Social Media is a Customer Retention Channel Too!

Businesses are discovering social media and are trying to determine its value by associating a return on activities. This is not an easy task. Social media is a channel for marketing but not marketing in the traditional sense. Social media is a two way street. You have to contribute and participate in this community. You cannot push ads like you do in a magazine or on a TV. There is a different behavior needed here. It helps you build a community of for your customers to connect with each other. It is sort of like people sitting in a restaurant. When someone orders the special and a nearby table sees how good it looks when it is served and the look on the patron’s face when they taste it, that person will order the special too.

Today, customers want a place to connect with other customers and want a place to share feedback to bet read by the company they purchase from. The customer hopes that the company reacts on the feedback.  Customers really do not care about excuses when it comes to dealing with feedback. They want to know your company cares. If you don’t you risk losing that customer to a competitor and your reputation is damaged.

Customer retention is critical when managing customer lifecycle. Why? Because you spent damn good money to acquire that customer and it is cheaper to keep them that to try to get them back. Also, it is difficult to get a customer back after they have left you. It may even cost you more to reacquire a customer than to acquire a new one.

Is social media part of your customer retention plan? How much of your marketing budget is dedicated to keeping your customers? A little? Nothing?

Developing a strategy for using social media to retain your customers should be in your retention plan. It may be hard to tell your finance department what the dollar benefit of using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media tools during working hours. Explain it to them this way. Your customers are using these channels now to communicate. If you are not listening and contributing to the channels how will these customers become loyal and continue to use your services or products? By pumping stuff out on your own channel by using reward programs? Not anymore. Social media is an inexpensive way to communicate and keep customers. It takes man hours and a two way communication response plan.
 

Community Contributors - Social Media Marketing