How to Create Meaningful Connections With Customers

Businesses are oversaturating the digital marketing landscape. Having an online presence as a brand was once a perk. Now it’s a necessity. Customers expect big and small businesses to be online. So more brands now use digital marketing strategies to increase visibility and convert customers. For your business to stand out, you must make personal connections.

There’s also more segmentation developing in the digital marketing space. Your brand isn’t the only one trying to personalize customer experiences. Technology lets businesses group prospects together and target preferences based on similar behaviors. To cut through the noise, your brand must use customer feedback to zero in on needs and stir emotional connections.

Consumer intelligence is improving. Your competition knows the value of making buyers feel appreciated. That's why they collect and analyze customer data to identify pain points, challenges, and interests. To stay in the game, your brand must use customer intelligence to build long-term relationships.

Customers also want brands to be authentic and aware of political and social causes. More than 85% of consumers expect businesses to take action beyond their product or service. Examples include addressing societal challenges and displaying representative images. To strengthen consumer bonds, your brand must support outreach initiatives tied to your core values.

To build solid relationships with your customers, your brand should:

• Create meaningful content focused on pain points

• Deploy lead-nurturing strategies across the funnel

• Follow up on leads with hyper-focused content

• Provide a seamless digital experience for easy conversions
   

Create Meaningful Content Focused on Pain Points

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential. But first, your brand must create content that’s helpful and relevant to your customers’ problems. Without SEO, your prospects won’t find your content. But without personalized content, their questions won’t get answered. And your business won’t build meaningful relationships.

Does the following content creation process sound familiar? Research keywords, prioritize volume, and generate content ideas. Try a different strategy. Identify your customers’ pain points, generate content ideas, and find keywords that match intent. This method lets you connect with buyers on a personal level by meeting their needs from the start.

Storytelling is a great way to create meaningful content that grows customer partnerships. Position your customer as the hero and your brand as the guide. This framework allows them to solve their problem with your help. As you walk beside prospects on their journey, they feel connected to and invested in your brand.

Deploy Lead-Nurturing Strategies Across the Funnel

Lead-nurturing strategies help you engage with customers as they travel through the sales funnel. These tactics are especially critical in business-to-business (B2B) sales, where 95% of B2B buyers aren’t ready to buy. With lead nurturing, you can stay in touch with customers and keep your brand top of mind while they’re in limbo.

Here are seven lead-nurturing strategies to create customer connections:

• Targeted content: use pain-point content to target prospects and identify qualified leads

• Multi-channel lead nurturing: reach out to qualified leads on many channels beyond email

• Multiple touches: mix content types and channels to boost interactions and engagement

• Timely follow-ups: consistently check on leads to keep them interested and remind them of your brand

• Personalized emails: tailor your messaging to increase customer satisfaction and encourage retention

• Lead scoring: use a lead scoring strategy to pinpoint which prospects you need to focus on

• Sales and marketing alignment: identify moments when teams should transition potential customers from marketing to sales

Lead nurturing helps your business maintain customer relationships beyond the first interaction. These connections increase the chances of prospects doing business with you when they’re ready to move forward. With consistent communication over time, your brand builds trust and customer loyalty.
 

Follow Up on Leads With Hyper-Focused Content

Valuable content and lead nurturing set the foundation for meaningful customer connections. But, at some point, you must ask for the sale, or your prospects won’t become customers. Follow up with specific calls-to-action (CTAs) and personalized sales pitches to get closer to sealing the deal.

You can move customers toward action at this stage with neuromarketing. Here’s how it works. Your customer’s primal brain reacts strongly to stimuli related to survival, drive, or instinct. Appealing to these subconscious thoughts prompts customers to take notice — and act.

Here are six primal stimuli to apply to your marketing tactics:

• Personal: Humans are self-centered. Focus on what’s in it for them.

• Contrastable: Humans notice differences. Show before and after outcomes.

• Tangible: Humans like things to be simple. Don’t make them think; get to the point.

• Memorable: Humans remember stories. Include a narrative that’s easy to follow.

• Visual: Humans process images quickly. Ensure your hero shot is contextual.

• Emotional: Humans are driven by emotion. Make your customers feel something.

When customers see hyper-focused content that triggers gut reactions, they're more likely to bond with your brand.
 

Provide a Seamless Digital Experience for Easy Conversions

When your prospects are on the verge of becoming customers, you must make the process as easy as possible. There’s no room for friction at the finish line. Imagine you’re about to sign up for a 6-week online course, and the site crashes right before you complete your registration! How likely are you to give it another go?

To create a seamless digital customer experience, make your messaging clear. When prospects click a CTA, they should go straight to a landing page that reflects their intent. Next, verify your website works correctly. Potential customers don’t like 404 messages and other technical obstacles. Finally, create a feedback loop for questions and answers. Customer support is crucial in business relationships.

Providing the optimal digital experience improves customer engagement and creates loyal customers. It also boosts sales, increases revenue, and enhances your brand’s reputation. Remember, if you don’t go the extra mile as a business owner to delight your customers, your competitors will be more than happy to oblige.

Here are some examples of some B2B and B2C brands that excel at creating meaningful connections with customers. Take a tip or two from their playbooks.

Share your story. Customers want to know why you started your business. What do you stand for? What are you trying to achieve? For example, do you know how HubSpot and the inbound marketing movement started? A couple of MIT grads noticed consumers were growing tired of — and ignoring — interruptive ads. Now their brand empowers businesses “stop interrupting, start helping, and return their focus to the customer.”

Embrace email marketing. When a prospect submits their email address, they might as well be giving your business their phone number. It’s a sign they're beginning to know, like, and trust you. Maintain and cultivate this connection by sending helpful content to their inbox. For example, SEMrush delivers tips on optimizing your Google Business profile in the email below. They also provide a social media management checklist and a complete SEO guide.
 

Keep in touch with hyper-focused content. Personalized messages make your customers feel like they’re not just another number. They understand you truly care for them and strive to meet their needs. For example, Chewy goes above and beyond to connect with a customer in the image below. After Miranda Strasburg posted a picture of her cats in a Chewy box, the company sent her hand-painted portraits of the felines.

Offer a smooth digital experience. When customers are ready to buy, don’t make the bottom-of-the-funnel process difficult. They’ve made their decision, so reward them with instant gratification. For example, when a customer views a product on Amazon, they have a few options. They can click “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now.” If the customer only wants this one item, they click “Buy Now,” then “Place Your Order,” and skip the cart altogether.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

Getting customers to know, like, and trust your brand isn’t enough. They need to feel seen, heard, and understood, too.

Let O8 show you how to create genuine connections. We can use content marketing, user experience (UX) design, and other digital strategies.

Start learning how to exceed your customers’ expectations and help your business succeed.