The Importance of Instagram Guides to Boost Engagement 

When Instagram hit the social media scene in 2010, the platform revolutionized how we connected with friends, loved ones, and brands. This change transformed the focus of posts from words to pictures. In 2020, Instagram gave the digital world even more innovative social media trends through Instagram Live, shops, reels, a refreshed home screen, and Instagram Guides.

While brands have become familiar with lives, shops, and reels, many have not yet tapped into the creative potential of guides. When used correctly, engaging Instagram Guides can do double duty for your social media strategy by giving new life to existing content and boosting brand engagement. 

What is an Instagram Guide? 

The Instagram Guide feature lets content creators publish themed and numbered lists directly in the Instagram app. Consider a brand with a blog post called “5 Best Places to Eat in Nashville.” That list can now live on Instagram as a mini-blog without directing users away from the social media site and your brand’s page.

The guides allow for a cover photo, an introduction, a selection of embedded posts, and optional descriptions of each list item. Currently, lists can be created for places and from previously published posts. 

Creating Engaging Instagram Guides

Creating an engaging Instagram Guide is easy because it uses existing posts. In other words, you don’t need to spend more time creating brand-new content! Instead, use it to give new life to the published posts you’ve already perfected.

Instagram offers guides for places and posts. While product guides were an option previously, they were discontinued in June 2023. However, there are still many ways to maximize guides and boost engagement.  

The Places Guide is geography-focused and allows creators to share locations. These are also typically based on a specific theme. Remember our “5 Best Places to Eat in Nashville” example? You can create a place guide by searching geotags, using saved places, or tagging locations that are geotagged in existing posts. 

The Post Guide is the most open-ended of the two options. Because this one is not governed by geotags, there is much more freedom to be creative in how this guide can be used. You can share product instructions, steps to a recipe, team introductions, and more. Any content that shares a similar theme and can be gathered under a common theme will work!

Both types of guides will encourage followers to stay on your page for longer periods of time. Because your guides use embedded information and descriptions, they will not have to venture away from you for more information. You can also make it easier for users to find your guides by using hashtags and keywords.

Guides that offer step-by-step instructions, life hacks, tips and tricks, or a behind-the-scenes look at your brand increase engagement and offer genuine, helpful content your audience will be interested in. While they cannot like or comment on the guides, they can share them in stories and direct messages. Even though the communication is one-way, the benefits of users spending more time with your content is a definite plus. 

Get Expert Help with Instagram 

Successfully staying on top of your brand’s social media platforms is a full-time job! Let our team at Green Apple Strategy help you maximize your online presence with engaging content that makes sense for your business. Contact us today to see how we can work together to increase brand awareness and engagement. 

How to Harness the Power of Storytelling in Event Marketing

Let’s be honest… it takes a lot of time, attention, and energy to plan and execute an event. The last thing you want is to waste your resources on an event that falls flat. After planning and executing dozens of events for clients over the years, we’ve learned some of the most important best practices for creating an effective and unforgettable event. Harnessing the power of storytelling is one of the foundational pillars of effective event marketing.   

Building your event around a compelling story is beneficial for several reasons. It makes promoting your event easier by creating a more intriguing hook for guests or media outlets. It unlocks creative ideas and opportunities to engage attendees. It is easier to promote, and it creates a more memorable experience for attendees. Ultimately, it enables you to connect with your audience on a deeper level.

How to Harness the Power of Storytelling in Event Marketing

Here are some specific tips and ideas that marketers can use to harness the power of storytelling in event marketing:

Start with a Strong Story

The first step is to come up with a strong story that will resonate with your audience. You need to decide on the core idea behind your event. The “story” of your event should be relevant to your brand, your values, and your overall blueprint for your brand story.

Here are a few questions to consider: 

  • What is the overall purpose of the event? What messages or emotions do you want to convey to the attendees?
  • What are the core themes or ideas associated with your brand or organization?
  • Are there any key moments or events in your company’s history that could be used to tell a story?

Make it Personal for Your Audience

Helping your audience see themselves in the story is an important factor. The events that resonate the most are ones that allow you to connect with the audience on an emotional level. When your attendees can see themselves in the story, they’re more likely to remember and enjoy the event.  

