GET A FREE CONSULTATION
Posted by Bhupinder Kaur Chhabra
July 06, 2016
Savvy marketers are well aware that customer loyalty is accustomed at each interaction; a brand makes with its customers. Those interactions are very important to build up and maintain strong customer relationships. Every interaction with the customer provides an opportunity to reinforce the satisfaction they’ve been experiencing with the previous interactions and thus it strengthens their loyalty to the respective brand.
Social media has grown as a mainstream platform today, so the focus on using such networks like Facebook and Twitter for marketing has been virtually exploded. These networks offer tremendous marketing opportunities and it is possible to do much more with social media including drive customer loyalty.
If you’re looking to keep more of your customers or the smart ways to nurture better customer relationships using various social media channels, this article is the right read for you.
Social media plays a pivotal role to build up more and more meaningful connections with customers that stay with you for longer. We’ve figured out a seven-step plan to help you improve customer loyalty with social media.
When it comes to social media, the older tricks like “Set It And Forget It” do not work now. This would not work at all on the social channels. You need to be ‘real time’ – You need to be engaged with your audience, interact with them and respond to their queries while on social networks.
You can easily shoot out promotional emails, run display ads and make the announcements on television and various radio spots, but what about reminding the customers of these sales and promotions. Turn out to social media – a platform born to promote whatever you want very quickly and the best way for the last-minute marketing. Remember, the followers on your company’s social media profiles are the ones who’ve raised their proverbial hand indicating their willingness to get informed of all your company’s happenings.
Today, more and more people are turning to social media for the customer services and support. What’s the reason?
Face it, Except a phone call, which medium allows your organization to engage in real time with its audience. Since, the companies using the phones to interact with customers has gradually decreased, and the need for getting the immediate responses and results has dramatically increased, most of the companies today have their customer support on various social media channels.
The further step in growing the customer relationship is proactively providing the value that your customers are seeking based on your offerings. Maintaining the cycle where audience provides feedback and you fine-tune the value you provide helps deepening the relationships.
Once you’ve developed a good level of engagement, focus on building up conversion activities keeping your customers involved with your business on social media.
Great marketers know well, the loyal customers are the active advocates for the brand. They spend more on your brand and save the company’s significant customer acquisition costs. You can use various social listening tools to determine your brand’s social advocates you may target to infuse the relationships with value.
For instance, you may ask your loyal customers to self-determine in exchange for a reward of the value for better engagement with you on social media. For example, some companies reward the members for their participation on a regular basis.
Remember, rewards need to reflect the value in your consumer’s heart, so use the feedback from your loyal social advocates to develop those rewards.
It is critical to develop and maintain a consistent rhythm so make sure the value you provide to your social VIPs is always perceived in a fair trade to maintain the customers’ ongoing loyalty. You can create reward programs tailored to your business needs and social VIPs. There are several rewards trending on the social networks and the audiences.
Here is a compiled list of rewards which are most commonly noticed on facebook and twitter today:
– Inviting social VIPs to a special event
– Offering a sneak peak or an upgrade
– Providing free access to the unique content they truly value
The best marketing strategy is to personalize your offers and give your special audiences an opportunity to look ahead to your upcoming promotions and keeping them involved in your business.
Finally, the most important factor of any business is its ‘Success’. And, success can be measured on the basis of spend and the customer retention. The best way to track your business growth is to capture the social IDs and the email addresses in your conversion activities that you can link up in your CRM and the whole sales process. And, to directly measure sales, you may look out for the growth in the social engagement and the social following.
Gradually, as your customers share more and more, they’ll help create your virtual brand advocacy among their own networks. Ultimately, rising up other individuals’ interests in your brand.
Social media is and will be playing a critical role in improving the customer relationship and growing lifetime customer value. So, what are you waiting for? Start encouraging greater loyalty and customer value by incorporating these seven tactics into your social media plan. This will help you grow social customer retention with a long lasting business impact.
Do you follow any other social media strategy for your business? Have you tried these ways to connect with your loyal audiences? What strategies did actually worked for you? Please share your valuable thoughts.
