Growing Customers Means Growing Relationships
Growing Customers Means Growing Relationships
Using Facebook to build trust and friendships with your clientele
Whether you’re the head of a multi-national conglomerate or a stay-at-home mom with a small knitting business, you’re probably aware that Facebook has become an excellent means of promoting your business. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that business comes flowing in simply by casting a virtual net and gathering in as many friends as possible. What companies across the board are beginning to learn is that relationships — more than advertising and constant promoting — are what drive up fan bases, customer loyalty and eventually, sales.
Late last year, Facebook announced that it was launching a test of their new Pay-to-Promote platform in the United States. Only available to a small percentage of U.S. members with less than 5,000 friends, the platform allows users to pay a test price of $7 to move their posts up in their friends’ news feeds.
Reviews are mixed so far and some are questioning its effectiveness (and whether or not the promoted posts will be marked as such on news feeds, or if they will just appear as part of the regular feed).
What does this mean for businesses, which have already had the ability to pay to promote posts? That depends on what you’re trying to do and how you do it. For most Facebook users, the social media site is just that; a place to socialize. If you’re friends with a business, it’s most likely because you support what they’re trying to do and want to know more about their upcoming activities. At the same time, you want to know them on a personal level. As a business, if you’re regularly blasting friends with posts about sales or pushing certain items, you’re probably going to start losing interest (and friends), fast. If, however, it’s used on a more personal level, such as announcing a special tasting at your bakery for Facebook friends or sharing a photo of the month and congratulating the Facebook user who submitted the image, then it might work in your favor. As users begin to pay to promote posts, the importance of quality content in both paid and unpaid posts will increase. Only posts with real value will gain the audience you seek.
The main point is that Facebook appears to be much more effective when it is used more to build customer trust and relationships, and less to sell. In fact, General Motors pointed this out last May when it decided to discontinue advertising with the social media mogul. In a provided statement, the company pointed out that, while they were no longer advertising, Facebook, “continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers,” and they would continue to use it as such.
Whether your business has one employee or three hundred, thirty friends or more than five thousand, the rules of good business are as strong as they always were. If you get to know your customers, build up your relationships with them and garner their trust, you build customer loyalty. This, in turn, causes your clients to spread the good word about you and encourage others to use your services.
Here are a few ideas to help you get started on building more social media relationships for your business:
Keep it personal: Reach out to your customers on a personal level. If you own an auto parts store, share a piece of advice, such as how to use isopropyl alcohol to remove engine oil from hard surfaces. If you’re a baker, share an anecdote about what you learned after accidentally leaving the eggs out of a cake recipe. Sharing on a personal level helps others relate with your business and keeps you in their minds.
Share pictures: Whether you hold regular events at your brick-and-mortar storefront or simply want to encourage your customers to share how they use your products, sharing tagged pictures on Facebook is a great way to get in a little promotion for your business with your customers and their friends. By holding a monthly photo contest, for example, with tagged images of your customers using/wearing/sharing your product, your product is not only shared on your Facebook page, but on the pages of your customers and their friends, as well.
Participation rewards: Rewarding customers for interacting with your site is an excellent way to promote your business and encourage them to keep coming back. For the more advanced Facebook users, creating games and offering reward points for participating, or giving reward points for sharing a post or participating in a poll, could translate to discounts (for example, receive 25% off your next purchase with 500 reward points) either through online or brick-and-mortar store purchases.
If you’re still learning the ins and outs of Facebook, however, something as simple as giving away a free extra scoop of ice cream for one day at your restaurant with the mention of the offer on your Facebook page is a great way to get more people signed up and involved with your company.
What ways have you found to reach out and build relationships with your customers? In what ways do you feel social media allows you to stay more connected with your clientele?
Erin Schwartz manages marketing programs for 123Print.com, a leading provider of high quality customizable items like business cards, address labels, postcards, and other promotional printing materials for small businesses and solo practitioners.
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