An excellent first step to improving your marketing is asking this revealing question: what does your business look like to outsiders?
Here are three pointers that will give you an idea of what kind of image you’re projecting.
If you’re reading this, you’re onto one of the best tools to sharpen up your brand.
Client reviews
You probably saw this coming. It’s an invaluable tool to understanding what people love about you, what they’re confused about and what makes them wrinkle their nose at you (or stab the keyboard with venom on your product pages).
Now, we all know some reviewers give unfair judgements or like shaming everyone they review. But, largely, reviews can be treated as some of the best mirrors on your brand’s image.
If people have taken 2-5 minutes out of their jam-packed schedules to make a comment about their experience, you meant something to them – good or bad. What they have to say was worth their effort and they really want you to read it.
Fellow shoppers are looking at these reviews, too. They want to know what it’s like to buy from you. Personally, I’m jolly thankful for Amazon reviews as I look at these for every Amazon purchase.
Take time to read and make notes on what people have written. Look at ratings of your products, see what features people keep talking about or which services people keep praising on social media. Look at those that keep getting bad reviews, or no reviews. What do people love or find disappointing?
Also, what are the demographics of reviewers? Are they your target audience or people slightly outside it? This could mean you’ve got scope to expand your audience.
There are a host of tools to get reviews from your customers. People can write comments on your products pages, fill out a form you send them in return for a discount code, review you on Trustpilot, start a Reddit about you, comment or like you on social media or you might get a verbal comment at the close of a contract. Take notes of EVERYTHING.
Actions customers take
What do I mean here?
Well, take a look at what people are actually buying or not buying. What’s popular at the moment? What’s unpopular? Who’s buying? When are they buying (time of day, week, month or year)?
If you’re not sure where to get all this, start with Google Analytics. Your web hosting provider can set it up very easily from your website and it’s an insightful tool to see where people are clicking. HotJar is another great tool that analyses on-page behaviour like where people are looking and clicking. Also, make sure you’re set up with a CRM for your business because they monitor your business’ performance and make life easier at the same time (I recommend Bigin or Zoho CRM).
If you’re running email campaigns, most providers will give you some analytics. Who opened the email and when? Which subject lines performed well?
Don’t forget your social media analytics, too. There’s plenty of data to browse on Meta Business Suite that covers Facebook and Instagram, assuming you’re active on there. If not, talk to me here.
The actions people take speak incredible volumes, whether they give you a review or not. Take notes on what’s going well and what’s not from all of these tools, and you’ll have a pretty good idea at how you’re doing.
Your social media presence
I’d like to dive into social media a bit more specifically to answer your question (what does your business look like to outsiders?).
As this is where most people are spending their free time, you can analyse pretty much your whole audience here.
Specifically, see which posts have got the most impressions, likes, comments and shares. Which type of content goes down well? It’s most likely to be videos like reels or video posts, but maybe people have responded to a competition, case study or your seasonal posts.
Whatever people have responded to best shows you how people like to interact with your brand and what type of content they enjoy seeing on social media. If you’ve only got one or two posts that were popular, your image on social media has room for improvement.
Be consistent. Keep showing up on social media in the ways that people are loving and people will see that you’re relevant, present and within reach.
What now?
The biggest hurdle to jump to starting all of this is time. Set aside time to analyse each of these and you’ll start to get a good picture of what you look like to the world.
It could be good news, and you’re coming across exactly how you want to and to whom you want to. Or, you could spot some cracks and start filling those in.
Analytics are part of my research, so we can talk about this together if that’s easier. Start a conversation here. If you’re wondering what your company culture looks like to outsiders, read this helpful post.