The Stages of Inbound Marketing and What to Focus On: Delight Stage

Sometimes a refresher can be beneficial to help you focus on the exact things that will help you reach your goals.

In our three-part inbound marketing series, we’ve shared what you should focus on within the first stage, Attract, and the second, Engage. 

That brings us to our third and final stage: Delight. 

What is the Delight Stage?

Let’s start with a quick refresher.

The first two stages place heavy emphasis on your marketing, sales, and service teams because they:

A) Work to support your prospects and customers as they consider your business, and

B) Then make a choice to trust you to solve their problems. 

As potential customers consider your brand as one to conduct their business with, they go through these different stages of the inbound marketing process in order to make their decision.

• Attract: This is the stage where prospects first hear about your business. It is largely driven by your marketing team and the reputation of your services team.
• Engage: This is the stage where prospects seriously consider whether or not to trust your company. The two teams within your company most involved with this stage are your marketing and sales teams.

Then, we enter the Delight stage.

• Delight: This stage is where you can really pile on the brand loyalty which leads to an extended lifetime value of a customer. This stage involves your sales and services teams.

So, what exactly do we mean when we talk about customer delight? 

By creating a strong, positive experience with your business, customers are willing to give you their complete trust and even share your business within their personal network. It’s also worth noting that even though this stage is the last of the three, it should continue on throughout a customer’s lifetime within the context of your brand.

Although the numbers are dwindling, many teams can fall victim to believing their sales and marketing strategy is done once the customer signs on the proverbial dotted line; however, that mentality will not reap the rewards your business sets out to achieve.

A few simple actions, such as sending follow up emails and surveys, hosting exclusive customer events, and creating engaging content, can do wonders for prompting repeat business. 

What should you focus on in the Delight Stage?

With every single stage of inbound marketing, success comes from focusing on the right things. 

Your customer has been one of the main points of focus in every installment of this series, and for good reason. It’s not just that we’re struggling to come up with a good idea – it’s that your customers serve as the fulcrum around which the entire flywheel of your business revolves. Lose sight of caring for your customers well and you’ll eventually lose sight of your business.

But it’s also critical that you focus on your team to succeed. They are the ones actually responsible for caring for your customers well in order to earn their delight and trust. What do they need in order to succeed?

How to delight your customers

What does it actually look like to delight your prospects and customers enough to earn their trust for a lifetime?

This answer is going to be a little different for every business and every customer, but here are some principles to live by to create and maintain customer satisfaction.

1. Make customer success your success. The thing that will bring the greatest delight to your customers is when you reach the goals they have hired you to achieve. When your success is tied to their success, everyone wins.
2. Be proactive and helpful.
   Your customers have hired you to be the expert and be the one to lead them. Take the initiative to measure progress toward their goals, and make adjustments when necessary (rather than forcing customers to come to you when things are not tracking appropriately). If your client has a need that you can help address, be willing to do so. 
3. Communicate, and then communicate some more.
   Communication lays the foundation for a healthy, thriving relationship, and it’s a must in order to obtain customer satisfaction. Communicate promptly and clearly with your customers so that they always know what is going on, rather than have them feeling like they’re always in the dark.
4. Admit mistakes and be quick to “right” them.
   You and your team are going to make mistakes – it’s just a reality you have to face now. While you want to do everything to avoid mistakes, be prepared to admit them and then fix them as quickly, humbly, and honestly as possible.
5. Be excellent.
   Perfection is impossible, but excellence should be the goal of your team, every day. When you strive for excellence, your customers will be absolutely delighted.

Your business cannot function without your customers, so train your entire team to treat them with care, excellence, and respect. 

When you choose to operate in this manner, you earn lifelong customers who will help your business grow and thrive for the long haul.

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