Grow Your Business by Taking Care of Your Current Customers First. . .
In my 20+ years of professional experience, as a manager and consultant, marketing and selling “big ticket items” (Luxury Cars, Real Estate and Mortgage Financing), I have experienced two opposing schools of thought among my peers.
The first (with which I totally disagree): focus all your efforts on making as much profit on each customer as possible and forget about customer service. They are probably not going to buy from you again in the future anyway! In fact, after graduating from college, I was fired from my first job which was at a very large car dealership for “being too nice to the customers!"
A Better Way
The second school of thought, (which is my personal philosophy): Treat your customers the way you would want to be treated. When a customer purchases from you, go out of your way to make sure they are happy before, during and most importantly - after the sale! Read: "Customers for Life," by Stanley Marcus.
Why is the second idea so important for you and your business and what does any of this have to do with Social Media Marketing? Individual customers can make or break your business, especially with the viral nature of social media. A very happy customer will not only buy from you again (but will also tell everyone they know to do the same). A very dissatisfied customer will go out of their way to tell everyone they know NOT to do business with you or your company.
Social Media Marketing
Think of Social Media Marketing as a vehicle for your customers to share their experiences from your business dealings (bad or good) with literally hundreds-of-millions of other potential customers, 500 Million+ on Facebook and another 100 Million+ on twitter (Word-of-Mouth amplified and re-broadcast).
Marketing via Social Media is both a huge opportunity as well as a huge responsibility! Why not be responsible and make the most of this phenomenal revenue-generating opportunity?
Work Smarter
Which one makes more sense, to have dissatisfied customers out there telling others NOT to do business with you, or to have thousands of people singing your praises to millions of others out there and essentially doing your prospecting (or "Lead Generation" as it's commonly referred to in the Web 2.0/3.0 Social Media World) for you?
“When comparing the future intentions of less satisfied site visitors to highly satisfied site visitors, our research indicates that the highly satisfied visitors have a 62% greater likelihood to subscribe, 84% greater likelihood to recommend the website and a 43% greater likelihood to return to the website.” ~ Website Magazine
For me it's a "no-brainer." After being fired from that first car dealership, I went on to become a top sales consultant at another very large dealership which emphasized total customer satisfaction. There I occasionally had a very different problem. Because so many of my customers referred their family and friends to buy cars from me, there were times when I had too many of them show up at the same time!
It was the fact that I took such good care of my current customers that enabled me to have several days in which I sold five cars in a single day to mostly repeat and referral customers who refused to deal with anyone but me!
Grow Your Business
For the past few years I’ve been applying the philosophy (of generating additional prospects “free leads” by keeping your current customers satisfied) to Social Media Marketing.
For one company, I designed a program that generated an average of 15 qualified leads from each of their own existing customers . . . hundreds of them!
Another campaign I developed was a system that generated over 200 requests from current customers for information about purchasing more of the same product (a big ticket item). That happened within the first 5 days of implementation. And that was only a test!
On yet another occasion, I created a survey (asking current and potential customers what services THEY would like to see offered. That survey got a 40 percent response rate (80 of 200 responded). This idea eventually led to a 300 percent increase in business. The possibilities are endless!
Just by utilizing two or three low cost or no-cost strategies, imagine: "how much would an increase of five to six times your existing client base improve your own business? How do you go about it?" One answer could be as simple as who you follow, or more importantly, who follows you on twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. Who should you follow (or unfollow) on twitter? See: HTTP://tweepi.com/
Listen . . . Really Listen!
Anyone involved in Social Media Marketing absolutely must listen - "really listen" to (or hire someone to do it) what customers are saying about you, your industry, your product and even your competitors. Be responsive to their feedback. If you're not interactively marketing your business, product or service online - you're totally missing the boat. See: HTTP://www.tweetdeck.com
People prefer to buy from companies and individuals they know and like or who are recommended by people whose opinions they respect. We all just want the overall best value for our money and to know someone will be there to take care of us if there's a problem. See: HTTP://www.socialoomph.com/
The moral of the story: Grow your business “virally” by satisfying your first customers first!
Final Note: Currently I’m working on a new website showcasing the best “Social Marketing Automation” services and applications (integrating Social Media, Email, Mobile and Video Services).
Please add your comments (below) as to which “tools” you currently use and would recommend to others. Also let us know which tasks you would like to “automate” for your own business. Thanks! ~RC
Recommended Related Posts:
Social Media Will be ‘Part of Virtually Everything’: HTTP://bit.ly/cqYcH4
Media Sharing Trends 2010 for an insight into internet sharing trends: HTTP://bit.ly/9AqlPO
Social Media Trends For The Next Year: HTTP://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/09/12/
25 Tips for Killer Facebook Marketing: HTTP://tinyurl.com/25fbtips
60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online: HTTP://www.copyblogger.com/increase-influence-online/
There are literally thousands of great posts related to this subject. I will continue to share the best of them in my own future posts. Rick Clark @rcl4rk
