Finding target customers and drawing them to your business is hard work. Invesp research shows that acquiring a new customer costs five times more than retaining existing ones. In addition, getting them to know more about your new products or services and how to use them to solve their pain points is even more challenging.
As you keep generating new leads and converting them into customers, It is essential to have a great onboarding process for your new customers. You must carefully walk your new customers through your business to use it and solve their challenges. Here is a simple strategy for onboarding new customers from Hubspot company.
Source: HubSpot
Research shows that many brands lose their customers within the first month. This is because many businesses don’t have a great process of onboarding their customers on how to use the business products or services.
You don’t want to lose your new customers after spending a lot of money and time acquiring them. In this short article post, you will learn how to onboard new customers to get them to start using the business for a long time and keep generating revenue and sales from them.
What is a Customer Onboarding Process?
This is how a business walks a customer through their business products or services and introduces them to how to use them as they solve their pain points. Here is a simple definition from the Hubspot brand.
Source: HubSpot
It is essential to have a great onboarding process as it helps your new customers know how to use your business to solve their pains effectively. They can also get some business ideas to invest in and help them grow their business. It also reduces the churn rate as customers leave a company if it cannot solve their pain points. Here are these excellent tips to help onboard your new customers.
1. Use Welcome Videos
Videos are great for connecting and engaging new customers to the business. As part of onboarding your new customers, you can create excellent video content to guide the customer on the company and introduce them to the business. Here is a link to one of such welcome videos by Vidyard company.
You can show new customers more about your business products or services in the video. Let them have a fresh feel of your business and its value.
Show them how the products will be of value to them to solve their pains. They feel that the business cares for them, making them trust it more and can lead to them using the business products or services for a long time.
In addition to having welcome videos on the website, you can also set up an automated email marketing welcome series.
The emails should be more about how the customers can use the business. You can send them information to help them understand how to use the company to solve their challenges.
2. See What Your Competitors Are Doing( The Tools They Are Using)
You are not the only business in the market. You have your competitors, who are all looking for the same customers.
So you can spy on their business operations and see how they manage their new customers. See the tools they use or how they handle the customers and replicate it for your business.
When you spy on your competitors and find valuable things they do and have been working for them, you can try them for your business. You can also purchase the tools they use to manage and run their business and start using them for your own business.
Your competitors can give you insights into handling your new customers as you get them acquainted with your brand. It can also help you quickly build trust with your new customers.
3. Have a High-Quality Website
Your new customers will interact with and engage your website content daily when they use the products or services you offer.
It is essential to ensure you have a high-quality website. In addition, most users are now using mobile devices to access information as they solve their pains. Research shows that there will be more than 7.6 million smartphone users by 2027
Source: Statista
Ensure your website loads well, and new customers can access it on their mobile devices. It will make it easy to interact and engage the business regardless of where they are, as the information is easily accessible.
If customers find it hard to use your website and access the information they want on their devices, they can decide to leave the business and get help from other companies.
You end up losing customers and income. Therefore, it is essential to optimize the content on your website and use the keywords your target customers or customers use when searching for information.
Let your website have faster loading speeds. Customers hate websites that take ages to load content. If they can’t get the answer they want in a short time, you will lose them as they will look for a business that works faster. Make your website navigation simple so new customers can quickly find what they want from the website.
4. Have Quality Content For Your Landing Pages
Landing pages are essential for your business. They help guide new customers about your business and how to take action when using the company. Therefore, it’s necessary to have captivating and great content for your pages.
The content should show the customers the value they will get from the business and how the company will solve challenges.
You can also include some video content on your landing pages, as most people love and engage with video content.
Video content makes it easy for new customers to engage your business and know more about your company’s tools or products to solve challenges. Create explainer videos to guide the new customers on using the company to solve their pains.
Research shows that 74% of videos created are explainer videos, helping customers understand more about companies’ products or services.
Also, update your blog page with content that your new customers and other target customers will love to read. The content should guide them on solving their pain points and using the products or services. Make the content easy to read and include visuals and screenshots to help readers easily understand the content.
