Let’s get social media savvy!
Whether you are running a small, local operation, or heading a global, enterprise-level effort, it is clear that your customers are online. Social media can help you reach customers everywhere and anywhere. Customers are interacting in social channels with their friends, colleagues, and other brands in search of information, recommendations, and entertainment. If your company is not around to answer, a competitor will be. In doing so, your competitor will quite likely take away the customer at hand, along with anyone else listening. By offering a great opportunity to increase the impact of your marketing, to promote your services or products and also to respond to customer enquiries.
Some useful social media related terms for business,
Business profile – Public social media profile for any business.
Content – Content is the King! In Social Media Marketing, But Customer is the King for Business. In this context content can be text, links, events, photos or videos that are shared with your online social community.
Click-through rate (CTR) – This is the percentage of people who click on a piece of content, whether an email, a social post or an online advert. A CTR can be used to measure the success of your digital marketing efforts. A high CTR means your customers find your ads helpful and relevant.
Target audience – The group of people your business aims to serve or support. These may be existing customers, or potentially new customers.
Audience insights – This is data that can be collected over time to help your business understand how people feel about your product, service, or a piece of content you have created. You can use your audience insights to tailor your marketing plans, product design and the content you share.
Social media marketing and business success
There are many ways to promote your business and products to the world. Now, along with traditional media marketing, like TV, billboards, flyers and newspaper print ads, many companies are adding social media into the mix. There are many benefits to adding social media to your business’s marketing activities. It’s much targeted, so it can be seen as an efficient method of communicating with, and growing, your customer base. It’s also more responsive and allows you to adapt to your customer and business needs.
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Let’s look at the ways social media can help grow your business.
Build an online presence quickly
A social profile is a simple way to get your business online. Better still, it’s usually quick and free. With similar benefits to a website but with fewer overheads, you can use your social profile to share important contact information, an overview of your products or services, promotional offers and marketing campaigns. You can even use your profile to provide real-time customer support.
Drives awareness of your business
With so many people using social media these days, a business without a social presence is a bit like having a store without a sign. People need to know you’re there. The online social community is growing by the minute and an online social presence can help to increase awareness of your business, make your business easier to discover and even help your sales revenue. On social media, every user has the potential to be a future customer. Creating a ‘digital storefront’ makes it simple to search for, and share your business when recommending it to friends and family.
For example: Ananya is having trouble finding the perfect saree for her sister’s wedding. Her friend Anitha shares her favourite dressmaker’s Instagram account with Ananya and suggests she get in touch with them. After searching the dressmaker’s profile, Anaya finds a similar dress and sends the store a message to check 1) if it’s still in stock and 2) if they can tailor it for her. Once the dressmaker confirms both questions, Anaya finds their address and opening hours on their profile, before jumping in the car.
The dressmaker’s Instagram account helped build this customer relationship and sale. Without seeing the dressmaker’s Instagram account, Ananya might not have been inspired to visit the shop.
Develop a relationship with your customers
Social media provides an opportunity to continue your conversation with new and current customers. Where once a customer might have phoned in advance or just visited the store and hoped for the best, today many people find it more practical to go online first to find out more about a business.
Offering responsive and tailored online customer support on social media is a great way to stand out from your competitors. One-to-one conversations help current and new customers feel confident with your services and what you offer. Responding to and engaging with your audience online in this way can be a great way to provide brilliant customer service. This can strengthen customer relationships and increase customer loyalty.
As well as one-to-one conversations, your business profile is also a great place to share relevant and unique content. You can quickly and easily share information about new products, launch promotions and talk to your audience about their interests – hopefully inspiring them to consider your business time and again.
Get to know your audience
Social media insights can help a business to effectively improve its message, services and products. This information can help you provide more tailored customer support and improved customer experience to help grow your business.
As soon as you launch your social profile, monitor the way people engage with you. What information do people ask for? What content do they engage most with? These insights can help you align your future activity with your customers’ interests and needs. Social media insights can also benefit broader business decisions, such as product design or the stock you buy.
To improve your business and its services, it’s important to understand what appeals to your audience. If users regularly message you with questions about a particular product, consider how you can sell complementary products that match their preferred item. On the other hand, if you are receiving a number of complaints about a product consider changing it, or even discontinuing it.
Advocacy is the nirvana of social media, and it is through advocacy that your efforts start to truly scale and grow. It shows that your brand is doing such an amazing job that your customers shout about your brand from rooftops, sharing their opinions and experiences with their networks. That sharing is the best marketing a brand can ask for.
Maybe a better question is, why wouldn’t a company use social media?
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