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This article is the third in our series about how understanding the key phases of the local customer journey can help your dance studio thrive. This article focuses on how to build your reputation and turn your customers into advocates. 

These steps complement each other. After all, you can’t turn customers into advocates unless you create an excellent reputation and service for them to help you sell. Customers are often viewed as more reputable, honest brokers of your brand than advertising, so this is a step you don’t want to skip. 

Building Reputation and Advocates

The core building blocks that turn customers into advocates for building a positive brand reputation are the same in every business: You have to crush expectations, immediately remedy any customer service concerns your dancers may have, and ensure your clients are happy. You also have to listen to their concerns and respond appropriately to any challenges. 

From there, you can take your most loyal customers and actively encourage them to become your advocates. By creating the right incentives and providing the right encouragement, you can use your customer’s positive experiences to build a positive impression of your brand. 

Gaining Actionable Insight and Identifying Advocates

Building your reputation and finding your advocates requires a conscious effort and some in-depth analysis by your marketing team. During this process, you can also determine where your weaknesses are and what you can do to address potential customer landmines. Try these three tools to get started:

Surveys

Surveys are a great way to find what your customers think about you. You can give quick surveys via a QR code that leads to your website, enabling you to hear what your customers think of your business. Surveys should be brief and focused, so you get actionable data. Surveys can also be excellent marketing tools, since they show your customers that you value their opinion and want to improve.

Online Reviews and Social Proof

Customer reviews are hugely important: Customers are much more likely to give you their business if they see overwhelmingly positive reviews on a network like Google, Yelp, or Trustpilot. Conversely, if you have consistently bad Google reviews, you are much more likely to lose a customer’s business. 

Why? Customer reviews are important forms of social proof. The idea behind social proof is that customers are more likely to have a positive impression of your business if they read about others having a good experience. Even better, one positive review is likely to influence the next reviewer. 

You should therefore work to amplify positive Google reviews. You can do this in a few ways. First, ask your customers to leave good reviews. You can put reminders in emails to clients, lesson invoices, or any materials your dancers take home. Then post those positive reviews on your social media by sharing them directly and/or making them into attractive graphics. You can also link to review sites on your website, enabling customers to leave reviews easily. Finally, you should always respond to reviews — positive or negative — to show that you value your customer’s opinions. 

World of Mouth / Referrals

You can turn your customers into active advocates by getting them to recommend your studio to others. The first step is simply to ask them to recommend you to their network. From there, reward those customers with a discount or other social proof showing you truly value these referrals. This incentive makes it more likely that other customers will make more referrals, creating a positive cycle. 

Ready for the Next Steps?

At EZTransition, we want to help your dance studio expand its business, and we’re here to help you improve your local customer journey. Call today to book a 30-minute call.