How to use social at each stage of the customer journey

Social media is an integral channel throughout the entire customer journey. However, each stage requires a different approach and messaging to effectively reach and engage customers.

Here’s how to use social media at each stage of the customer journey.

Customers need different things from brands at each stage of their journey. At the start, they need more information on their options and details on the product/service.

In the middle, after they’ve begun to narrow their choices, they need to verify the options.

And toward the end, they need ongoing support and ways to easily share their experience.

Social media is an integral channel throughout this journey, but plays a different role at each stage for both the consumer and for your brand.

Following are the foundational ways to use social media and set expectations throughout the customer journey.

Interest

The interest phase is when customers are first becoming aware of a want or a desire, and first becoming familiar with your brand, products and/or services.

This is your opportunity to create awareness and ensure your brand/products/services are included in the initial consideration set.

Use social media channels to post educational, informational and entertaining content. Quality of content is tantamount here.

Don’t simply post content for the sake of it. Ensure that it is well written and/or designed, can be easily viewed on both desktop and mobile devices, and provides value to your audience.

Utilizing the paid promotional features on the various social networks helps to extend reach to a broader audience.

Research

During the research phase, customer are narrowing down their options and learning more about these select choices.

At this stage, you need to provide more information about your business, and the key features and benefits of your products/services.

Use social media to link to specific product, service or category pages, fact sheets or FAQs, and relevant resource content.

Answer all questions posed directly through your social media channels.For an additional, proactive step, find people on social media channels that are in need of support, but haven’t directly approached your brand. Helping these individuals in their time of need can help win you new business.

Validation

In the validation phase, customers are looking for proof or verification that the purchase decision they are about to make is the right one. You can help substantiate your brand by providing easy access to legitimate, third-party reviews and information on your products/services.

Beardbrand shares articles and blogs about its products and company, improving credibility and providing third-party reviews.

Make sure your company is accurately listed on all relevant review sites, and that you have included reviews on product pages.

Then use social media channels to share existing customer reviews and testimonials, and encourage others to add new reviews.

You can also reach out to industry bloggers to ask for product reviews, just be sure they’re including the appropriate disclosure notices on their blogs and site.

Decision

In the decision phase, the customer has selected their best choice and is ready to take action. Here is when you need to provide the path of least resistance to conversion.

Use social media at this stage to post sales, discounts or other promotional offers and link directly to the conversion page(s).

Use paid retargeting campaigns on Facebook and Twitter to bring customers back that have already visited your website.

Retention

The retention phase is when customers come back to make repeat purchases from your brand. This is your opportunity to ensure customers are satisfied with your offering and are aware of the value that you provide to their lives.

Use social media to provide ongoing customer support and stay top of mind for existing customers. Answer questions and respond to concerns in a timely and helpful fashion.

Ask for feedback directly about their experience with your products/services, inquire about how you can make improvements (and then actually make those changes!).

And post new offerings, promotions and announcements on your social media channels.

Advocacy

In the advocacy phase, customers turn into promoters after being delighted with their experience.

You must inspire this advocacy through superior performance and well-structured influencer and brand ambassador programs.

Maker’s Mark has a long-standing brand ambassador program that encourages social media activity by providing exclusive perks.

Use social media to identify and engage with customers that have powerful and authoritative social media networks of their own.

Reshare and engage with customers saying positive things about your brand. Develop a user-generated campaign to encourage real stories from real customers, and share the most compelling submissions on your social channels.

Customers have different mindsets and needs at each stage of their journey, and use digital channels in varying ways throughout.

When you understand how and why they are using social media, you can provide the right content and messaging to help guide them through their journey.

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9 Ways to Use Social Media to Improve Customer Experience

Ten years ago, less than 10% of US citizens had any kind of social media presence. Now? Over 75% of Americans have social media accounts and use Internet frequently. This explosion of social media has led to our approach on marketing a new twist.

With the rapid growth of the Internet, there comes the eventual adaptation and migration of businesses going online. One of the ways they do this is by utilizing social media, a concept that has expanded and become so complicated that it is considered its own industry of employment. It is unlikely that a business dealing with customers could approach social media from a secondary viewpoint; employing someone for the express purpose of handling the company’s social media profiles is the go-to and the recommended path to take.

