Generally, it takes more of human intellect, yet less financial cost to promote a product on the social media. The human social connection factor is why a company’s social media presence plays a huge role in retaining customers. Social media users are quick to share, tweet about and like products they enjoy, thus enabling an organization to capitalize on the viral benefits of online marketing.
It is important for businesses to have social media presence. Web portals such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest are accessed by billions of people around the world both via computers and mobile devices. With social media usage growing at such a staggering rate each year, why wouldn’t organizations turn to social media portals as customer retention tools?
Web Site Integration
Certainly, designing a marketing friendly website is essential, but it is also a must for the web developers to link the pages to social media platforms and outlets as these are hubs for connecting with current customers and attracting their like minded peers.
The company social media outlets are merely the first step for creating social media presence. Integrating social media channels into the website and every step in the sales funnel allows visitors to see the business as engaging them where they are. If the social media marketing is in capable hands, then the product, service or brand gains positive worldwide popularity. A certain image, video clip, or a post when properly managed has the potential to be seen by billions. By using social media, not only do people buy the product, but they also recommended it and share it on their account profiles. Welcome to the new word of mouth advertising!
In House or Outsourced
Many businesses do not delve into the social media marketing realm with an understanding of the speed at which social media changes. Business pages of social sites such as Facebook may serve as company social media communication outlets, where the business projects its brand today, but tomorrow their ideal target market may decide to abandon Facebook in favor of Instagram. For this reason alone, companies need to hire experts for social media management in order to stay ahead of the curve and keep their consumer messaging consistent across the various social media platforms.
In lieu of making the human capital investment in a social media manager, some organizations choose to outsource the tasks to specialists in the field of social media management. Social media managers use a variety of tools to promote an organization including PowerPoint presentations, video clips, and paid and free of cost advertisement links, blogging, article marketing, contesting and much more. All of these media forms keep the consumer engaged in conversation with the company leading to enhanced customer loyalty.
If customer retention is the goal, often times, the breadth and value an outsourced provider brings to the table outweighs the benefits of hiring someone internally to handle the corporation’s social media campaigns.
Many big brands and savvy Fortune 500 corporations who value repeat buyers have flagged their social media presence as a valuable tool for customer retention. Some have even started using social media sites such as Google+ and Twitter as customer service portals. Ultimately, when you open your business door to the social world, be prepared to innovate in order to retain those valuable customers.
Social media in a business is a must have, you can develop relationships and things with your customers that you normally wouldn’t because of the ability to talk to them through social media, not to mention like you said customers like or dislike things through social media rapidly and that can ruin a companies’ reputation even if they don’t have a social media site.
This is such a good post, you are right you have to get a relationship with your customers and the best way to do that these days is social media or text messaging and text messaging is a little more difficult because you have to have their phone number. You have to integrate a page in your site that asks for information about people so you can get something started.
Whether you work for a big business or small one, one thing is clear from this research. Social media marketing is here to stay. I would even go as far as to say that it is no longer marketing’s shiny new object. In fact, social media has become an indispensable tool to achieve key business goals since prospects and customers spend at least one out of five online minutes using these platforms. This makes social media too big to ignore.
What I do know is that other social media channels are rapidly gaining popularity among small business owners as a means for connecting with current and prospective customers. In fact, I saw that approximately 75 percent of small businesses have at least a page on a social networking site, this was according to Social Media Today, an online community of public relations, advertising and marketing professionals. If that doesn’t reiterate what this article is saying, I don’t know what would.
I know that CMOs are doing much more than launching a Twitter feed and a LinkedIn group or two to increase reach. And they are doing more than email marketing and simple data capture. These leaders recognise that the role of the CMO is evolving from an emphasis on acquiring new database contacts to building deep intimacy with customers. It’s no longer a matter of who you know, but what you know about them. That means CMOs need to be focused on actively listening, engaging and responding to their customers.
I think this is a great idea you can build relationships with people via social media and they will pass it on to friends and family of theirs so that your business can grow. The word of mouth technique has just changed to be word of social media these days so you have to be careful still in the business world of what you say and do.
I think this idea would cause substantial growth in your company if you could figure out how to do it right. I have had a lot of people use my email as a tool and that is just aggravating sometimes and I would rather they not do that. Maybe this way would prevent that from happening. Thank you so much for the idea I look forward to giving it a try.
I agree with using social media to get through to your customers because it is conversational by nature (you know, the type of interaction / dialogue that takes place) as opposed to hard selling so long as your posts / status updates are not pushy sales tactics. I have seen many of the gourmet food trucks use Twitter to promote their location and people flock to the trucks knowing they are there at that moment.
I think E-marketing and CRM are more effective when used together I have been recently working on our presentation “CRM and eMarketing – the targeted marketing dream to create more qualified leads I thought it would be good to share some of it with people who opted into my news letter. That is just one idea for subject matter that can build trust with your readers. Once they know you send quality content, they won’t trash your emails.
I find myself using Facebook a lot to express to others when I like a certain something. I do this particularly with movies I have seen, movie trailers I like in anticipation of a movie’s release and workout products. I think it is a great way for companies to track how people share with others. I also share my opinions regarding sports. It’s a great way to interact with other fans who root for a common interest.