Social Connections

Why Connecting to Your Customers is Important

I just read an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review on advertising.  The title of the article was “Advertising’s New Medium: Human Experience”.  It was a very well written article tackling how advertising has changed and how to better promote your company effectively.  After reading this article I came up with 4 means to effectively advertise to your customers.  I will cover the first one in this article.

Social Connections:
I have been reading articles about using social media as a business tool for years and we just recently jumped on the bandwagon.  The problem I always had with social media was how to use it for our business, but that was the key fallacy in my thinking.  Social media’s scope is not narrow.  The problem is that I was being narrow-minded about the power of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc and their ability to engage customers at every level.  So how does social media do that and what should I do?

The goal of social media is to make connections. We have been doing it for years but it has now become faster and for some, somewhat easier. When I talk with some customers they ask me, “Why does this matter?  What does this have to do with increasing my business?”  A great point – why do anything in business that doesn’t have the potential to increase your revenue.  But it does.

As more and more things become automated and integrated you lose the personal connection and relationship with your customer.  You become just another company that sells products.  When there is no relationship there is less loyalty.  Less loyalty means gaining new customers and customer retention much, much harder and more costly.

So how do you fix this?  One way is to engage your customers socially using social media. This along with your other channels of marketing will create a network of loyal customers that not only buys from you but also recommends your products and services to their network of potential customers.

Some common ways to use these mediums effectively are to post pictures of your jobs that you complete and of your staff.  Let people in your markets see how great you are at what you do.  Let them see who you are.  Have your employee’s join Facebook and others and have them post things just once a week.  Chances are they already do this.  Just tie that into your company’s Facebook page.  Join a photo-sharing site like Flickr or Instagram and post your pictures there too.  The more places you present your work, the more you get noticed.  Use your phone to record video of your guys in action or even just something funny – and post them to YouTube.  Put your business on Google Places so people can find you.  There are a number of programs out there and the possibilities are endless.

Again the biggest thing is to just do it.  A few minutes a week over a year period turns exponential in creating a solid relationship with your customer.  The fruit of this minimal labor will be a solid, increasing, and loyal customer base for a lifetime.

If you have any questions on any of these topics, send me an email, post something to our Facebook wall, or just give me a call.

John Perkins
IT Director
Scorpion Protective Coatings, Inc
800-483-9087
john@sc2scorpioncoa.wpengine.com