3 Simple Ways to Use Content to Increase Your Customers’ Success

Your customers’ success plays a major role in your ability to earn their loyalty. Whenever they have a good experience getting the results they desire using your products and services, they are much more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend you to their friends. 

But far too many brands miss the opportunity to add elements to their customer journey that support their customers in being successful in achieving their goals. As a result, their customers are frustrated, their customer service and support costs increase, and there aren’t as many brand testimonials as there could be.

Content is a smart way to increase your customers’ success. By strategically adding content at key points of your customer experience, you can help your customers’ reach their goal, and do it more quickly. I know I personally would send a lot fewer support tickets and call customer service lines much less if I could turn to easily accessible content to help me get unstuck.

Here are three simple ways to use content to increase your customers’ success.

1. Show them how to use your product

As you evaluate the touch points your customers have in their journey with you, don’t assume that they’ll just know how to do something. And ditch the notion that a how-to product manual will suffice. Instead look for creative and thoughtful ways to show them in the moment how to complete tasks that are critical to their success in using your product.

About a year ago I snapped a photo of a laminated card in my hotel room that explained how to turn on the shower. I appreciated the simple gesture, because I’ve had to make more than one embarrassing call to a hotel front desk over the years, asking them how to turn their fancy shower on.

Start with the most common questions you get and create content to address them. Over time you can expand.

2. Show them how to be successful with adjacent activities that involve your product

In many instances, your customers aren’t using your product in a vacuum. They are engaging with it as a component of a larger system to help them reach their goal. You can be a go-to resource that helps them achieve their overarching objective, that your product is part of.

Last month I recorded a keynote talk for an upcoming virtual conference. All the speakers had to record their sessions on their own, and then send them in for the organizers to edit.

I spent hours on YouTube figuring out how to hook up my microphone to my camera. Thankfully, there were multiple how-to videos that walked me step-by-step through what I needed to do, and I got the recording done. None of the videos I watched were from the camera’s manufacturer. They were all from creators who have no visible affiliation with the brand.

Brainstorm the different end-goals your customers have that your product helps them achieve. Then create content that answers key questions they have along the way.

Wistia does this well. The video marketing software company does a brilliant job of creating how to videos on adjacent topics to their product offering that helps their customers be successful, such as information on marketing, sales, and video production. When I wanted to create an at-home recording studio, I used a single piece of content from them to guide me on everything I needed.

This strategy has the added benefit of helping you attract potential customers who are looking for answers on how to achieve their broader goal, but aren’t yet aware of your product as a solution.

3. Provide ongoing support that helps overcome other hurdles to achieving success 

For some products, there is a bit of a mental hurdle your customers need to overcome to achieve success. That’s why some brands offer their customers some form of community aspect to their offering, as a way to allow their customers to connect with others who are on a similar journey.

In addition to the community aspect, you’re able to connect with your customers, answer questions in real time, and coach them through mindset issues that could be holding them back.

I’ve seen brands do this with Facebook groups, Slack groups, and even with weekly Instagram Live sessions where they answer questions from both customers and potential customers.

Everyone wins when your customers are successful. Commit to using smart content to help them get more wins more often.