5. Having The Best Communication Channels, Customers Prefer
Your new customer will have questions and issues that need answers each day. As you walk them through the onboarding process, it is essential to have the proper communication channels. Also, have a 24/7 support team that will handle challenges.
Have different communication channels to engage and communicate with the customers.
Since customers prefer different channels, having many channels makes communicating and engaging the new customer easy.
For instance, some customers prefer using emails while others love live chat on the website. Both will increase the customer’s engagement and help them learn and use your business.
If new customers have issues and don’t see someone to help them get a solution, they will seek another alternative.
You can lose them as they join other businesses that can address their challenges and guide them well to get what they need. You can also chat with the customers on a live chat from the website as part of the communication.
Once they reach the website, they should have someone who can address their problems and guide them to the proper channels for help.
6. Have a Great and Professional Customer Support Team
Great communication channels are just one part of the onboarding process. It would help if you had a great team that can handle the customers and knows how to interact with them.
You can have great channels, but you will still lose most of your new customers if the team is worse and can’t handle customer needs. Research shows that 70% of customers stay with brands that have excellent customer service.
Source: Nextiva
Your team should be able to guide and effectively handle the customers’ challenges. Excellent communication skills also come in handy. The team should also create a clear strategy and plan to teach the new customer as they use and learn more about a business product or service.
It can be discouraging for new customers if they hit a dead end and the support team can’t help or show them the right direction to follow in time. For example, you could be running a SaaS business and get new customers.
They create an account, and when activating it, they get into some complications and don’t know how to proceed.
If the support team can’t reach that customer in the shortest time and help them finish the account setting, the customer can decide to use other services. So you end up losing the customer after searching for them for a long time.
7. Offer Testimonials From Your Previous Customers
Trust is essential for any business. Your customers will want to build trust with you using your new products or services.
One best way to build this trust is to show other customers who use your business to solve their pains.
Give them testimonials from your past or current customers. Let them hear what they say about your business and the value you offer to solve their pain points. Here is an example from the NP Digital agency landing page.
Here are some of the great companies that the agency has worked with that other potential customers can trust.
Source: NP Digital Agency
When you sell a product or service to a new customer, and the customer doesn’t notice other people using or have used the business, their trust for the company can end.
They can start having second thoughts and doubting if the business will ever help them get what they want. Those doubts can result in them leaving the company and joining your competitors.
Hearing other customers talk about the business and how they find it valuable motivates them to try out the company. They want the same experience previous customers got and to solve their pain points within the process.
8. Collect Customer Feedback and Act on it
You don’t always have to expect customers to come to you when they have problems. Remember, your customers are new to your business and are in the process of learning and using your company. However, you can be proactive and collect feedback from them.
You can run a survey with questions related to their pains and how they find the business helps solve those pains.
The survey can also have questions on what they want the company to do to improve their value in solving the customer pains. Some of the best tools to help get feedback from customers are:
You will know to deliver the correct value better and solve their pains through feedback you get from the customers.
9. Do Customers Follow up to See How They Are Doing
In addition to collecting feedback, you can do individual customer follow up to see how they are doing.
Get information from the customer about how they use business products or services. Also, strive to know if they have found help from the business for their pains. It will simplify the process of onboarding the customers.
You will know the progress of the customers and what they have already gotten from your brand.
Through interaction with the customers, you will know other better ways to help them use your business and get the best out of the company when solving their pains.
Following up with the customer after the onboarding process is essential. It shows the customer that you care for them and want to give your best to solve their pains.
You will build more solid relationships and increase trust. The customer can keep using the business for a long time.
You will also give them a great user experience and satisfy their needs. They can pay back by referring other target customers to you, and you can get more customers for your business.
10. Understand Your New Customers
You will not effectively onboard your new customers if you don’t understand them. Therefore, ensure you research and understand the customer’s pains to walk them through the process of solving their pains efficiently.
Knowing your customer will significantly help in the onboarding process as to what to do and how to handle their different challenges as you familiarise them with your business.
Understanding your new customers’ expectations of your business is also essential. It will help you give them a great customer experience to match what they expect from your company.
