.

9. Predict Buying Behavior

Move over old-fashioned bar charts and dashboards; sophisticated CRMs are now armed with machine learning and AI. These tools provide you the insights to help you track your sales performance and predict the trends that might modify the buying behavior overnight.

The most significant benefit of using advanced analytics is that it provides insight into the prospects who are more likely to buy based on their interactions and previous buying behavior. It helps you divert your resources in the right direction. It will also help you ensure that the accurate inventory is maintained to meet the demand.

If you can accurately predict buying behavior or surge in demand, you will be able to fulfill orders faster and spot negative demand patterns before they hit your business.

10. Automate Processes

It's crucial to create a sales cycle for your business and implement it in your CRM. Automated workflows immensely help your processes, so have it everywhere! Similarly, automated follow-ups will save you a lot of time and person-hours. However, you should set it at a controlled frequency to avoid annoying your customer. You can also set automated reminders for your team.

Automation is sweeping the industry faster than you can imagine. The sudden rise of automation is primarily because we have limited resources and tons of tasks to execute to survive in the market in the present times. It gives you a distinctive edge over your competition.

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According to a Gartner Research study, businesses that automated lead management experienced a 10% or more increase in revenue in less than nine months.

11. Get Crucial Alerts

Without CRM software, you can't manage your business processes as swiftly as you need to. The alert function in a CRM will notify your team members of the tasks they need to perform. Sometimes there are important events that need to be taken care of by the marketers, and the CRM can send alerts to your team about that. If the delivery has missed a shipment or a lead turns negative, the CRM software will inform your team.

Lead Management through Deals App

Sales and lead management can be a nightmare for businesses. To make your life easy, DashClicks has launched a powerful app named Deals. This application is available via the DashClicks' white-label platform.

This app allows you to create a variety of sales pipelines so that you can visualize the entire sales process and monitor various deals. It splits the sales process into small parts and steps to make it more manageable. This way, you will make various sales tasks easy to execute and track progress at a granular basis. With the Deals App, you can hold your sales personnel accountable if they are not performing up to the mark.

Navigating the Deals Application

Go to the Deals application, and click the tab My Deals. You can use this interface to have a look at your latest sales pipeline and also your active deals. First-timers won't find any active deals. Now, have a look at how this page shows numerous stages in your sales pipelines.

Click on the table view and you'll be able to see lists of your deals followed by various columns containing relevant information.

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Let's have a look at the list view. You can find all the stages of your sales listed here in vertical order. Click on any of the stages to expand the view and find the sales deals that fall under that stage.

You can search for a specific deal through the search field located next to the toggle button. You can export all of this information through the Export button. You can also create a new sales deal and add, edit, or reorder a sales pipeline through the App.

Deal Automation

Go to the Deal Automations button, which is the most powerful feature in this App. Your sales team will probably commit mistakes while working a pipeline and completing repetitive tasks such as sending follow-up emails or text messages.

You can automate these tedious tasks at various stages of the sales funnel with The Deal Automations feature of the Deals App. Currently, the platform allows Email and SMS automation. Apart from that, it also allows you to create instant websites through its InstaSites feature and generate reports for your clients with its InstaReports feature. These are the two of our most powerful prospecting tools.

Utilize the Deal Automations feature, save time and decrease your workload. There are lots of helpful articles that will make you a digital marketing pro in very little time. Here is a list of the automation features that the DashClicks platform offers.

• InstaSite Automation
• SMS Automation
• Email Automation
• InstaReport Automation

To know more about this app, click this link.

Conclusion

It's obvious now that CRM is a blessing for businesses to boost sales and your organization's overall growth. But, how can you implement it? Companies with a long sales cycle and those struggling with client communication must undoubtedly be ready to embrace CRM software.

It will prevent you from losing sales opportunities and getting caught in a messy situation while organizing your processes. It becomes even more crucial if you run a startup and lead generation is your top priority. But, when you grow and your customer data increases manifold, you start missing free opportunities coming your way.