Creating an event that resonates with your audience can be challenging because so much of your attention is focused on your marketing goals. Taking time to ask these questions can help create an event that personally resonates with attendees: 

  • What is the target audience for the event? What are their interests and pain points?
  • What could make it a must-attend experience for your target audience?
  • How can you improve their experience or their life through the event.

Engage All the Senses

Visuals can be a powerful way to tell a story, but it’s equally important to think beyond visuals and incorporate elements that appeal to sight, sound, touch, taste, and even smell. In the iconic words of Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message.” The way you deliver your story determines its impact on your participants, so have fun with it! 

Here are a few ways you can create an “immersive experience” that supports the story you want to tell:

  • What emotions do you want attendees to feel during the event? 
  • How can you evoke these emotions using sound and lighting design or visual elements?
     
Real-World Examples of Storytelling in Event Marketing

Over the past few months, we’ve been able to design and implement several event marketing strategies for our Green Apple clients. Here are some examples of how storytelling has been used in their event marketing plans:

The Skylight Grand Opening Event: Sip & Sample 

After months of renovation, The Factory at Franklin wanted to create an opportunity for guests to explore the reimagined space and celebrate the grand opening of The Skylight—the new bar at The Factory at Franklin. We designed an event called Sip & Sample that highlighted The Skylight’s narrative of being a space for the community. We brought together new and current vendors of The Factory and invited the community to join us for this exclusive grand opening event.  

Crain Construction’s 90th Anniversary Celebration

Known for building relationships and structures that last a lifetime, Crain Construction wanted to celebrate their 90th anniversary alongside team members, former employees, customers, and industry partners who supported their growth over the years. By hosting the event at Prancing Horse of Nashville Ferrari Dealership—one of their most recent projects—we were able to create an immersive experience that celebrated the past while generating excitement for the company’s future. 

United Communication’s Project UNITE Celebration

United Communications is a local internet company making tremendous strides in providing high-speed internet access to rural communities across Middle Tennessee. They came to Green Apple Strategy looking for a way to celebrate a state-funded grant for their Project UNITE initiative. Every aspect of the event, including the location, speaker list, and food choices, was designed to demonstrate the company’s commitment as a local provider.

Let Green Apple Plan Your Next Event

Special events are a powerful tool that can be used to enhance your marketing goals. If you’re ready to develop a compelling story or theme for your upcoming event, ensuring a memorable and impactful experience for your attendees, we’d love to talk. Reach out to us for a consultation.

Marketing and Customer Service: Improve Collaboration to Enhance Experiences

Overhead shot of two people working on laptops

Businesses need both marketing and customer service to survive. While each team’s day-to-day activities look very different, both play an important role in engaging clients, increasing new sales opportunities, and generating more profit.

Collaboration between your marketing department and customer service team is critical for creating a more customer-centric culture. But where do you start? In this article, we want to unpack a few helpful principles we’ve learned over the years when it comes to collaborating with our clients’ customer service teams to enhance the experience for their clientele.

3 Reasons to Cultivate Collaboration Between Marketing and Customer Service 

Before we dive into the “how,” here are a few important reasons to break down the silos between your marketing and customer service teams:  

1. It’s more profitable to retain current customers than acquire new ones.

Let’s face it. Attracting new customers is hard. It requires a lot of time, energy, and resources to engage a prospective customer all the way through the sales cycle. In fact, numerous studies have found that it is 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to keep a current one. On the other hand, a 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of the company. Because of the role that marketing plays within the organization, it can be a valuable asset when it comes to developing an intentional retention strategy. 

2. Marketing can learn from customer service to develop smarter campaigns. 

Your service team has a front-row seat to understanding how people really feel about your products and services. They know the challenges your customers face every day. They also know how people use your solutions to make their lives better. This information can be an invaluable resource for your marketing team as they develop marketing campaigns that speak directly to the pain points of prospective customers. 

3. You offer the same personal experience and congruent messaging for your customers.

The last thing you want your clients to feel is that you only cared about closing the sale. That’s why retaining business requires as much involvement from marketing as it does from your service team. Today’s consumers expect a consistent journey from the brands they support. In fact, 78% of customers expect consistent interactions with your business from the time they first engage your brand until they become a customer. Combining the efforts of marketing and service not only benefits your customers, it ultimately impacts your bottom line. 

