This is a blog I wrote for my work this past week and you can read the original here. I like to keep all my writing together in this space and I think these benefits can apply to other industries and areas of life besides marketing!
We all make mistakes; it’s really inevitable in human nature, and we all know the feeling in the pit of our stomachs when something major goes wrong. There is nothing worse than clicking “Send” on a high-profile email blast going to 20,000 or more contacts and seeing a spelling error in the subject line or noticing a broken link or a missing image in the graphics. The reality is, there are no take-backs or re-dos, so getting it right the first time is a must.
Luckily for our customers, we have a quality assurance process in place to help avoid such problems. What exactly is quality assurance and why is it so valuable to you? Quality assurance, while it has traditionally referred to ensuring standards in the process of manufacturing of a tangible product, it also includes the quality of delivering services to a customer and avoiding problems in the process of delivery.
This crucial process has such an important place in your inbound marketing because more than likely, the stakes are high. Whether it’s your monetary investment with your marketing budget or you have potential sales on the line, your ROI depends on the quality of marketing being delivered to your target market.
While it’s easier said than done, there are many great benefits of QA-ing your Inbound Marketing:
- Make a great first impression. First impressions can be everything when it comes to marketing. Often times, you might just have a split second of a potential customer’s attention before he or she makes a quick decision about you. Nothing is a bigger turn-off than having a mistake in your content, campaigns or website, which can unfortunately lead to a lost sale.
- Avoid time and money on redoing work. Time is money, and when mistakes happen, this usually equates to additional time spent on fixing errors, proofing, testing, approving and implementing work. This can ultimately lead to more money spent than needs to be rather than if an error was simply caught the first time around.
- Build a rapport of excellence. You have excellent services and products, but your marketing is a hot mess. By creating top-notch content, messaging and websites, you can properly express to your current and future customers the level of excellence they can expect. Mistakes and errors can send the wrong message of what type of business you are running.
- Set a standard of high quality work. Happy customers are more likely to spread your praises and recommend your business. By making quality your standard and paying attention to the finer details of your marketing, customers will trust your work and be more forgiving when you do happen to make a mistake.
- Encourage improvement across the company. By placing emphasis on quality, you are creating a company-wide culture that supports improvement and teamwork and encourages the very best work out of people. And this positive, challenging work environment may ultimately prevent a neglectful or complacent attitude by your employees.
Have you ever experienced a time where a lack of quality assurance caused a problem in your marketing? What types of things do you do to ensure quality standards?
photo credit: mastrobiggo
Katherine Smith | Love is the reason I write. 