Why The Golden Rule Is Now – Be Easy To Work With

See why being easy to work with will have consumers choosing, raving, reviewing, and referring you to grow your business.

As business evolves faster than ever many elements of a business’s offering can be pretty equal. The same types of service, similar products, and pricing within cents of each other.

How can you stand out? By being easy to work with.

With time as our biggest commodity (for your business too), being easy to work with and reducing friction, time, and stress for your customers is key.

So while the golden rule of business has long been viewed as treating customers with respect and kindness the same as you’d want to be treated, I’d argue it’s become more focused. It’s now to be easy to work with.

Here is a look at how to be easy to work with.

Be easy to find

Great marketing, messaging and positioning can make your business an easy choice. Online this means having strong Google search rankings, complete Google Business Profiles (previously called Google My Business – GMB), and active social media.

For most small businesses this means engaging in local SEO. When a consumer is looking for a local business for services or products you want your business to be visible on Google. Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is key to these local organic and map pack results.

Whitespark’s annual Local Search Ranking Factors Report shows that having a complete GBP profile, proper categories, and great reviews matter a lot. Optimizing these elements in addition to using photos, posts, offers, and more will help your GBP rank well for local searches.

In addition to local search marketing, social media can assist in being top of mind for a small business. Creating posts that inform, differentiate, educate and entertain can all work to make your business be discoverable and top of mind when needed.

While it may seem daunting, most small businesses actually have a ton of content options just by sharing their story, daily activities, interests, team members, and more. Still, need more ideas? Here are 100 social media content ideas you can choose from.

No matter the channel, always be thinking about how easy it is to find your business and what elements you can leverage to make your business easy to choose when they do.

Be easy to work with from the start

Once you have been discovered or referred, you need to make the start of communication easy.

Make help easy to find

When a prospect or customer wants to reach out, they shouldn’t have to search for how to do that. While a longtime standard has been phone numbers and contact options in the website header and footer, what about everything in between?

Especially in today’s mobile-first world, where the header or footer can be many swipes from being visible, your calls-to-action (CTAs) should ALWAYS be visible. Using floating buttons for your CTAs puts your next step front and center, just a tap or click away at all times.

Make contact easy

Boosting conversion can be as simple as giving your prospects and customers the options they want to contact you. Make it easy for your prospect to reach out by letting them control the channel and choose the method they prefer.

Presenting these options clearly and together makes choosing easy for your website visitor.

One big key here is offering the right contact options as well. Combining contact staples like calls, forms, and emails with emerging real-time channels like SMS and messaging are what customers want. A recent survey showed that 89% of consumers want to be able to 2-way message with the brands they work with.

Offering messaging to contact your business from major sites and platforms like Facebook and Google makes you easier to work with. Prospects and customers can contact you using messaging from Google search, maps, or your Facebook page.

The good news for your business is that Leadferno integrates with both Facebook Messenger and Google’s Business Messages so you can read and reply to these messages in one app.

Texting is easy

Texting can make working with your business easier. It can even make work easier for your team. Our study showed texting is the preferred communication channel, topping calls and email.

Why? Texting is easy, efficient, direct, and manageable.

Here are just some of the ways 2-way texting makes you easier to work with.

Initial contact and conversion via texting

As we noted above, being easy to work with can start right at the beginning. Marketing to website visitors and prospects so that they can ask questions and communicate using text messaging helps increase leads.

SMS makes it easy to ask questions and get answers. Texting is a real-time channel that is easy for both sides to manage with good velocity to provide help, solutions, and outcomes. faster.

By having CTAs on your website so that customers can text you at any time you make starting a conversation easy. Commonly known as a web-to-text widget, this makes engaging over SMS possible from desktop, tablet, or mobile browsers.

When your business can land customers worth hundreds or thousands of dollars from answering a few questions, you want to make asking questions as easy as possible.

Customer communication

Often during the buying process or the customer experience things arise that need clarification or addressing. SMS is perfect for these questions, answers, and clarifications for great communication.

Text messaging is brief, focused and allows both sides to communicate easily on point. It allows for both macro and micro communication that isn’t a hassle on either end because of how it can be managed.

Proactive text updates and reminders

The best customer experiences are the ones where the customer is guided through an enjoyable and successful journey. Using text messages proactively and for reminders can both blaze the trial for this journey and serve as the perfect tour guide.

Helpful tips to be proactive with your communication are:

• Reach out first. Don’t wait for your customer to ask for help. Learn their needs.
• Guide them. Always outline the next step in your process, even when small, to ensure they progress.
• Invite questions. Ask what else you can help with before you close any interaction.

Using SMS for appointments, service, and deadline reminders is a great way to be easy to work with. Not only do these timely reminders help your customer with key dates, times, and interactions but they keep your business on schedule too.

How being easy to work with pays off

The benefit to adopting this golden rule is manyfold. Being easy to work with will easily meet and usually exceed your customer’s expectations. This helps foster growth elements for your business like these.

• Repeat customers – A delighted customer will consider no other options the next time they are in need. Their lifetime value is yours.
• Raving customers – Making a customer happy can turn them into a min-marketing machine. Talking up your business in social circles, social media and other settings even when not asked about your business or service.
• Reviews – Delighted customers have no problem sharing their happiness in ratings and writing. Earn more Google reviews and other review sites by being easy to work with.
• Referrals – When asked for a great resource, you are at the top of their list. They know they will look great sending their friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers to your business to get help.

Reap these benefits and more by adopting this golden rule throughout your organization and processes.