Connecting with your customers online is more than having a contact us page with a form and an email address. It is finding what is meaningful to your current and potential customers and meeting their needs. Connecting with your customers can drive more traffic to your ecommerce or physical store, drive demand, and build loyalty.
It’s how brands like Amazon, American Express, and even Wendy’s keep their names in front of their audience and keep demand strong. Their responsiveness, humor, and (most importantly) their ability to engage by being relatable all drive brand awareness and repeat traffic. These same concepts apply to small and medium-sized businesses too.
You don’t have to be a huge corporation or spend millions of dollars connecting with customers. You only have to meet them where they are and cater to their needs. And it is easier than you might have guessed. Here are a few digital marketing strategies for connecting with customers online through social media, live chat, and communities with tips on implementing them.
- Be where your customers are
- Tie social media to marketing goals
- Ensure chat and support are professional
- Make sure website content meets customer needs
Be Where Your Customers Are and Provide Value
Get to know the popular online hangouts of your target market, and make sure you have a presence there. If you want to sell clothing to high school and college-age fashionista customers that share fashion ideas on Instagram and TikTok, you can join the conversation by:
- Paying attention to the hashtags and wording they use and incorporate it into your messaging.
- Finding causes and ideas that motivate and drive their interests and behaviors, including charities and social activities.
- Looking for the people with influence who engage conversations, not “influencers.”
- Finding the groups that are local and inviting them for an in-person event with their friends’ circles. This may encourage them to share and stream live from your store, building your business further.
For a home improvement business or hardware store, a YouTube account can help reach a large audience of people seeking how-to videos on household repairs.
- This could include creative videos sharing how to do specific tasks and giving multiple options to complete the task in case the person does not have a specific tool or part. Remember to include a link to where they can buy said parts from your store if they want the same tool or product you use in the video.
- Think about local problems with houses like sun damage in the desert, snow and leaf issues in the Northeast, and cleanup after tornadoes in the Midwest. By creating content around these specific issues, you become a local go-to resource and the brand your community trusts in when they need supplies, services, and advice.
Social media platforms are only useful if you’re actively engaged. That starts with responding quickly to comments about your brand and extends all the way to initiating new non-promotional conversations to be a thought leader in your space and remain an active member on the platform.
Tie Social Media Marketing to Your Goals
Setting up metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) is an important step when connecting with current and future customers online as it shows what is and is not working when it comes to growing your business. This is even more so the case on social media, so you should continuously fine-tune your message and then measure and maximize results. Metrics and KPIs can change each season or quarter, by channel, and by the type of content or interactions you use.
Marketing goals can include:
- Sales
- Leads and form fills
- Email or SMS subscribers
- Shares
- Likes, bookmarks, and embeds on the platforms
- Brand awareness and impressions
During off seasons when people are less likely to shop, like holiday ornaments in May or pool supplies in December, you could have a goal of building a subscriber list during the slow months by sharing interesting and seasonally relevant information. As the busy season begins, you can go from list building to direct conversions and track which channels brought in the most subscribers, so you can refine how you grow the list during next year’s slow season.
A children’s clothing store can post about “kids eat free nights” with local restaurants to help save parents money. In turn, the restaurants may share the clothing store’s promotions as a thank you, giving the store exposure to their social media fans and followers.
Keep Online Chats Professional
When you engage with consumers through direct messaging on social media or in live chat, pay attention to how you manage those online conversations. Taking the time to fully understand their concerns, showing empathy if they’re experiencing problems with your product, and using a conversational tone are all good ideas. Avoiding misspellings and grammatical errors will also help maintain a professional image for your brand.
It can be frustrating to have the same questions asked over and over, especially when the information is clearly displayed on the page or the website. If you have a virtual assistant or customer support person, provide them with alternative ways to respond to specific repeat questions other than, “Visit our website to see the store hours.”
By making the person do less work, and by adding value, you may create a better experience for your brand and increase revenue. Two alternatives to the above response can be:
- The store hours at (insert address) are 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, and there is usually less of a line around 10 am and 2 pm if you want to save time.
- Your location is open from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, and we’re having a sale on snacks, t-shirts, and air filters today only. If you want to avoid lines, 10 am and 2 pm are usually slower.
Both of these options give the answer without making the person take extra steps, and they add something helpful. If the person wasn’t considering a product from you, or was going somewhere else for products like snacks, t-shirts, or air filters, you may have just increased your total average order value and items-per-cart metrics for the day.
Other ways to connect with customers online through personalization that helps them feel special include:
- Addressing them by their name if they provide it.
- Signing the chat with the customer support person’s name.
- Saying please and thank you and thanking them for being a customer.
- Listening to the entire question and responding to all of the parts in it to show your company cares.
- If the question has multiple parts, retype each part of the question and place the respective answer directly below it.
Some brands get away with humor and playful banter, but it is not a good tactic for most companies as there is no voice inflection and some people only want a solution. What is funny or humorous to you or your customer support team may agitate others. If you upset the wrong customer, it can cause that customer to shop elsewhere or create backlash for your brand if they are upset and post about it publicly.
Create Engaging Website Content
If you haven’t updated your company website in a while, take a look at how you can revamp it to answer customer questions and match your current brand and style.
Including engaging stories about how you started the business on the about page with updated statistics and photos shows how you’ve supported the community throughout time. If you have a team members page, include their photos, interests, hobbies, etc. This lets current and potential customers know who they’re talking to; and if they share the same interests, this can help build a bond before the customer engages.
When you have a new product launch, store opening, or company community project coming up, why stop at just announcing it to your website visitors? Post about it on social media, upload it to your Google Business Profile, and think about live streaming the event so that social media fans can take part virtually.
On product and service pages, take a look at the questions customers have asked over the last two quarters and see if they’re answered in the content in a clearly visible space. When you address the questions that may be on the customer’s minds as they enter the page, they can feel confident that your solution is right for them. This may increase conversions and stop customers from returning the item (where they may have if they didn’t have these answers up front). The latter reduces your overhead costs of returns, restocking, and refunds.
Connecting with customers online through social media, forums, groups, communities, and live chat builds a bond and trust factor that helps grow and scale your business. It is as simple as using the customer’s name and saying thank you in some cases, while in other cases, it can also include a content strategy where you share how to do things or what’s going on in the community so that you can become a community leader and a go-to source for information, products, and services.
National Funding does not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only. You should consult your own tax, legal and accounting advisors.