Check out these 9 ways to use social media to improve customer experience. Try them out and see what happens, you might be surprised with the results!

1. Use your social media page to interact with your customers.

Many businesses, seeing the usefulness of having an online presence, create a social media pages and groups on sites like Facebook or Twitter…but only use these pages to distribute promotional material or service announcements. It’s rare for a page to interact with its customers, and it is one of the biggest “features” you can add to your company. Customers love being able to rely on having reasonable contact with a business they purchase from and social media is one of the best ways to go about that today.

2. Check up on your social media page regularly.

It’s absolutely necessary to maintain your page once it’s been made. Nobody is going to follow a social media page if there is no activity and especially no sign of presence by the business. Simply put, if you go through the effort of having a social media presence, you need to check on it regularly. Daily if possible. This allows you to answer customer inquiries promptly, deal with negative feedback, and quell spam/troll posts before they blow up and alienate your customer base.

3. Link your customer service department with your social media team.

If you’re a big enough business to have a dedicated customer service representative as well as a social media manager, it might be a good idea to link these two together. Many small businesses make this happen by ensuring that there’s a single person doing both jobs, but you can also make this come about by having both the customer service team and the social media team work together with customer inquiries. They have very similar jobs, only different platforms in which they work. It’s important that the problems or solutions one team grapples with can be easily accessed by the other team.

4. Ensure that your social media team knows what your normal employees know.

There’s nothing worse than being a customer, talking to a business’ employee in their brick-and-mortar store, going online, and then receiving completely different information from the business’ social media manager. Which person is right? You won’t know…until you do some digging. This should never be the responsibility of the customer; indeed, it should be expected that the customer receives the right information on the first try. If your social media team is authorized to comment on your business policies, make sure they actually know what they are in order to avoid confusing and frustrating your customers.

5. Respond to feedback, even if it’s simplistic or without complaint.

Just like how you should actually interact with your customers when they field complaints or ask questions, it’s still important to interact with them even if there’s nothing wrong. A simple “thank you” goes a long way in encouraging customer involvement with your business online. Likewise, if you have a specialized business (such as in the arts and crafts industry), providing suggestions to customers who are venting or otherwise just chatting on your business page can encourage customer loyalty. This leads to our next point…

6. Your social media team should be acquainted with your product.

Have you ever contacted a business’ customer service department or posted a message on their social media profile, and then realize after they respond that the employee doesn’t actually know what they’re talking about? It’s frustrating and it discourages you from ever contacting the business again. Why bother since you know more than them anyways? Make sure that anybody you assign to dealing with your social media pages knows a thing or two about what your business offers. Providing training documentation is an excellent way of ensuring they get brought up to speed quickly.

7. Run social media exclusive contests.

Many businesses post coupons, flyers, and promotional material on their social media pages. Most often, these posts are simply rehashes of what can be found in their actual physical store. One way of encouraging your customers to follow and appreciate your social media presence is to offer an incentive. Online-only coupons, contests, and more can all generate customer involvement that may not ordinarily be present. It’s a quick and easy way of getting a few extra likes and even getting a few more sales.

8. Keep personal opinions quiet.

This is seen far too often. Businesses with an online presence slip up, make a personal statement on their page, and then need to deal with public backlash. This can work out in some cases, but in most it’s seen as distasteful. This can be due to simple unprofessionalism or because the business is picking the wrong time and the wrong place for their owner or employee to get up on their soap box. Generally speaking, it is safe to assume that your customer only want to read material related to your business when they visit your business’ social media pages.

9. Keep an eye on what your customers want…and give it to them

Monitoring what your customers are saying on your social media pages is a no-brainer. You have to do it. What you also have to do, however, is take what they say into consideration when you decide what to change with your social media strategy. If a large portion of your customers are commenting that they want a certain feature or element to be added to their viewing or buying experience, it may be a good idea to implement it. It breeds goodwill with your customers and lets them know that you care about what they think.

