In the last step you narrowed your target and put together a plan to get your product or service in front of these people - AKA awareness. It’s one thing to have awareness, it’s an entirely different thing to get someone to hand you money.  In this section we will reflect on your current process and look at what needs to change to optimize your sales process.

When asking for feedback, you must consider the best way to approach your customers.  Here are a few ideas...

Email
The most frequently used method to request customer feedback is email. The email is sent once a service has been provided or when a product was purchased and delivered to a customer.

Various providers can assist companies with automating this process, and many of them will ensure that reviews are distributed amongst the most important channels, like Facebook, Google, and Yelp.

SMS 
Not to be underestimated, SMS is one of the most powerful channels to request feedback from customers. In an age when consumers are always a few feet away from their phones, SMS is a great way to communicate with existing customers and potential leads. With higher open rates than email, SMS is a strong alternative to use when only a phone number is known.

Interviews
Interviewing customers doesn't need to be exclusive to major retailers or market research companies that have big budgets. Frequent and loyal customers are generally very happy to give feedback if you simply ask them. After all, they're the ones who are most invested in your product or service.

Try finding some segments that interest you and select various customers who fit these profiles. To increase your potential for success, ensure that the customer is being contacted by a real person as this will not only make them feel like a VIP (and become even more loyal) but will increase your chances that they will provide valuable feedback.

Website
Want to know how people are using your website and why they aren't converting? Then session replays could be the way to gather the feedback required to overcome these hurdles.

Providers such as Hotjar and Yandex record user interaction with your website so you can easily see what they're viewing, clicking on, and interacting with. This type of feedback is invaluable and can help you see your website from your visitor's viewpoint and see issues that you may not otherwise have noticed.

Social 
Social media has become an inexpensive and efficient way to communicate with your target audience. Customers are already actively participating in communities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and it doesn’t cost your business anything to join in on their conversations. Respond to comments, send direct messages, and engage with your audience to see how people really feel about your company.

When your team encounters negative reviews, be sure to respond to them quickly. Active social media users are expecting a fast response, so you have to dedicate a resource to each channel. Closely monitoring your social buzz is a great way to track trends and events that can influence your business.

Incentives
One way to make your surveys worth the investment is to offer a reward for their completion. This makes for a simple, yet highly effective transaction approach to obtaining feedback.

While money or discounts are great, keep in mind that the reward doesn’t have to be cash, either. You can incentivize customers using free content that’s useful to their workflow. This could be an e-book, an in-house study, or an educational pamphlet that helps them achieve their goals.

Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score or NPS is one of the best ways to obtain and measure customer feedback. It uses a scale of 1-10 to determine whether your customers would recommend your company to other customers. Scores from 0-6 are considered to be negative responses, or “detractors.” Scores between 7-8 are neutral, or “passive.” Finally, scores of nine and ten symbolize positive experiences and are called “promoters.”

The best part of NPS is that it’s efficient for both the customer and the company. The survey uses only one question which makes it easy to record and analyze results. It doesn’t require a lengthy time investment from the customer, and you have a better chance of receiving thoughtful feedback.

Reflection Questions

• • How do you currently drive referrals for your business?
  • What's working?
  • What needs to change?

Giving customers the information they need to continue through the funnel is the primary objective of lead management. When different parts of a business' marketing organization are out of step, or leads are not properly qualified, customers can receive duplicate or non-relevant information - resulting in the death sentence for an otherwise on-track conversion. Simply managing leads in an efficient manner, via a CRM, reduces manual work for an online business and improves the customer experience.  We will cover some of these tools in the next section.

We are often missing opportunities on the lower end and upper end of the revenue funnel.  This is a way to sell more to existing customers and (potentially) a way to capture customers you've been saying no to.  

When we refer to the top, middle, and bottom of the revenue funnel, we’re referencing the concept that although a large number of people may become aware of you, not all will actually buy from you.  AND those that do may not engage at the same levels.

All your marketing tactics listed in the last section will go on the first tier of your revenue funnel... some of these might be:

• • Social media
  • Search
  • Video marketing
  • Online ads
  • Referrals

Possibly the most important goal of a business is to retain existing customers. Yet, in the land grab of trying to get new customers, retention tactics can be overlooked.

Consumers not only evaluate whether they will make repeat purchases of your product or service but they will also be assessing how likely they are to refer their friends/colleagues/family - brand advocacy.

Customer loyalty is the product of a consistently positive customer experience. This, in turn, is very much related to customers’ emotions. The effect of forming an emotional connection with a customer is to create a lasting memory. These can come through personable service, going above and beyond, or offering surprise extras. These ‘moments’ stay in a customer’s mind and hopefully result in a true advocate.

Relationships suffer without regular contact. Continuously staying in touch with customers allows you to hear their concerns before they become issues. Routine conversations and customer surveys can provide valuable insight.

Market development is a growth strategy that defines and develops new segments of the market for current products. A market development strategy aims to persuade the customers that are not buying in currently targeted segments. It also actively supports new clients in new segments.

A strategy for business development includes growing the new market through new customers or potential uses. You can define new users as new geographic segments, new demographic segments, new institutional segments, or new psychographic segments. Another approach to boost the sales of the business is across new uses.

We define ‘new users’ as:
- New demographic segments. In other words, selling to different types of consumers. For example, if the company has targeted women, it may now try to target men.
- New geographic segments. This means promoting the product in different parts of the country, or even other countries.
- New psychographic segments. Psychographic segmentation involves dividing a market into different segments based on consumers’ personality traits, values, or interests. It may also involve dividing the market into segments based on people’s lifestyles.

The Ansoff Matrix

Also called the Product/Market Expansion Grid, is a tool used by firms to analyze and plan their strategies for growth. The matrix shows four strategies that can be used to help a firm grow and also analyzes the risk associated with each strategy.

It’s a four-quadrant grid with new and existing products on the x-axis and new and existing markets on the y-axis. The four expansion strategies it contains are:

• • Diversification: Introducing a new product to a new market

• • Product Development: Introducing a new product into an existing market

• • Market Development: Introducing an existing product into a new market

• • Market Penetration: Further selling an existing product into an existing market

Each of those strategies has different levels of risk, with diversification being the most chancy and market penetration being the safest option.