The old motto “The customer is always right” has never been more relevant than it is today. Given so many ways consumers can interact with businesses these days, brands need to be at their peak and ensure that their customer base is satisfied with products and services.
From consumer reviews to interactions on social media, customers are just a few clicks away from you. Therefore, your company must be up to date with the latest methods of communication with customers in order to provide customers with a comprehensive brand experience.
If you are wondering how to connect with your customers, you are in the right place. In this article, which can be considered a kind of guide, we will summarize the ways of communication that put the customer at the center of your business on social networks.
Consumer Reviews
Verbal communication has long been an important component of the growth of a brand. Today, with so many ways to communicate with each other, consumer reviews are even more important in modern marketing.
“Almost 90% of B2B and B2C brands believe that customer statements and case studies are the most effective content marketing tactics”
It is hard to imagine better advertising and certification for your brand than when people spend their money to use your product or service. You can achieve this by creating a page on your site (or leaving a portion of the page) for consumer testimonials using positive social media comments left by users about your brand. When you build a website, do it in accordance with the niche in which you operate and leave the option of making changes across the website open if in the future you feel the need to update, for example, its design.
You can also add tweets and comments from Instagram and other platforms to include comments from all communication channels available to your consumers.
Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing personalizes the approach to online business, directing customers through the sales funnel with one key issue at a time, usually with the help of chatbots.
By automating questions based on customer response, conversational marketing allows interested customers to get to where they want to be in a faster way. In addition to navigating customers through the sales funnel, this seems like a smart way to use the data you will collect based on their responses.
Self-Help Guides
Customers are becoming more independent, especially as access to information increases. If they can find a solution without directly contacting the brand, they will most likely do so.
As many as 75% of people say that speed is an important factor in the customer experience, and self-help solutions save time. Providing online support tools will significantly improve your communication with consumers.
User-Generated Content
User-generated content is an ideal method to strengthen social media engagement thanks to its inclusiveness. Given that 79% of people claim that user-generated content has an impact on the purchase decision, it is clear that this is one of the most powerful methods of communicating with customers.
Not only does it allow them to express their opinion, but it also makes customers feel like they are part of a brand. This sense of belonging increases customer loyalty and usually results in an improved essence. As a marketer, you also get plenty of content from users that can be beneficial to your brand.
Customer Service
Although some consumers are looking for solutions that do not require customer assistance, this segment of a business still plays a vital role in communication. Many brands need to interact with consumers in situations where self-help solutions could not provide an answer and solve the problem.
Social networks have become key platforms for consumer questions to brands, and 66% of customers state that the speed of response is a key requirement for them. Having a team member tasked with answering questions on social media helps create a more personal relationship with consumers and lets people know that they are talking to a real person, not to an impersonal corporate brand.
Rules of Successful Communication on Social Networks
Whether you are running a personal or business profile on social media, communication is key in gaining followers and potential clients. How do we communicate? New communication channels enable faster and simpler communication on social networks, so it is necessary for market survival and competitiveness.
If you run social networks, look back on your posts, comments, and messages. Are you happy with the communication? Is this an example of the communication you expect from the pages you follow? We can learn a lot about our communication based on the feedback from our followers – how they react to our posts and what their communication tone is.
Here are some rules of successful communication. But before that, first, ask yourself who you are contacting through your page or profile. Is it a younger or older population and is the relaxed communication appropriate to the products or services you offer? The most important thing is to adapt to the target audience!
Spelling Rules
You probably had to think twice whenever you found yourself in a situation where you needed to address followers directly and did not know if you would write to them as if you were on a first-name basis with them or formally.
Addressing based on the first-name basis is often for private profiles because in very relaxed communication we address our friends and let them know that we are sending a message to everyone separately.
This kind of addressing is also present in communication with young people when we want to get closer to them, and a good example is teen magazines, or advertisements for chips and the like, which target the audience of the younger generation. A formal tone of address is the most common and best choice when addressing the elderly.
Adapting to Followers
Speaking of spelling, both serious/business and relaxed communication on social media should be correct in spelling. Today, there are many mobile applications with spelling and language checkers and suggestions, as well as web editions that are very easy to browse. Use them and check the text of the posts so that there are no typos.
Why do you need to tailor your text to your target audience? Since we have all become one big internet generation, sometimes with a better knowledge of English than our mother tongue, we should not exaggerate with too many fancy words because we do not write scientific articles, but try to sell a product or service to non-linguists.
Promptness
Good social communication is accompanied by a quick response to comments, reviews, and messages, and fast sometimes includes responding at night.
The goal is to encourage further commenting by responding to comments because a page with a lot of comments can be a sign of user interaction and the quality of the website itself.
The World of Emojis
Emojis also play a very important role in digital communication. Although we are usually unaware of this, when we communicate with others we unconsciously mimic their facial expressions and emotions, and in online communication, an emoticon or emoji can convey emotion just like a real face. Many studies have concluded that the common feature of successful posts is the use of emojis, so use them and make the text more attractive, readable, and interesting.
In (business) communication on social networks, be specific and clear, and if the nature of your job allows, dose a little humor. By communicating with customers, we also influence the formation of a new or change an existing attitude towards a product or service, so try to convey the truth and expect satisfaction from existing and future customers.
Customer Communication Statistics
Here are some statistics that underline how necessary it is to have effective communication with clients and be up to date with trends:
- Since 2020, conversational marketing has been recognized as a revenue channel in B2B and B2C marketing,
- Predictions say personalization of accessing consumer will be the next big marketing trend (29%),
- Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing,
- 33% of people still use email to communicate with companies,
- When it comes to chatbots, 86% of people enjoy using them,
- 82% of people expect a response via live chat within five minutes,
- 86% of online customers prefer proactive customer support,
- 79% of companies with the best performance have been using marketing automation for three or more years.
Communication Is Key
The customer is the king (or queen) and they help you in your business. Keeping up with trends helps you improve customer response and create a strategy that will bring you more business while retaining current customers.
“Social networks are a key communication platform today. In addition to a quality offer, you will also attract customers with informative posts that consist of added value and communication.”
Listen to them and respect their opinions and criticisms, continuously publish content that is interesting, and accurate in spelling – that will attract them to your profile. The goal is to build a community of loyal users with whom you will communicate on social media and who will spread the good word about your product or service. It is important to keep existing customers because if we lose them, we need to invest twice as much time and money for new ones.