Parting Thoughts

If you’re doubting the validity of adopting some better social media practices, just remember the story of Mark Zuckerberg. He wasn’t the first person to create a social media platform. In fact, when his creation of Facebook first entered the scene, the likes of MySpace were still on top. What made his creation so much more successful? There are different answers, but one of the big components is that he listened to his users, changed the site to consistently make it more accessible to others, and ensured that it was built on a model of sustainability. As a result, Facebook saw an exponential success rate, which made Mark Zuckerberg one of the richest I.T. billionaire in world, his current net worth is $42.7 billion dollars.

Those were just 9 ways you could enhance your customers’ social media experience when it comes to interacting with your business. Do you have any more that you feel are worth sharing? Did we get something wrong? Let us know what worked for you, especially if what worked for you happens to be something shared on the list above.

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Incorporating Social to Build Across Your Organization

To correct the imbalance within the division of labor and increase corporate presence on digital platforms, consider adopting a workflow process built around modern social technology.

I was having lunch in London and talking with a colleague about the real challenge faced by most businesses when adopting social technology, which is the division of labor that exists in most organizations. Ironically, we were in the same place - England - that originated this practice as the Industrial Revolution began. And it was the same place - thank Sir Berners Lee - that has now given rise to the most significant force regarding that division of labor: hyper-connectivity and the social web.

Nearly three-quarters of marketing professionals and executives will claim that his or her firm has a social media policy. However, only 20 percent believe they have the employees with the right skills to pull it off. They'll agree that social channels like Facebook and Twitter in the U.S. and Western Europe have become a preferred channel for customer care - 6 percent of consumers consider call centers a last resort. Yet, the majority of posts directly to brands go unanswered.

Even more striking, the approach to using these digital channels is quite traditional. A specific team owns it - usually marketing for outbound publishing, and customer care for inquiries and replies - with relatively little interaction between the two. There is also little to no involvement from other departments.

This division of labor mirrors the same kind of thinking that defined the organizational structures put in place at the start of the industrial revolution. It's no wonder that organizations typically tap only 40 percent of their actual potential when it comes to resolving issues. Or when asked, more than 70 percent of employees say they feel underutilized.

Given the mismatch, it's no surprise that many of the champions actively pushing for adoption of social technology and processes feel overwhelmed. Social is put in a box, handed to one or two departments, and funded at a few percent of what is spent on advertising and phone banks. I don't see success coming given that approach.

The reality is that what is required is a holistic review of the fundamental business structure. How do employees across departments work together? How do complex customer inquiries get passed to the deep, internal subject matter experts who can respond with a solution instead of, "So, (caller name) what you're saying is (repeat whatever the caller just said)."

What's required are workflow processes built on contemporary social technology -ironically, the kind we all use at home, at work, and on our smartphones. Contemporary social workflows should involve:

• Capturing and sharing events
• Comments
• Indications of relative favorability
• Presentation
• Discussion of options

Additionally - and perhaps most importantly - social workflows should result in a realization of an eventual solution based on collective input from diverse sources.

Here's how the social web works: as consumers, we naturally post questions and observations, seek options, ratings, reviews, and we use that information to make decisions. This isn't rocket science - it's the same way young people "shop socially," and they do it all day long. Yet, when we walk into the office, we expect our own customers to listen to us and accept what we say as the only answer. 

Think instead about how various disciplines within your organization could work together to create amazing customer experiences using social technology. Human Resources and Legal could craft hiring and response policies that enabled your subject matter experts to participate. Customer Care could then incorporate those experts into its workflows, and marketing could learn from the interactions involving those experts. Marketing could then understand what the brand really stands for, as determined by customers. That would change things. Of course, it would also require a different approach to organizational structure in which collaboration and collective thinking was rewarded.

Imagine workflows that included customers directly, engaging with the organization at various levels depending on the nature of the inquiry. Basic customer care can be delivered through peer forums and support agents that also rely on and curate those support forums themselves. Conversations expressing purchase intent could be shared with pre-sales engineers who would then nurture the conversation into an eventual sales lead. Ideas and feature requests could find their way onto the desks of product managers and designers, after being vetted in peer forums and ad hoc research communities. That would accelerate innovation, reduce support costs, enhance loyalty through earlier detection of likely churn, and create a more engaged workforce.

Start now by re-examining your fundamental business objectives. Ask yourself the question, Who in the organization could work with our customers to make these happen? Then connect them.

