Large businesses may have staff numbers and big advertising budgets in their favour, but small businesses have some advantages that are arguably way more important. They have the ability to engage directly and personally with their customers. The sheer number of customers that big businesses have make personal engagement almost impossible. How many times have you made contact with your phone provider or bank and thought “this is a terrible experience”? If you’re like most people, it’s all the time.
Small businesses don’t have this problem.
Personal and direct engagement is the future of marketing. In fact, it’s the present of marketing. Modern social media platforms provide incredible opportunities to communicate with your customers and allow you to help and show your appreciation in ways that we’ve never had before. When you do this effectively, customers become something far more important. They become brand advocates. This should be your ultimate goal. Once you turn customers, or even people who simply love your business, into brand advocates it’s like having your own fan club of people who shout from the rooftops about how amazing you are. That’s gold dust right there.
However, people will only do this if they feel like you genuinely care aboutthem. Platforms like: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Anchor allow you to publicly share a connection with your customers. The mistake most businesses make is that they treat these platforms like a one way news feed. It’s all “visit our website for our latest offers” or other old fashioned and cliche techniques. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of that but it should be a small percentage of your content strategy.
The focus should be on providing genuinely valuable content that your customers will want to engage with and then letting them know how much you appreciate it. For example, if someone retweets your tweet then send a personalised video message in return. With modern smartphones and tablets it’s really quick and simple to do.
“Hey Susan, thanks so much for taking the time to retweet our blog post. We really appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your day”
What impression does that give? It shows that you are prepared to take that minute out of your day to show you care and want to publicly state it. It gives that person a happy boost and takes them one step further towards becoming a brand advocate. It also makes you stand out. Very, very few businesses are doing this, even smaller ones. That’s because social media is still relatively new. People are still figuring it all out and taking traditional marketing approaches and applying them to modern day platforms. You can do this if you want but it misses the point and only touches the tip of what is possible. It’s exciting times to be in business and we are very happy to be part of it.
If you’d like any help or guidance on how your business can do a better job of connecting personally with your customers then drop us a line. We’ll book a free one hour consultation with you and put together a bespoke strategy to achieve social media success.”