Customer interaction helps build loyalty
As the social web increasingly becomes part of our daily lives, shoppers demand informative one-to-one communication with brands. Social media enables this, empowering shoppers to express and share their opinions on a brand, whether good or bad.
By Steve Hurn, CEO of Reevoo
As such, social media has made the relationship between brands and consumers more transparent, with the onus now on brand marketers to instil confidence and trust in the consumer by incorporating transparent communication and real-time responses.
Responding to this new breed of consumer, brands have adapted both their online offerings and unified marketing strategies to incorporate user generated content and social sharing.
Known as ‘social commerce’, this new approach allows consumers to interact directly with the brand and act as its unofficial spokespeople by sharing their experiences with friends and family via the social web.
Savvy marketers leverage this by delivering campaigns that underpin the use of social media as a key communication channel with customers and prospects.
One example of how brand marketers can leverage social commerce to engage with consumers is by incorporating customer reviews, which effectively provide consumers with a voice, allow them to act as brand advocates, share their experiences with others, and flag potential customer service issues directly to the brand to respond to in real-time, before they become bigger problems.
In addition to reaching other consumers and heightening existing marketing efforts, social commerce utilised effectively represents a source of useful information to marketers in terms of insight into customer attitudes toward the product, brand, and the service.
This in itself serves as market research for a new era, providing insight into thousands of consumer opinions in real-time.
This new era of openness is something that brands must embrace; people now have the ability to share socially with others their thoughts, experiences, and grievances, and they will do so whether or not brand marketers offer them the option to engage socially through brands’ own channels.
The trick for brand marketers, then, is to learn how to use social effectively, to both engage with prospects and provide improved customer service, all of which will lead to an increase in positive brand equity.
When executed properly, customer engagement can truly be the competitive advantage needed by many brands to stand out in the market.
Soliciting honest customer feedback and addressing actual customer issues as they happen, with a solution-oriented strategy, demonstrate a brand’s commitment to its customers. This can often be the key to converting website visitors into actual purchasers, as well as creating loyal customer that will return again and again.
Unfortunately, some marketers misguidedly believe that they can contrive social commerce to suit their needs. Because social commerce is still relatively new, the sector is open to exploitation and manipulation.
For example, social commerce providers have been known to remove negative reviews at the behest of the retailers or manufacturers, and review collection methods are often unchecked, meaning anyone can write a review, regardless of whether that person actually bought the product or experience.
Another example of the misuse of social commerce is when marketers supply fake reviews or write false or damaging testimonials against competitors.
There have been numerous incidents in recent years where overzealous brands have indulged in these practices, only to suffer the fallout of lost credibility and consumer ire as a result – shoppers can see through review or content that is not genuine.
The proliferation of fake reviews not only discredits the brand, but ultimately, hurts the end user, who will end up buying a product or service which may not meet their expectations.
For these reasons, when brand marketers consider incorporating social commerce into their unified marketing campaigns, both authenticity of content and authenticity of the source should be paramount to the consideration and, preferably, an industry standard.
Verified reviews benefit both customers and brands; they facilitate customer engagement and understanding, leading to a better customer experience and, hence, increased sales and loyalty.
When implemented properly, in an honest and transparent way, customer reviews can have a successful impact on brands’ marketing strategy and, ultimately, their bottom lines.
A main reason for this is due to the fact that real customer reviews essentially act as marketing tools for the brands; through social participation, consumers act as advocates for the brand.
Social commerce and, in particular, verified customer reviews, are becoming an essential part of brands’ marketing campaigns, and by understanding how to utilise them properly, marketers stand much to gain.
From basic word recurrence search, to performance benchmarking, to integration with existing CRM and other data-aggregating systems, there exist many possibilities for marketers to benefit from social commerce.
Savvy marketers are already employing many of these techniques, building on what customers are saying and connecting the dots to identify trends, and relating relevant information to create actionable insights.
Speak Your Mind