5 Ways Marketing and Customer Service Can Make Each Other Better

If you’re looking to create more collaboration between your marketing and service teams, here are a few best practices to consider: 

1. Ensure your product marketing resonates with new and prospective buyers. 

Creating buyer personas is an important part of building a marketing strategy. If you want your messaging to resonate, it’s important to know what prospective (or current) customers are thinking, feeling, and facing on a daily basis. Because your service team is talking to your customers all the time, they likely know more about them than any other department in your company. Make time for these two teams to work together to create buyer personas. Their collaboration will make sure your marketing materials are targeted and relevant. 

2. Leverage the expertise of your service team in your content creation.

Your customer service team also knows your products and services better than anyone else. They’re often the ones helping clients find ways to solve challenges or provide helpful information. That’s why they make incredible thought leaders within your company. Your marketing team should collaborate with your service team around content ideas to capture helpful best practices and share valuable knowledge about prospective customers. 

3. Collaborate to monitor and respond to customers on social media. 

Social media put the power of brand perception into the hands of your clients and customers. Today, people can leave comments or reviews on social media platforms, Google, or industry-specific message boards. Many times, it’s the marketing team’s responsibility to monitor these channels. But working with the customer service team is key for transforming a negative comment into a more positive experience. 

We all know when a brand’s social media response seems cold and canned. Developing a process for marketing and service to respond collaboratively, even personally reaching out to the customer through their email, can make a tremendous difference when it comes to reputation management.  

4. Capture client success stories and testimonials for marketing collateral. 

While learning from complaints is important, capturing positive feedback can be just as valuable for your marketing efforts. When customer service and marketing work together, it helps the marketing team find testimonies or case study candidates more efficiently. This is particularly helpful if you want to turn customer reviews into a solid content marketing plan for your business. 

5. Create exceptional experiences for clientele with a loyalty program or a “surprise and delight” campaign. 

Your service team spends most of its time “in the weeds,” supporting customers. Finding the time or mental capacity to consider outside-the-box ways to strengthen the bond with clients can be difficult. As a department that’s generally known for being more creative, your marketing team can help enhance your customer experience with surprise and delight efforts. 

Despite having different job responsibilities, marketing and customer teams share common goals of attracting and converting new visitors into customers and providing exceptional service to retain those customers. To learn more about how we can help your internal teams cross-pollinate, reach out to schedule a meeting with us.

5 Best Practices for Marketing Project Management

Person sitting at a desk with a notebook and laptop

Let’s be honest – managing all of your marketing efforts is tough. There are dozens of steps to move a single project from an idea to a completed deliverable and requires collaboration between multiple parties. While there can be a lot that can go wrong, the good news is that there’s a way to bring order to all the madness that marketing campaigns bring with them – marketing project management!

Project management is more than a way to make sure your team is staking on time and budget, it actually increases the ROI of your marketing efforts. Marketers who plan projects are four times more likely to be successful.

At Green Apple, we’ve learned quite a bit about the foundational principles and best practices for effective marketing project management. While some of the lessons we learned the hard way, others were discovered through the creative problem-solving of our team. Today, we’ve built a team of gifted client relations specialists whose primary focus is to execute an effective project management process. 

For this article, we’ve asked one of our assistant client relations specialists, Kayla Reyes, to share a few insights she uses when it comes to “keeping all the plates spinning” for our clients.

5 Best Practices for Marketing Project Management

There are dozens of elements that go into managing your marketing projects effectively. From creating your overall structure and procedures to defining the communication processes, there’s a lot to consider. But how do you go about implementing these foundational principles for marketing project management? Here are a few best practices we’ve learned over the years:

1. Hire the right people.

Many of the tasks and responsibilities of a project manager require a certain mindset and skillset. Some people are big vision, whiteboard dreamers. They typically make better strategists that project managers. 

At Green Apple, we use a couple of tools to assess a team member’s project management acumen. For example, we have several enneagram ones who embody the characteristics of being honest, detail-oriented professionals. We also use the Culture Index to evaluate the interpersonal skills that are required for project management. 

2. Find tools to help.

Once you have the right people in your project management role, it’s important to equip them with tools that can help them be successful. In today’s digital-first world, this often means finding the right project management software for your team. As a hybrid marketing agency, we’ve found a lot of success in using tools like Basecamp and Asana for project management and collaboration with clients. 

3. Build consistent processes and systems around your tools. 

Investing in project management software is only helpful if your team knows how to use it. It requires intentional planning to discover how the match the features that are available in a project management tool with the internal processes and structure of your team. Training is another important factor to ensure everyone has what they need to fulfill their task and nothing slips through the cracks during a project. 