A robust CRM will not let you miss out on those opportunities and help you meet the demands of growth.

When you access DashClicks' white-label platform, it brings you all the benefits a robust CRM software can provide. Our CRM system tracks incoming leads coming from the campaign we manage. We follow leads through call tracking, website form submissions, and ClickFunnels form fills (if we run the campaign).

Rapid digitalization and proliferation of the Internet in the past two decades have allowed us to connect with almost anyone in the world. Facebook helps us find relatives and friends and stay in touch with them, whereas Instagram enables us to communicate directly with celebrities and share stunning pictures and visuals. Twitter allows us to stay abreast of the latest news and trending topics, and LinkedIn helps us connect with the people in our industry or niche for business purposes.

Still, you can’t turn these connections into relationships. A relationship requires awareness, commitment, and a certain level of trust, even if it exists purely in the social media realm. So, a relationship isn’t just a click away, contrary to what most digital enthusiasts claim. It needs nurturing and time to grow.

However, if you look at the trends, businesses hardly have the patience or inclination to develop customer relationships. They want quick results. It happens mainly because digitalization has brought everything to our fingertips, and everybody seeks instant gratification.

However, the truth is far from it. Regardless of the environment and technology you live in, people’s reactions are based on their emotions, feelings, and motivations.

It can be big marketing to treat online profiles simply as digital existences. There are real people behind these digital profiles who would like to be treated as humans. So, if you expect people to respond to your marketing, focus on building relationships rather than completing transactions. Remember also, that you build relationships with people and not digital profiles.

What is Relationship Marketing?

Unlike transactional marketing, relationship marketing aims to build long-term relationships with your customers. When you implement it as a strategy, you start achieving your business goals swiftly. It includes almost everything from generating revenue and sales to attracting more clients, getting repeat purchases, and making loyal customers.

Relationship marketing aims at providing the best customer experience through top-notch service and building trust. In transactional marketing, brands focus on completing sales, making it a closed-minded and myopic approach.

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Brands that resort to transactional marketing may soon lose their customers to their competition as they don’t invest in building lasting relationships. When closing sales becomes their primary focus, they move from one customer to another, increasing their churn. A high churn rate can become fatal for a company. It can become even more lethal if you run a subscription-based business.

You can run customer success programs to arrest churn. According to The Customer Success Association, “Customer Success is a long-term strategy that is scientifically engineered to offer proven value that is also sustainable. It’s professionally directed to maximize customer value and achieve business goals through it.”

So, to sum up, customer relationship marketing is a long-term marketing approach. You might think that most businesses must be practicing it because of the apparent benefits it offers, but the research proves otherwise.

Tracking Relationship Marketing Industry Trends

Every business owner knows that establishing long-term customer relationships is crucial, and 85% of companies affirmed this in a Super Office study. But are they really investing in relationship marketing? If studies are to be believed, the truth might shock you.

According to a 2013 Econsultancy study, 30% of businesses invest in relationship marketing. Whereas in 2021, only 24% of companies used relationship marketing as their long-term marketing strategy. So, there was a sharp drop in the number of companies practicing relationship marketing in these six years.

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The study also revealed that relationship marketing is linked to a higher ROI as compared to transactional marketing.

So, why are companies not taking relationship marketing that seriously? It’s not a lack of awareness but a lack of strategy that prevents them from taking the plunge.

This article discusses how to formulate the strategy to implement relationship marketing into your marketing plan.

How to Formulate a Sound Relationship Marketing Strategy?

You won’t get much traction if you only use a few tactics such as offering discounts, personalized services, and introducing loyalty programs & rewards. It is simply because you can’t refer to these tactics as a strategy.

Start by bonding with your audience. Use social media for forging friendships and leveraging the power of feelings. It’s a given that no marketing campaign or offer can ever score over customers’ emotions.

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Customer relationship marketing allows you to go into the heart and minds of your customers. Here are some of the ways you can do that!