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Why Social Media Marketing Is Not A 9-5 Job

As Social Media Marketing goes mainstream, companies finally understand the value of a Social Media presence to their bottom line. Chief Marketing Officers, steeped in traditional marketing philosophies, have been forced to reckon with this new type of marketing.  Many are now on the hunt for Social Media Marketing professionals.

The problem is that many are still mired in the old marketing paradigm.  They want to hire an employee to sit in a cubicle from 9-5 and “do” Social Media marketing. They are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Social Media Marketing is not a 9-5 job – and is not strictly “marketing.”  It involves monitoring social sites – sometimes at odd hours.  It means being ready to find answers to questions when people are asking them.  It means being on the sites when the audience is there.  (90% of our clients’ Facebook pages are most active at 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.)

While large corporations may have the luxury of staffing their Social Media Marketing departments 24/7, smaller companies do not. Having a dedicated professional available outside normal business hours – one that may not sit in the local office during the day – may be the answer.

Today’s dedicated Social Media Marketing professional is tuned into international, national, business and industry news.  Her day often starts well before 9:00 a.m.  She has the alerts set on her mobile phone to let her know when something important is happening – and can tweet or update the timeline quickly.  A Social Media professional may be at the supermarket or the gym when notifications, questions or complaints come in. Her value is in monitoring the social sites through the day and responding quickly – not sitting in an office – and the value of an employee like this should not be underestimated.

Today, more than ever, customers are not purchasing products during regular business hours.  They are shopping online while they watch Netflix in the evening.  They may have a question or a comment.  If they can’t get an answer from one company, the chances they will continue their search at another company.  And when they are unhappy, they do not want to wait until 9:00 the next day for someone to at least acknowledge their pain.

Consider a recent British Airways exchange, a large company with no Social staff around the clock – #fail.  (Read about it here Angry Customer Used Promoted Tweets to Chastise British Airways )

Hiring Managers need to figure out that a Social Media Marketer should be working hours that fit the needs of the Social Accounts, not the traditional business hours.  Understanding this and accepting it will benefit the business’ Social reputation – and their bottom line.

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'Simplifying The Way We Work' is Great, But What About The Customer?

I caught a small article flashing across my news feeds, “Coca-Cola Disconnects Voicemail At Headquarters.”  I’m not a big fan of voicemail, those I receive are translated into texts and sent to my mobile and email.  So this post is not about voicemail.

The thing that struck me in the article the reasoning behind this.  The article cited an internal memo from the CIO, the change was not done for cost savings, but rather “’to simplify the way we work and increase productivity.’  Callers, upon not reaching the person they are trying to reach are told to try later or find an alternative method.”

So all this leaves me wondering, “What about the customer?”

Coca-Cola employees probably already know and are trained in the alternative methods of reaching each other, perhaps with email, or the many  types of internal messaging systems, so they have no problems, but what about customers?

How is a customer to figure it out?  How do they get to the person they want?  What does it do to their own work flow and productivity?

Coca-Cola is not alone in the way they design their workflow and processes.  In fact they are probably smack in the middle of the way most companies design them—to optimize their own work flow and productivity.  So organizations focus on how to make it easier and more efficient for them.

But what about the customer?

Well it actually becomes pretty easy for the customer as well.  The more organizations focus on their own internal efficiency, forgetting about the customer, making it more difficult for them to reach the people they want, the easier it makes it for the customer, as well.

See the customer when faced with obstacles will simply go some place else.

Customers will shift their spending to organizations that focus on the customer experiences they want and expect.

All organizations constantly face the need to simplify their processes, workflow and costs.  But in doing so, they can’t focus solely on their own internal operations.  They have to think about the impact on their customers, suppliers, and those outside the company who need to be engaged.  No organization, no part of an organization exists in isolation.  There are people who serve the organization (e.g. suppliers) and people who the organization serves (e.g. customers–and everyone has customers).

Changes to our processes without considering the impact on these communities, ultimately hurt the organization itself.  If customers can’t conveniently reach people in the organization, they will vote with their wallets, going some place that focuses on customer experience.  Even suppliers and other external people need to be considered, if they can’t get through, where does the organization get critical information to improve its ability to achieve its goals.

As a final side note to this article, it’s disappointing the article was about “voicemail,” when it should have really been an examination of customer experience.

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