These days it is all about social media. And I am not just talking about Facebook and Twitter, I am talking about YouTube, blogs, photo sharing sites, Amazon.com customer reviews, search engines; any tool that helps businesses engage with their customers. While many tout their abilities and the power that social media has to develop and grow a brand, it’s not something that is right for everyone. Many business owners – following the lead of others who have gone before them – will jump into social media head first, spread themselves across all platforms and wait for the customers to pour in. But, they are left doing just that. Waiting. As the saying goes: “If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed.” So the real question here is: is social media marketing the right strategy for your business, and more importantly, how can you better utilise the power of online communities to get your brand heard?
To answer these questions, I enlisted the help of Chris Marriott, global managing director for Digital Agency Services at interactive marketing company Acxiom. With 15 years of digital marketing experience under his belt, Marriott helps Acxiom’s digital agency deliver services and solutions for companies wanting to acquire and retain customers via email, mobile, web sites, search engines, social media, online advertising and other emerging digital marketing channels.
According to Marriott, a lot of small businesses have no idea what social media is. “So many businesses have no clue about social media. They are told it’s something they need to be using because all their customers are supposedly on these networking sites. So they jump in without actually figuring out whether it is the right strategy for their business,” he explains.
“Another misconception about social media is that it’s just Twitter, or it’s just Facebook. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In actual fact, social media incorporates anything online that encourages and facilitates consumer engagement. It’s any blog with user-generated content, YouTube, Flickr, even Amazon.com is social media, because customers can go on and comment about particular products.”
Marriott believes that businesses need to first understand what social media is and how consumers behave within that world, before throwing themselves in. They need to figure out what their objectives are and what they want to achieve from their social media strategy.
One very effective strategy, explains Marriott, is to engage with ‘social influencers’. These are the people actively involved in online networking sites and who truly believe in your product/brand/service and will relay that information to their peers.
“Consumers tend to trust each other first over companies when it comes to brand recognition. Word-of-mouth is the most effective form of marketing, so companies need to engage these social influences and use them to help promote their service. Companies need to incentivise these influential customers and make their experience as enjoyable as possible in order to use them as unofficial brand advocates,” says Marriott.
This could be as simple as listening to customer feedback on products and services and asking them ‘how can I do better?’ “Customers loved to be stroked by companies in this way. Listen to the customers first and in return, they will listen to you,” says Marriott.
Another effective way to harness ‘social influencers’ is through a ‘tell your friend’ type promotion, says Marriott. For example, give them a discount on a particular product, but only if they share with a friend who may not yet be a customer. It’s a great way to extend the experience for the customer. Some companies will also align themselves with a particular cause or a charity as a way to reach out to their customers. For example, buy this product and we will donate 10 percent of the price to XYZ charity.
Marriott says the key is for companies to “get down off the pulpit and stop broadcasting to customers about what they SHOULD believe, and find out what they NEED”. Companies should engage with their customers on their own level.
The digital environment is constantly changing and evolving and it’s no longer a one-way street for marketers. Customers now have just as much influence on the way a brand is shaped and perceived within the marketplace, as the actual marketers themselves.
According to Marriott, where many businesses fail is not in the execution, but what comes after that. “If you look at the sales cycle: awareness, interest, desire, conversion, repurchase, etc, after awareness the marketing effectiveness begins to wear off,” he explains.
So how can companies ensure that they retain the customer’s interest? “When it comes to influence and desire, that’s where other people in the social network begin to take a higher level of importance. From a marketer’s perspective, it’s doing what they can to keep the discussion on track to positive thinking,” he says.
And what happens when it doesn’t all go according to plan?
“Companies shouldn’t be afraid to respond and admit fault if something doesn’t go the way they planned,” says Marriott.
I asked Marriott to give me some examples of companies that have experienced massive consumer backlash online and how they handled it. He gave a great example of KFC in the US and the grilled chicken debacle.
Earlier this year in the US, fast food giant KFC used social media to launch a new grilled chicken product. They enlisted the help of talk show queen Oprah to promote the product on her show. The company’s offer of two free pieces of grilled chicken, two sides and a biscuit to anyone who downloaded a coupon within a two-day period had viewers across America scrambling to download the free coupon and running to their nearest KFC store to claim their free meal. The offer sent the chain store skyrocketing to the No. 1 topic on Twitter and by the next day, blogs began reporting ‘riots’ at New York City KFCs.
Due to the overwhelming response, KFC was unable to meet the demand and some customers were turned away. Angry customers took to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and anything they could get their hands on to vent their anger about the promotion. By the time KFC realised they weren’t keeping up with demand, they pulled the plug on the promotion and issued rain checks to consumers willing to go back to a KFC, fill out a form and wait for another coupon to arrive in the mail. They were to be rewarded with a free Pepsi.
While this is not a desirable outcome for any business, what they did next was the most remarkable thing of all, says Marriott, and actually put them back in the good books of the American public.
Marriott explains: “Yes they got bad feedback, but they didn’t hide their head in the sand. They responded almost immediately. They took responsibility and acted swiftly. They issued an official apology, they had staff monitoring Twitter feeds and people complaining about not getting a coupon were addressed by customer service reps.
“They were out there in the community and participating, and as a result came out looking better.”
The moral of the story is that, if you choose to engage in the ‘social media world’ you need to know how to operate within it, and how to mitigate risk. Nobody has all the answers. No one knows what the perfect social media strategy is. The skill lies in how you handle yourself within that world.
Bottom line? “Figure out what’s best for your business and do it well,” says Marriott. “Listen and respond to your customers and they will keep coming back.”
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