Customers lie at the center of any business universe. It is the relationship with them that determines the chance of success of a business. With the advent of social media, maintaining this relationship has become easier than ever before. The social media platforms that have emerged over the last few decades are now among the best places to connect with the customers. In fact, the world of social media is taking the practice of maintaining customer relationships a step forward. It results in great rapport with them and through it, an enhanced profit. And all it needs are a few easy steps to follow.
Social Media and Business Marketing
What do you do when you are not satisfied with the services of a company? Or when you find that a product that you have bought is damaged? Most of the people around the world do similar things. They log on to their favorite social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and others to complain to their friends, family, and relatives. In fact, with social media around, they can lodge official complaints through these platforms as well. So, these platforms need to play important part in your business marketing procedure. The right steps here can help to take your business to the next level.
Increasing Social Media Marketing Budget
With rising popularity of social media platforms, companies are spending more and more on them to main proper customer relationships. A report from the Wall Street Journal says that companies already spend 9% of their marketing budget on social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter. This is expected to touch 13% over the next one year. Moreover, it is likely to be over 21% within the next five years.
Beyond Just Good Etiquettes
Customer relationships depend on a lot of things. You need to keep an eye on all of these to ensure that your relationship with the customers never gets strained. For example:
- Delivering high-quality products and services consistently does help.
- Meeting promises is important.
Effective customer service plays a major role in maintaining a proper relationship with the customer. And an effective customer service is surely a lot more than the good behaviors and etiquette of business owners. Social media is surely one of the most effective ways for the companies to maintain proper relationships with their customers. But why is it becoming the most used customer relationship platform? And how can it be leveraged most to get the best results? Here’s a sneak peek.
Encourage to Share Own Stories
Sharing their own stories – well, this is what a lot of people seem to love most. And all that the business owners need to do is influence them to make them post photos or messages that work best for the business. Remember, the stories or the photos that the customers are sharing on your social media timeline can even be inspirational enough to influence others. And when the story that you have shared is able to make the customers happy, it is surely going to have a positive impact on your business. When your customers are happy, it is surely going to be a great thing for your business.
Gift Coupons on Social Platforms
Who doesn’t love to receive something wonderful? Well, social media can be the best platform to offer the customers some prize or discount. There are quite a few ways to do it. You can arrange a competition on a social media platform. As a prize for the winner, offer some kind of coupon. This will surely be a great impetus for the customers. It will motivate them to participate in the contests that you are organizing on the social media platform. Thus, you will be able to remain in constant touch with the customer, at least as long as the competition is going on. This, in turn, will play a major role in enhancing your customer relationship.
Say Thank You!
Have you ever said thank you to your customers? Well, social media can be a great place to do that. In fact, it is on this platform that you can get an estimate of how the customers are liking your business. For example, the likes in a Facebook page might be the metric of calculating the customer engagement level of your business. And once you do that, you are surely going to get effective results. The fashion brand Burberry did just that. They tweeted personalized Thank You GIFs to 3,000 of their customers on reaching 1 Million followers. And the result has been overwhelming. The company is experiencing further increase in their number of customers now.
Owning Mistakes and Responding in a Customized Manner
Responding to consumer feedback is one of the most important activities needed while maintaining proper customer relationships. And it should not be an automated one as well. Always ensure that you respond to the feedback in a customized manner. If there is any complaint on social media about the products and services you provide, look into the matter. If you find that there has been a mistake on your part, own it and apologize. Nobody is perfect and so, the customers do not expect you to be always free from mistakes. But it is important to say sorry when the mistake is yours. And it can be the best way to convey to the customers that they matter to you.
Social media has become one of the most important platform for business marketing. So, you need to use it prudently to make the most of it. In fact, the right use of the social media platforms can help you expand your business significantly and, in turn, increase revenues.