Is social media one of the platforms you use to keep your previous and existing clients engaged? If “yes”, I bet you wouldn’t mind learning a few tricks that could help you strengthen and deepen your relationship with them.
For those yet to apply this to their business, the earlier you learn about it, the better it would be for the future success of your business. You can draw inspiration from the fact there are countless brands today reaping the fruits of effective social media marketing, enhanced customer retention included.
Generally, with social media, there are way better things one can do to build customer loyalty and engagement.
In this article, you will learn practical and clever hacks brands can use to enhance customer retention and how to apply them to your social media campaign.
1. Make Your Business Easy To Find On Social Media
Despite there being more businesses on social media today than ever, not all of them are easy to find. Is yours one of them?
If “yes”, chances are it’s because of a failure to invest in promoting your social media profiles, alongside having presence in only one or two social platforms and inconsistent usernames.
In any business, customer service plays a huge role in determining how your customers will relate to you. Even though call centers and email remain valuable, there’s a section who will rather prefer to contact you via social media and their expectation is that you will be easily reachable.
In addition to customer service, some expect to see company content and news there. But your social media profiles aren’t going to meet all these needs if no one gets to see them in the first place. And if this goes on for a while, you may lose both existing and potential customers.
Now, solving this should begin by identifying a social media platform(s) where your previous, existing, and potential customers are active and discuss your business or things that matter to you. Once you do, create a profile(s). To experience great results, consistently engage your audience and respond to their questions and concerns in a timely manner.
Don’t forget to promote these profiles on your other online platforms, business cards, employee email signatures, and in your interactions with customers. Let them know that there are several ways to reach you.
2. Listen, Request Feedback, And Respond To Reviews
Many businesses will agree that it’s less expensive to retain existing customers than to get new ones, and one of the things that is going to drive that, as supported by a survey from HundredX, a company that develops listening/feedback solutions for business, is listening.
By enabling your customers to give feedback in real-time and then acting on what you’ve heard timely will more likely drive retention.
Speaking of feedback, a good number of us are shy to request for it publicly, which is understandable given the reality that performance reviews can get really uncomfortable. But don’t let that blind you from the fact that feedback can be super valuable, both to you and your customers.
First, people sharing the experience they’ve had with your product or service, especially positive ones, can be inspiring to those looking for a solution you are providing or in need of more reasons to keep coming back for what you offer.
If its negative, that’s an opportunity to respond to their concerns, make improvements where necessary, and more importantly, show your potential and existing customers that they can trust you to attend to their needs, before and after the sales.
In the end, all three of these factors combined will help to build a solid bond between you and your customers, and this will easily be the reason why they will keep coming back and even refer their friends, colleagues, or family.
Because it’s easy to go wrong with requesting customer feedback, spare some time to learn the best practices in this area.
3. Use Multimedia Content
The uncomfortable reality businesses with social media presence have to accept today is that there’s plenty of content online to consume nowadays and, at the same time, a declining attention span. That means it’s easy to barely get noticed, a situation that could mean losing out on your existing clients and an opportunity to acquire new ones.
That aside, chances are your audience absorbs information differently. Some people probably relate more to videos and/or images than text and vice versa. That means if you limit the ways in which you share your content on social media, you could face similar consequences as the earlier situation.
Examples of multimedia content you should consider using include videos, infographics, charts, gifts, webinars, just to name but a few.
To achieve excellent results out of this move, you must develop a compelling story (if it’s a video), or informative/intriguing content (for the other forms of content), choose the most suitable content for your business, select the right social media platform to share it, and then invest in promoting it.
Also, before developing either, it would be great if you came up with quantifiable metrics that take traffic, lead generation, and engagement into consideration. This will be crucial to knowing how your multimedia campaign is performing and areas to adjust or improve on.
Remember, there’s possibly many of you competing for the attention of what appears to be your target audience and so, unless you stand out or give them a reason to focus on you, you may not retain them for long.
4. Calls-To-Action Matter
Calls-to-action (CTAs) may sound like an age-old technique, but they are just as productive as any other effective dated tactic. Their application in social media borrows from their success on websites where they are mostly placed on a landing page. It could be to get website visitors to download a resource, make a purchase, request a quote, and so on.
Regardless of the social media platform you are using, it would be great if whatever you post has a piece of content that’s intended to induce a reader, listener, or viewer to take a specific action.
By telling your prospective, previous, or existing customers where to go next or what to do, you make their journey clear and eliminate the confusion that could draw them away from your business.
In fact, one of the greatest benefits you are likely to enjoy from such a move is enhanced engagement and connection with your audience, a situation that could help to build a solid relationship between both of you.
One important thing to note, however, is that for your CTA to be effective, your content has to build excitement or interest to the point your audience will not hesitate to want to dig further into your topic or become your loyal client.
That makes it necessary for anyone looking to create a perfect CTA to learn as much as they can about the technique before putting it into action.
5. Exceptional Customer Service
As we saw earlier, there’s a section of your customers who will turn to your social media profiles for assistance. Before we go any further, here’s a fact every business should note. Did you know there’s a huge percentage of customers who will easily switch loyalties when they encounter poor customer service?
Not too long ago, Forbes shared a report with similar findings; another worse thing being you will face huge loses in the process.
These findings reinforce the truth that responding to your customers timely and with accurate and helpful information will contribute towards persuading them to stay and acquiring more customers.
Don’t forget that people respond better when you speak and listen to them in a way that makes them feel connected, valued, and appreciated. That means your interaction with customers on social media should not be any different as it would be in person.
Once you establish an emotional connection with your audience, that will be the foundation for building customer loyalty. And in order to build and foster a healthier relationship with them in the long run, tack your interactions with them to understand their interests, needs, intent, wants, and perception.
6. Don’t Be Boring
There are multiple ways you can look boring to your social media audience. And if you do, they will definitely lose interest in what you have to say or offer and probably switch loyalties.
How does one avoid that? First, don’t overwhelm your audience by posting too much content. That includes long lectures or not figuring out an optimal posting frequency.
Secondly, remember the majority of people on social media love to be entertained and informed. Therefore, you risk losing their interest and attention by not being creative or sharing irrelevant content. Other acts like selling too much or saying the same thing repeatedly can also be a huge turn-off.
Thirdly, realize that being negative rarely yields anything good. That includes things like trashing your competitors, complaining a lot, lashing out at critics in your comments, and so on.
In general, you stand a chance of retaining your customers and attracting new ones if you stay relevant, share fresh content, keep your posts short and sweet, develop a sensible posting frequency, and learn other time-tested ways on how to stop creating boring social media posts.
Social Media Hacks – Your Turn
It’s time to begin thinking creatively and strategically about the actions you are taking to retain your customers on social media. One thing I believe you will not want to face is losing customers you worked so hard to get simply because you couldn’t provide exceptional customer services, failed to make your business easy to find on social media, turned out to be boring, used ineffective calls-to-action or none at all, didn’t incorporate multimedia content, or think of listening, asking feedback, and responding to their concerns and questions on time and accurately.
The good news is you can prevent that from happening and it begins by applying what you’ve learned today. Remember to seek professional help where it would be helpful and learn as much as you can about the different techniques before putting them into action.
Author Bio:
Sabine Ghali is Director at Buttonwood Property Management, a property management company in Toronto. She is an entrepreneur at heart who endeavors to help investors create real estate wealth over time in the Greater Toronto Area. Sabine is published in a number of media outlets, including Toronto Sun and Gulf News, among many others.