Take some of the biggest, most successful product/service-based companies in the world. We’re talking about companies such as Tesla, Apple, Nike, Amazon, and Starbucks. You’d think they don’t need to invest in relationship marketing anymore, but you’d be wrong. All of them, in fact, is highly customer-centric brands.

The love & respect for these brands is so high that if someone talks negatively about any of these, their customers get offended and defend their beloved brands.

What else can you wish for as a brand?

Again, it is not limited to just B2C brands; emotional bonding also affects B2B brands.

In B2B transactions, too, someone who visits your website watches your videos or downloads a white paper isn’t a business but an individual.

These individuals have feelings, so you can easily tap into their emotions and build a bond with them. It’s their emotions that will make them spend their money on your brand and not facts, stats, or logic.

Here are a few tips to formulate your relationship marketing strategy.

1. Be Real; Show Your Vulnerable Side

Tell your real struggle, and don’t just brag about your achievements. According to Adam Enfroy, you need to show your vulnerable side, so that people can relate their struggles with yours. Authentic stories that showcase your weaker side help you establish an instant emotional connection with your audience.

2. Build Trust

Deliver on your promise throughout the customer journey and build trust through positive reviews and testimonials on your website. The important thing is to ensure that these reviews and testimonials are authentic and verifiable. You should also bring your communities together to inspire and build trust.

3. Use Storytelling

Since humans are emotional creatures, storytelling has emerged as a powerful technique to establish emotional bonds. Tell them stories about your business that may include the following:

• Inside stories
• How you treat your employees
• Your mission and vision
• How your business was founded
• How you overcame the fierce challenges and failures

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You can also ask your audience to share their stories. Videos are the best content formats you can use to inspire trust and bring authenticity to your stories.

4. Personalize Your Communications

According to a University of Houston Victoria research paper, personalized interactions enhance the recipient’s experience. For example, you can try sending handwritten personal notes to your customers along with their orders. They will love it.

5. Keep Your Communications Consistent

Consistency leads to better customer experience, and excellent customer experience inspires confidence. So, keep your communications consistent across different locations and individuals. It would also help to keep it uniform across various advertisement campaigns and sales presentations.

6. Strive to Provide an Excellent Customer Experience

To give customers a fantastic experience, treat them exclusively. You can use CRM to craft custom messages and videos to make them feel valued. Address their queries and offer solutions to their problems. Ask them to provide their feedback and suggestions and inspire them to create user-generated content. It will help you boost your brand image. It’s a proven fact that excellent customer experience is the only factor that helps you make loyal customers.

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7. Offer Real Value

Successful businesses have a purpose-driven strategy and offer real value to their customers. This is the reason it’s tough to replace them in the marketplace. They don’t position themselves as product suppliers or sellers. Instead, they focus on adding value to their customers’ lives. For example, many cosmetic companies don’t perform testing on animals and people love them for it.

Here are some of the companies that offer cruelty-free products.

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It can be a cause, social responsibility, environment-friendly products, charity, or affordable products that people perceive as valuable.

Conclusion

Successful organizations try everything in their capacity to turn every customer into a long-term one. Long-term customers can ensure your success and growth and protect your brand against market fluctuations. With the help of an army of loyal customers, you can successfully decrease your marketing and advertising costs and scale your business.

Technology has impacted business activities in many ways, but the bottom line is still the same, and that is building, nurturing, and growing your customer relationships. Be mindful of how your customers feel regardless of the competitive advantage you may have over others.

With the relationship marketing strategies mentioned in this article, you can directly appeal to your customers’ emotions. Profitability keeps you in business, but if it becomes your ultimate objective, you may soon find yourself in deep trouble.

So, the best strategy for a business is to stand for a good cause and build a community of passionate supporters, who will likely turn into your brand advocates. Customer relationship is the most crucial element of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), so you should focus on relationship marketing to survive and grow in this highly-competitive, cut-throat environment.