4. Take a detail-oriented approach to execution.

Organizing and streamlining ideas and projects is essential to keep on track with deadlines. This is even more true in a fast-paced agency environment when you’re serving multiple clients at once. 

While moving a project through the stages of development is one key, making sure it’s done well and nothing is overlooked is another. The people who are really great at what they do focus on executing – not just the big things but also on all the little details. A good project manager recognizes that even the tiniest details matter. They make sure everyone has what they need for their specific task and address any mistakes that are made along the way.  

5. Periodically ask what’s working and what’s not.

Consistently asking, “is this working?” is just as important with your project management process as it is with other areas of marketing. At Green Apple, we make sure our project management approach integrates with our client’s internal processes. We’ve found it helpful to host quarterly meetings with our project managers and Orchard members to identify ways to improve our project management processes internally. 

“As a project manager, I love getting into the weeds to help our clients launch a strategy or create a campaign that makes a tangible difference in the world,” Kayla described. “It’s always meaningful to look back and celebrate the hundreds of steps that are taken — and all the people who are involved – to execute all of the marketing efforts for our clients.”

You can learn more about Green Apple’s unique approach or connect with our team to discover how we can become your marketing partner. 

 

Surprise and Delight: Tips and Ideas to Show Appreciation and Enhance Customer Satisfaction

Sqaurespace employee having coffee with a coworker

Marketing plays an important role in every part of a buyer’s journey. From creating a memorable first impression to finding ways to turn customers into raving fans, it’s important to know how to create experiences that enhance customer satisfaction. 

The concept of “surprise and delight” is one of our favorite tools in our marketing tool belt. In essence, surprise and delight is a strategy to reward customers when they’re not expecting it. These customer experience tactics have proven to trigger positive feelings, create a deeper sense of brand loyalty, increase referrals, and multiply revenue. These moments work as a brand differentiator, and they can also be a highly effective strategy for fostering long-term customer loyalty. 

Some of our favorite marketing campaigns over the years have included helping our clients find ways to “surprise and delight” their customers. It’s always fun to show appreciation and bring joy to someone’s day. We’ve also learned a thing or two about how to enhance customer satisfaction using this technique. Here’s what we’ve learned: 

3 Tips for Incorporating “Surprise and Delight” Into Your Marketing

As you look for ways to surprise and delight your customers, here are three best practices to consider: 

1. Make it Personal 

The best surprise and delight campaigns are personal. Giving a gift or reward to a customer can inspire strong brand loyalty. If you have a small number of clients, consider how to make each gift or reward as personal as possible. Companies with a large number of customers can still find ways to have a personal touch. Customer segmentation is an effective tactic to incorporate personalization into your surprise and delight campaigns so that particular types of rewards target the customers who will appreciate them the most.

2. Make it Genuine

Today’s customers know the difference between a gift and a marketing tactic. For example, some companies create “surprise and delight” campaigns based on coupons or discounts. Other companies use location-based services to reach customers on mobile devices and offer discount coupons when they’re near a particular physical location. But these are classic sales promotions, rather than surprise and delight campaigns.

The best surprise and delight campaigns show customers you genuinely care about them. It could be bringing unexpected gifts or simply creating special moments in the purchasing process for consumers. Even website design can include moments of surprise and delight. For instance, an unexpected 404 error page can bring levity and playfulness to website navigation. The more small moments of joy you can include in the customer journey, the more likely customers are to retain positive feelings about your brand. 

3. Make it Simple 

One obstacle that keeps businesses from investing in surprise and delight is a fear of the unknown. Established brands may have trouble finding places in their customer experience for a breath of fresh air, a moment of joy, or a truly human connection. Our advice to these brands is to start small and go from there. Don’t overthink it. Maybe your sales presentation could incorporate a meme or pop culture reference. Your merchandise or packaging could include a character, pun, story, quote, or tasteful joke. With attention to detail and an understanding of your customer base, you can find places to spread joy and build brand integrity. 

