4 Ways to Improve Your Customer Experience with Content Marketing

Posted by Sarah Mitchell on 22 July 2010 | 12 Comments

Tags: content marketing, customer experience, customer service

As some of you may know, I’ve just returned from a week-long vacation at a beachside resort in Bali. The goal of the trip was to escape the Perth winter and entertain my little boy in the process. I didn’t expect to do much except sit poolside with a book in hand, soaking up the sun and rejuvenating in the process. Surprisingly, the week turned out to be a case study in how good content can improve the customer experience.

Resort hotels pretty much have a captive audience. The trip is planned before you get there. Most people don’t bother to move hotels unless something terrible happens. Essentially, the holiday spirit dictates you relax and ignore minor annoyances in service and delivery. While your expectations are high when you arrive, a poor experience simply means you won’t return the next time. The place I selected was intent on making sure they would get repeat visitors. Their content reflected that.

1. Cater to Your Influencers
My six-year-old cares about one thing when he’s on holiday. If he can swim, he’s happy. When I booked my break, I made sure the hotel had a big pool. It helped when the website showed photos of three swimming pools complete with waterfalls, slides and fountains. In our case, they didn’t need to do much more, but they did. At check-in, he was presented with the following:

• Schedule of activities
• Special menu
• Branded, “unfinished” postcards ready for a colouring in activity
• A brochure describing the Kids Club

Before we unpacked, he knew far more about what was going on in the hotel than I did. The content he was given was presented in an easy-to-read style with graphic design attractive to little kids. Nothing he was given would have influenced my decision to stay there. Everything he was given convinced him it was the only place to be.

2. Segment Your Market
While he was studying the children’s menu, I rummaged for the spa brochure. Before we hit the pool for the first time, I’d booked my services. Later in the week, I picked up another spa brochure in the lobby and leafed through it. I was surprised to discover that while the content was largely the same, this brochure was positioned differently to appeal to couples and honeymooners. All the treatments were offered in tandem. If desired, each one could be performed outside the spa – in a romantic outdoor location or the privacy of your room. It wasn’t something that appealed to me on this mother/son trip but I bet a lot of brides insisted on a dual massage.

3. Translate Your Content
It’s common to see hospitality documents translated into Japanese. What surprised me in this resort was everything was also presented in Mandarin, Korean and Russian. Additionally, the television had channels dedicated to French, German, Russian, Indian, Japanese, Arabian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Korean and Portugese. (And much to my chagrin, five dedicated children’s stations.) Having lived and travelled in countries where English is not the first language, I can attest to how attractive it is to know you have at least one outlet for your native tongue.

4. Little Touches Can Make A Big Difference
It’s easy to think of content as being either print or digital. One brilliant piece of content I discovered at the hotel was the employee nametag. Under each name was a single sentence starting with, “My passion is”. There were many tags with “sport” or “travel” listed as the passion, as you would expect in a seaside destination. But there were gems like the young man serving coffee who had designated “classical music”.

How could a nametag be considered a content marketing strategy? Think about it. The resort wanted their employees to engage with their customers. By providing personal detail, it encouraged conversation. What it said was the resort was interested in me and was providing a data point for me, pulling me into their sphere. The employees, to a person, were wonderfully adept at making you feel like whatever you had to say was the single most important thing they had to hear. Even the gardeners would drop tools, bend down and ask my little boy a question when he said hello to them.

The heat of the sun and the sound of the ocean are distant memories a week after my return. My feet are back to their normal ice cube status for the Australian winter. The content marketing strategies, however, have stayed in my mind. Midway through our trip, my son and I were walking along the path running in front of the beachside resorts. I mentioned on our next visit we should try a different place. He gave me a puzzled look and said, “Why would we do that?”

How do you use content to improve your customer experience?

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Image courtesy of Tanti Ruwani at www.flickr.net