How social media bolsters your customer service prowess

As time goes on it seems that almost every brand has a social media presence nowadays. It’s hard to take two steps on Twitter without running into another corporate account sharing industry news and adding their perspective to the conversation. But how important is a strong social media presence to the health of your business? Is it necessary, or just nice to have? We here at P2Pseller recommend a robust social media presence as a load-bearing facet of a direct-to-consumer, customer-centric marketing strategy, but don’t just take our initial word for it. Read on for our overview of how you can make social media work for you.

How can you create an effective direct-to-consumer strategy?

There’s six points you need to keep in mind when developing any sort of marketing strategy, especially a social media strategy, that will benefit your brand and your business in the long term. We’ll be listing them off as follows and providing a short explanation in case you’ve never seen it explained this way before.

First, you need to keep your goal in mind. What exactly are you trying to achieve? Do you want to reach new customers, or convince existing customers to buy more? Do you want to increase brand recognition? Tie yourself to a certain set of ideas? All of these can be accomplished through clever marketing.

Next you need to hammer down your message. Your unique selling proposition or what you’re most looking to promote online. Sit down and brainstorm, either alone or with trusted colleagues and mentors to see what really says what you need to say while also being punchy and to the point.

Your audience is worth heavy consideration as well. If you market towards a demographic that doesn’t buy from your brand, you’re almost worse off than before. Unlikely to make new sales from previous customers, and selling towards customers that are unlikely to be interested in your product leaves you having spent a lot of money on advertising for little gain.

Next you need to take a look at which channels you’re advertising through. Email? SMS? SEO blog posts? Social media? All of these avenues have pros and cons that balance against each other in interesting ways. Picking and choosing only one is seldom the way to go, but they each require their own unique touch to get just right.

Consider also which tools you’ll need to accomplish your goals. Email campaigns require an email platform and often a campaign management tool. Social media accounts, analytics programs, and ad management tools are also a major bonus for any would-be marketer to have in their arsenal.

Lastly, you need some way to test the success of your endeavors. Analytics numbers can help a bit, but it’s best to have solid evidence of how your sales are growing over time. This means dedicating yourself to long-term monitoring to make sure that the jump in sales isn’t just normal growth that you would be experiencing anyway.

By keeping these six points in mind, you’ll be able to draft up a marketing plan that keeps all the important parts of your business at the forefront of your consideration. But how do you put it all together?

What does it mean to be customer centric?

We could offer dozens of customer centricity examples, but we would be over-complicating a very simple concept. The customer centricity meaning is as follows- put the customer first. Not only first, but at the very center of your business. Implement strategies that focus on the customer at all points during the customer’s journey- not just at the first point of sale. This way, you’re able to maintain long-term relationships that bring repeat customers back to your business again and again. This is distinct from a product-centric approach, where you focus only on the purchases. In the modern era, there’s little excuse to not think bigger.

How do you consistently put the customer first?

The key to customer centricity is excellent customer service. To deliver top-notch customer support, you have to get into the mind of the customer and treat them excellently. A good metric is whether you’re treating your shoppers like you would want to be treated, or giving them the same experience you would want a good friend or member of your family to have. Here are a few simple tips that will help you achieve that goal.

First, proactiveness. It’s absolutely essential to know how you’ll solve common issues before they crop up. How long do your customers have to request a return or exchange? Who is responsible for shipping? What happens if a package gets lost? All these questions deserve a few minutes of your time to fully think through before you’re put on the spot to ensure you can provide the best customer support.

Second, it’s important to meet your buyer where they are. If they’re frustrated, it’s important to acknowledge their frustration before attempting to determine which solution works best for them. Understand that they’re only interested in getting the product they paid for. They don’t necessarily have all the information about fulfillment, supply chain interruptions, or other problems like you do.

Lastly, consistency. Have a plan in place for the maximum amount of time that can elapse before you address a question or complaint. Speedy service makes for buyers who feel attended to and like their business matters, and it makes a world of difference whether a customer receives an answer within four hours or four days! Of course, that doesn’t mean that you have to be refreshing your email 24/7 to maintain good service delivery. No, indeed. In fact, many business owners choose to outsource their customer care operations for exactly this reason. For a small fee, you can have round-the-clock monitoring for whenever an issue crops up.

In conclusion

We here at P2Pseller are happy to show you the ropes when it comes to customer centricity to make your ecommerce selling life as smooth and simple as humanly possible. But in our opinion, good relations with your buyers begins with top-class fulfillment. The fewer delays there are, the fewer delays you’ll have to explain. Register a free account with us today to browse the full extent of our offerings and see what we can do for you and your business. We’d be ecstatic to partner with you and have you on board for the ecommerce revolution.