3 Ideas to Enhance Customer Satisfaction with Surprise and Delight

As you consider how to incorporate surprise and delight into your marketing efforts, here are three specific scenarios you can create campaigns:

1. Send Client or Customer Appreciation Gifts 

According to data from Merkle HelloWorld Loyalty Report, the best ways to engage consumers is through surprise offers or gifts for being a customer. Many companies send gifts during the holiday season. But sending gifts randomly throughout the year is a great way to create a more memorable experience. In today’s digitally connected world, virtual client appreciation gifts are also valuable tools to enhance customer satisfaction. 

2. Incorporate Surprise and Delight into Client Onboarding 

The onboarding process is important for establishing the foundation of the relationship with your clients and customers. While creating a seamless onboarding experience and setting expectations are important for creating an outstanding onboarding experience, why not find a way to surprise and delight them from the very beginning? 

3. Celebrate Your Customers’ Personal Wins

One way to show customers you care about more than just their business is to celebrate their personal victories and successes. This is where social media channels can help you stay connected with customers. As you get to know them, find ways to show you have a genuine interest in them as humans. It could be sending a personal birthday card, congratulating them on an educational milestone, or sending a meal or gift card for their newborn. 

The best way to enhance customer satisfaction is to make them feel like you’re going above and beyond for them. Surprise and delight customers by doing something unexpected to show appreciation and let them know how much you value knowing them.

A Marketing Agency’s Review: Delighted Survey Platform


It’s a dilemma many businesses face: how can you capture accurate customer reviews without being invasive? For B2C businesses, review platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews do provide some feedback. How can B2B companies also leverage the type of feedback B2C organizations have more access to? While we’ve used several survey platforms to capture customer responses for our clients, Green Apple recently began using the Delighted survey platform. What were our experiences? Keep reading to find out! 

What Services Does the Delighted Survey Platform Offer?

Like many survey providers, Delighted offers seven different types of customer surveys, which include simple visual assessment measures. These include a smiley face scale, a thumbs up/thumbs down indicator, and a five-point scale survey. At Green Apple, we often use their more advanced survey types, which allow our clients to track things like a customer’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), a Customer Effort Score (CES), a Product Market Fit (PMF), and a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). These data points can help our clients make informed decisions about product or service changes they plan to implement.

Delighted Provides Powerful Data Analytics

Green Apple originally chose Delighted because it’s user friendly and cost effective, but we’ve been impressed by the data and report options available. We also appreciate the email reports and the ability to track keywords in survey responses.

We’ve been able to really dive into the metrics offered by the platform by segmenting the customer responses and isolating specific keywords. We can also isolate reviews by the employee for the customer served. We have been able to track and report how well that employee has performed with customers. We have recently started reporting on this data monthly to show the client the top technicians and their NPS score or customer feedback. The client has implemented this data into their internal review efforts. 

Delighted Offers Multiple Survey Styles & Delivery Methods

Green Apple’s Digital Marketing Specialist Katie Jackson likes that Delighted offers multiple survey options, including SMS, surveys through a website, email surveys, brick-and-mortar kiosk surveys, and iOs in-app surveys. She finds the Delighted dashboard “simple and easy to understand” and says, “It’s very easy to upload and send customer surveys to our client’s customers!” Katie also appreciates the value-add that Delighted brings to our clients. 

“I think that Delighted has brought value to our clients because they are able to reach out quickly to the customer to fix any issues they may have if they leave a poor review. This has created better relationships with our clients’ customers because they are reaching out quickly after they submit a survey. We have also learned that SMS surveys have a really great response rate and customers like being able to text their responses back rather than going to a link in an email,” she says.  

Delighted Surveys: Our Takeaway

This survey platform has been a positive pivot for our Green Apple team. It allows us to gauge and track NPS metrics and offer actionable data to our clients. We’re also able to easily track data for customer responses through the platform. Over the past five months, we’ve come to appreciate all that Delighted offers. 

Want to Capture More Customer Reviews? 

Green Apple Strategy uses responsive, well-designed tools to help our clients gather and analyze essential data points. If you need more insight into your customers’ pain points, our experienced team can help provide you with the right data to make key decisions. From blogging and SEO to PR and social media management, Green Apple Strategy can craft a marketing approach to help you attract and retain qualified leads. Reach out to us today for a consultation.

Client Surveys: The Secret Ingredient for any Successful Agency Partnership


Client satisfaction is an essential ingredient for a successful partnership between a marketing agency and the businesses they serve. Whether it’s creating a website or driving your lead generation and brand awareness campaigns, marketing agencies exist to help your business achieve more than you could on your own. At Green Apple, we firmly believe that if our clients aren’t benefiting from our partnership, we want to know. This is where client surveys have become an essential tool for creating successful partnerships with clients.