You will also know how to guide them through the first stages of using your business products or services. That will make it easy for them to see a brand’s value and quickly know how to use the brand tools to solve their pains.
11. Keep Improving The Value You Deliver to Customers
The market is changing, and business products or services should keep changing to adapt to the new market. Your target customers are always searching for the best services or products. Therefore, it is essential to keep upgrading the value you offer your customers.
You can get new customers on board, but they can stop using the business if you don’t add more quality or new features to your services.
You can check out the latest upgrades from your competitors’ services or products. Then add more value than them and keep improving it to attract new customers.
Also, ask the customers how they find the business products or services valuable and if they have any suggestions to make the tools much better. It will give you an idea of what to improve or the features to add to deliver a better user experience for the customers.
12. Offer Discounts For Early Upgrades
You could be running a SaaS business, for instance. So you give your leads a free trial for your business tools to get a glimpse of how the company works.
When the trial period is over, some will like to upgrade to the paid version of the tool. You can motivate and encourage the customers by giving them an offer for the product or service.
You can reduce the tool’s price for the first month as they will be going through the onboarding process, learning more about the business services, and using them to solve challenges.
13. Get Your New Customers to Their “aha Moments” Quickly.
Your new customers want to use your business because they have pains they want to solve. Therefore, once they join your business, it is essential to quickly walk them through the process of using your business and help them get their first wins. That will motivate them more as they can see the value they are paying to operate the business products or services.
If it takes longer, the customer can start having second thoughts and leave the business. All they want is the solution to their challenges. Giving them what they need quickly can motivate them to use the brand’s services or products.
The new customers are not entirely into a business during the initial onboarding stages. Therefore, they would have doubts if they made the right choice to use a business product or service.
However, once you prove that you can solve their pains, those doubts evaporate, and the trust increases. Nothing makes a customer happy than getting a solution to challenges that causes them sleepless nights. Giving them those aha moments for their pains can make them loyal customers of your brand.
Why You Need a Great Onboarding Process
Onboarding is the ultimate process to get your new customer to understand your business products or services and use them to solve their pains. A great onboarding process has many advantages for a brand. Here are some of these advantages.
Reduce churn rate
Customers can start using a business and then leave the company. One of the reasons they leave is not knowing how to use the business to solve their problems.
Giving your new customers a great onboarding experience helps them understand how to use the services or products and effectively solve their challenges.
The customers will start seeing the value of the business as they continue using it and getting great results for their pains.
With the experience and the results they are getting, they will stay with the business for long, reducing the churn rate, and the company will continue making sales from the customers.
Improve customer experience
New customers will have the skills and experience to use business products or services with the proper onboarding process.
They will quickly see the value a brand has as they can see firsthand the results they get as they solve their pain points.
The onboarding experience helps them know how to get the best from the products or services they have purchased. Also, research shows that 86% of customers pay more for brands with excellent customer experience.
Source: Walker
Increase Referrals to The Business
Once customers know how to use services or products, they will readily use them to solve their pain points. In addition, using the products for some time will help solve their challenges.
After getting a great experience using a business for some time, they can decide to let others know of the value the company has. As a result, your new customers will draw more target customers to the business, leading to more conversions and sales.
However, this started when the business showed new customers how to use the products through the onboarding period.
Improve Product Adoption
A great onboarding process motivates customers to use the products or services of a business since they know how to use them.
That’s what product adoption is all about. The products or services were created to solve a need in the market.
Source: Heap
Since the customers have pains and know how to use the tools to solve the pains after a successful onboarding period, they can increase product adoption for a business.
After the onboarding process, the customer knows the business’s value and how to get it when using the business. Therefore, they are eager to use the product to get that value and solve their pains.
Conclusion
It is essential to ensure you walk your new customers well as they start using your business to solve their pains. Having a great onboarding process will be of great help in building trust with the customer. They will understand how your business works and effectively use the products or services to solve their pains.
They will learn how valuable your business is, which will even increase their lifetime value, leading to more sales and revenue for your business.
Use the tips above to nurture your new customers and guide them to use your company to address their pain points.
