by
Eddie Velez
Success by Design
The
term “social media marketing” can be very misleading, because it
gives the connotation that it’s strictly for selling something.
However, social media marketing is more than just promotion!
Social media marketing can help you with customer retention,
lower your administrative costs and manage your online
reputation. Let’s take a look at how you can do this.
Lowering Administrative Costs
Have you ever heard the saying that
it’s cheaper to keep a happy customer, rather than find a new
on? Think about it! If you lost a paying customer, what would it
take to find one to replace him or her? It takes advertising and
marketing, people on answering phones or making outbound calls,
possibly samples to attract interest. In short, this costs money
to only break even, since you need two new customers to grow.
When you consider that most times the reason for losing a
customer is either a misunderstanding or tardy responses to
inquiries. But what if you had a robust questions-and-answers
page, with downloadable resources that was promoted via social
media? What if when you received an inquiry and provided a
response, you took that response and shared it through Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ for all to see? Not only would it
deliver the answer to anyone else who may have the same
question, it shows caring and forward thinking – providing a
solution before asked!
Now, what would happen to your customer service department if
answers were being posted and delivered, eliminating the need to
speak with someone on the phone? You would need fewer
representatives putting out fires. Those are assets that can be
reallocated for higher productivity and lowers cost by not
needing to hire as many employees. And, let’s not forget the
GOOD PR this garners you.
Customer Retention
Staying with the example above, if a
customer feels valued and connected, finding the help they need
to best use your product or service, why would they look
elsewhere? When using this approach it gives you two HUGE
benefits:
1) It builds trust! When they see they can count on your company
to deliver, they trust you.
2) You can make suggestions on how your product could be used
for higher productivity and value, positioning your company for
up-sales.
Taking a proactive approach will keep you ahead of your
competition and, while the goal may have been customer retention
and lower administrative costs, it still contributes to sales!
Not only by the up-sales that can occur, but the legacy it
creates, which your sales team will use as one of the benefits
of doing business with your company.
Online Reputation Management
If you don’t know what is being said
about you, you cannot capitalize on it nor defend against it. If
people are saying good things about you, you want to know about
it and publicly acknowledge it and thank them. It shows
graciousness (which is in short supply these days). Moreover,
the things they say can also lead to new research and
development.br />
If something bad is said, it allows you a rapid response to
quash any negatives. And, once a negative is out there, it will
never disappear, but a steady social media campaign will help to
push it down where no one will find it.
Good ways of doing this are with Google Alerts and setting all
your social media accounts’ notice settings to inform you
whenever you are mentioned or tagged by anyone.
So if you thought social media was nothing more than just
selling, you’ve been missing about two-thirds of the value it
offers to help grow, sustain and protect your business. And in
this economy, this is as priceless as MasterCard!
Eddie Velez is a 20-year marketing and PR
professional,
web and graphic designer, and blogger. He publishes a
blog, The
Ruminations of Eddie Velez
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