Over the years, we’ve helped our clients to build customer surveys that produce the highest return on investment. Recently, we’ve decided to integrate that approach into our own workflow. In this post, we wanted to outline a few specific ways that client surveys align with our values as an agency and why we see them as an opportunity to continually learn, grow, and improve to serve others more effectively. 

4 Ways Client Surveys Help Marketing Agencies Improve 

Here are a few specific ways that client surveys help marketing agencies in the work we do each day: 

  • Client surveys provide insights that help assess client needs and identify effective solutions. It’s difficult to know what’s working and what’s not without qualitative and quantitative feedback. We believe in the value of making data-driven decisions based on campaign results. We also value the qualitative feedback of our clients. Client surveys are a way for us to assess client needs and identify solutions. To formulate our approach, we combine what the survey metrics are showing with what clients express through the surveys.
  • Client surveys provide perspectives on how to better serve and engage clients. Client surveys provide a valuable opportunity to assess how we’re working with our clients, in addition to evaluating the work we’re doing for them. Ultimately, they allow us to assess everything from internal processes that support the work we do to the dozens of interactions we have with clients in a given month.
  • Client surveys give direction for change and improvement. We believe that our clients’ opinions and feedback are two of the most important factors that validate the decisions we make for our business. For example, a few years ago, a significant number of our clients needed more sales-enablement resources than general branding materials. This allowed us to find creative ways to change directions in our service offerings to invest more in sales-enablement strategies that benefited our clients’ needs.
  • Client surveys capture a big picture perspective & track change over time. We’ve had the benefit of working with several clients for numerous years. Client surveys allow us to uncover seasonal trends or see how any recent changes have affected our client experience throughout our partnership together.

Why We Invest in Client Surveys to Enhance Partnership with Clients

Here are a few more specific reasons we’ve decided to invest in client surveys to enhance the partnership we have with clients. 

  • We want to live out our values in every aspect of our business. One of our core values at Green Apple is to put the client first in every aspect of our process — that is our bottom line. We believe client surveys are one of the best ways to do that. Assessing client experiences allows us to listen to clients, hear their feedback, and work with them to help them face their specific challenges.
  • We want to continually look for ways to create strong partnerships with our clients. Partnering with an agency that has a general philosophy and approach to business that is similar to yours is key for effective partnership. Client surveys provide a way for us to make sure we’re in sync with how our clients want to achieve their goals. 
  • We believe that open and honest feedback is key to a successful relationship. Effective agency partnerships are based on achieving results and effective communication. Client surveys provide a way to create stronger partnerships with our clients by providing an anonymous way for them to clearly share their thoughts. 
  • We want to continually learn, grow, and improve how we serve clients. Continual learning and growth are essential in the marketing world. This is just as true in how we serve clients as it is how we keep track of the latest marketing trends. We believe client surveys are a way for us to continue to add value to our clients’ strategies because they provide a way for us to continually learn and improve. 

If you’re curious about Green Apple’s approach to partnership and how we work with brands, check out our services page or portfolio of projects to learn more.

How to Create a More Customer-Centric Culture

Cashier on squarespace register and lady customer


It’s obvious when companies genuinely care about their customers, not just as purchasers but as people. As a customer, you want to feel valued and reassured that your purchase, experience, or service is satisfactory. Building consistent and reactive communication helps you develop long-term and loyal consumer relationships. So, how do you do this? You put the customer first. A customer-centric culture revolves around making the customer happy before, during, and after their purchase, ultimately earning established loyalty and higher growth. This strategy means listening to your customers and implementing what you learn from them. Not only does this practice make consumers satisfied, it helps you stand out from the competition for potential customers. While there are several methods of the approach, we’ve gathered a top five for you to review while you begin to design a customer-centric approach in your organization.

1. Invest In Your Team

Imagine you want to make a complaint about a bad experience. If you encounter a less-than-helpful person when expressing your concerns, you likely won’t return to that business. That’s why you want to hire employees who understand the value of customer relationships. 

While these customer-facing individuals do drive revenue based on customer experience, that’s not their primary duty. More than anything, team members who work directly with customers ensure the customer is understood and satisfied with their experience. To avoid disconnection between customer service and other departments, strategically merge other divisions or schedule regular meetings. Customer service shouldn’t be only certain employees’ responsibility– it should be everyone’s. Though customer service isn’t the only factor in adopting customer-centric ways, hiring and collaborating with excellent people are guaranteed ways to make your customers feel more secure.

2. Have Empathy for Your Customers 

Responding with empathy is essential when developing a successful customer-centric approach. These responses consist of implementing progressive thinking, understanding emotional needs, and genuinely caring about the individual’s concerns. Empathy is a learned and valuable skill for your team members to possess.

According to a PwC study, only 38% of U.S. consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs. That is a monumental opportunity for your company to specialize in empathetic proficiencies and automatically outshine your competition.

3. Be One Step Ahead

When planning your customer-centric strategy, think of previous customer experiences, including:

  • Frustrations
  • Clarity issues
  • FAQs
  • Miscommunication
  • BONUS: “What If” scenarios

As a team, compile these trouble spots and either solve the hiccups or list the solutions on your website so your existing and potential customers can have their questions asked as soon as possible. You learn these areas of improvement by listening to your customers and are rewarded by their appreciation and extended business.

4. Prioritize Your Relationships First

Did you know that customers who have a good experience are 5X more likely to recommend your product or service than if they have a very poor experience? Relationships and customer satisfaction matter. Whether it’s fun communication through social media interaction or substantiating trust in B2B discussions, you want to know what your customers’ needs and priorities are before all else. Maybe it’s the way you respond or how you market toward products that create customer attraction to your brand. Research and listen to what your audience specifies; you’ll continue to build mutually beneficial relationships.

Ready to Build Your Customer-Centric Culture?

If you’re interested in learning more about how your business could thrive initiating a customer-centric business strategy, contact us today for a consultation! We’re excited to investigate the precise approach for you and your audience.

6 Guidelines for Planning a Virtual Event

zoom meeting on a laptop
At this point in time, half of all businesses conduct virtual sessions 20 to 30 times a year. Virtual events are low friction, with fewer barriers to attendance. (No more driving in the snow or paying for parking.) They can also extend the reach of your event far beyond your local circle while having almost no overhead costs. Online events are also recordable, which is incredibly valuable from a marketing collateral perspective. Key moments from an event can be repurposed and used on social media channels to bring additional attention to your brand. If you want to optimize the events you’re already holding, or dive into the virtual space for the first time, we have a few tips for planning a virtual event.

1. Promote Your Virtual Event

In marketing, a multi-pronged approach is always best. Make use of your active email list by sending out an engaging email explaining the value proposition of the event. Advertise the virtual event on social media channels, and consider providing an incentive to attend. (Gift cards are perfect for this since they’re easy to send and easy for participants to use!) Ideally, you should build a separate landing page on your website with a sign-up functionality so that you can point potential attendees to it. Drop the link into any promotions you do so that guests can RSVP easily. This will not only give you an accurate headcount for the event, but it will also help you make the event more secure by tying invites directly to RSVPs

2. Set an Agenda

Even if you’re a freewheeling type, virtual meetings aren’t the right time to indulge your spontaneous side. If participants have a sense that you don’t have a game plan, you may lose out on their attention and their buy-in. You can even send an agenda out to attendees to keep them informed about how the event will progress. One tip: keep your timestamps loose unless you’ve had several dry runs. A simple order of events is enough to serve as a guideline. 

3. Prep Your Audience

While you may be busy with administrative preparation and planning, priming your audience or participants for the event can really pay off. This pre-involvement can be comprised of sending out a poll in advance of the event, collecting comments they may want to share, or gathering questions for a Q and A. If you’re really feeling ambitious, consider sending out swag or small branded gifts to increase both event buy-in and attendance rates.

4. Check Your Tech

Running a tech rehearsal of your event can help you prevent long silences, pixelated images, weak connections, or other online event woes. The apparent ease of a virtual event can trick some event coordinators into scaling back their planning. (Don’t I just open up my laptop and go?) In reality, because of all that can go awry in a virtual event, meticulous planning becomes even more essential. When you’re doing a dry run of the event, double-check the functionality of technology for all the hosts, including mics, lighting, and sound. You’ll also want to check the permissions of the platform you’re using. Decide if you want to auto-mute participants or require video. For presentation elements, check screen sharing and hosting capacities. Finally, check your event link to make sure it directs to the correct location. While it may feel tedious, a technology dry run is the best way to ensure a professional, streamlined virtual event.

5. Secure Your Event

Incidences of Zoombombing have dropped since online event platforms have beefed up security. However, unwanted or unexpected intrusions are the type of occurrence that can completely derail an otherwise successful event. To help prevent this, set a password for every single event you host. You can also limit screen sharing to administrators and auto-mute participants so they can only unmute with administrative permission. If you do use the auto-mute function, you should assign a specific team member to unmute participants as necessary. This job will require their full attention, so it should be their sole task during a virtual event. 

6. Send Out Your Event Link!

When you’re ready to launch the event, it’s time to send out the event to link to participants. While there are several schools of thought on when to send an event link out, we don’t advise sending it out too far in advance. Email links sent out too early will get buried in the crunch of an already full email inbox. Participants may have difficulty locating the link when they’re ready to attend the event. Links can also be forwarded to anyone via email. If you want to add another layer of security to your event, sending out a link no more than 30 minutes to an hour before the event can help you keep your guest list exclusive. Sending out a link right before an event can also serve as a gentle reminder to those who have push notifications turned on. 

Green Apple Strategy: Innovative Marketing In Every Industry

Our clients have used virtual events to connect to their customers and promote their brands. It’s one tool of many that can be used to enhance your marketing goals. If you’re ready to enhance your marketing goals, connect to your audience more efficiently, and increase your brand awareness, contact Green Apple Strategy. We can help you build an innovative marketing strategy to attract and retain qualified leads. Reach out to us today for a consultation.

A Marketing Agency’s Review of LoyaltyLoop

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With several options for survey platforms competing for your business, which one is the best for your business? The right answer for your team depends on your specific needs. So, to help you during the decision-making process, we would like to share our experience with the survey platform LoyaltyLoop. 

LoyaltyLoop is a common tool used by both B2B and B2C companies to better understand their customers’ opinions about their service and improve the customer experience. You may have used one of its competitors, such as Qualtrics (formerly known as Survey Monkey) or Delighted. Or, perhaps, you’ve never used a customer survey platform before and are just getting your bearings. 

Wherever you are in the process, we hope that this review of LoyaltyLoop will help you make an informed decision. We spoke to our Senior Client Relations Specialist, Olivia Cooper, to learn more about the pros and cons of this software.

Pro: Simple and User-Friendly Interface

We have found LoyaltyLoop’s interface to be user-friendly and straightforward. Still, we understand that we as an agency might have a different view of what is “user-friendly” because we use these types of tools regularly. For clients who aren’t well-versed in marketing lingo and processes, we believe that it will also be an intuitive experience. When asked her opinion on LoyaltyLoop’s ease of use outside an agency environment, Olivia replied, “For clients who are using this type of platform for the first time and want to log in and have the experience be as clear as possible, this interface will be great for them too.” 

Pro: Quick and Professional Customer Service

Another benefit of using LoyaltyLoop is the platform’s quality customer service approach. Olivia notes, “I’ve had good experiences with their customer service. They’re always quick to solve our needs, and they follow up regularly on projects we’re working on.” Any time you’re using software essential for business growth—especially one you’re paying for—you want to be sure that you can reach out for help if needed. LoyaltyLoop is an excellent option for good customer service.

Con: Basic Customization Options

One element that our team hopes LoyaltyLoop will improve over time is its customization options for the survey and follow-up emails sent to our clients’ customers. Olivia notes that she wishes “there were more customization options for the communications sent out through the platform.” She went on to give an example for added context: “We use LoyaltyLoop’s follow-up email templates to send after someone completes a survey, but the customization options to design the email are pretty basic right now. However, even with those basic options, these emails are very effective,” she adds. 

Though the basic customization is a drawback, it does not affect the effectiveness of LoyaltyLoop’s customer communications. We’ve found this platform to be a beneficial tool for our clients looking to build trust with their customers and improve their customer service.

Want to Improve Your Customer Service? 

Your customer survey strategy can be a powerful tactic to add to your marketing efforts. Our clients use these types of strategies to monitor and improve upon their NPS scores, customer service tactics, and the overall customer experience. 

We can help. Want us to join your team? Contact us today to schedule a consultation. We are happy to sit down with you to discuss your goals and how we can walk alongside you to achieve them.