Even though marketing your company to generate new customers is important, it’s not the only thing you need to do to run a successful business. You also need to build relationships with your customers so they keep coming back.
In this guide, we will explore the importance of building customer relationships, as well as share nine strategies to help you get started.
Why is it important to build customer relationships?
Social media has changed the way businesses and customers interact with each other. It’s now seen as an important avenue for real-time communication and feedback.
Building and nurturing relationships with customers is essential to keeping them coming back. Continuing these relationships on social media will help to turn customers into advocates for your business who will assist with marketing.
There is nothing comparable to word-of-mouth marketing, and having strong foundations with your customers is an excellent way to keep them motivated about your business. When you have customers who are passionate about your business, they will not only continue to shop with you, but they will also tell their friends and family about you.
It’s essential for businesses and marketing to build strong customer relationships because it’s more effective to retain loyal customers than to only try to convert new ones.
To break it down further, it’s important to build customer relationships because it:
- Reduces customer turnover and improves customer loyalty. As with any organization, the less turnover the better. The same applies for customers: the longer you can retain your customers, the better mutual outcome. They receive excellent customer service and products from your business and, in turn, you receive their loyalty.
- Increases the customer lifetime value (CLV). This is a great social media KPI to capture. The longer a customer remains loyal and purchases from your business, the greater the value this customer has in their relationship with you.
Nine strategies to help you use social media to build customer relationships that last are as follows:
How to build customer relationships with social media
There are many ways you can build customer relationships, such as through a forum, your website, email marketing, and your blog. In this article, we will focus on how you can do so through your social media platforms.
Although you may have put a lot of effort into gaining followers, you should also try to turn them into customers and foster good relationships with them.
Here are our top nine tips for you.
1. Create a customer service social media channel
For example, you could create a hashtag specifically for customer service inquiries, or you could create a separate customer service account that customers can contact. A great way to start building relationships on social media is to create a dedicated customer service channel. You could create a hashtag specifically for customer service inquiries, or you could create a separate customer service account that customers can contact.
Adding an option to your Facebook Messenger chatbot that allows customers to input customer service requests would be beneficial. This would help to direct people to a support page on your website, and make it easier for customers to get the help they need.
Make sure you respond to customers quickly and helpfully to create a positive image for your brand.
2. Use social listening to build customer relationships
Social listening is the process of monitoring specific topics and keywords online in order to discover mentions of your brand or related topics.
Sprout’s social media listening tool helps you track and respond to what people are saying about your brand online. This information can be used to improve your marketing campaigns and messages, as well as make more informed decisions about how to best serve your customers.
You can also use this information to create a list of blog posts, new features, and learning resources that your audience will be interested in.
3. Listen to customer feedback
It’s important to have a way for customers to provide feedback, but it’s even more important to actually use that feedback.
Make sure your customers know that you value their suggestions by actually implementing them.
No matter what it is that you’re introducing – be it a new product or a new feature for your software – it’s important to take customer feedback into account. This demonstrates to your customer base that you’re both willing and able to take their needs and desires into consideration, which in turn builds trust and loyalty.
4. Personalize customer experiences
Another great way to build customer relationships is by making sure your website provides a personalized experience. You can do this by adding a live chat widget to your website so your audience can speak to a real person. This person can call them by their name and provide a real experience, which will help build lasting relationships.
Other ways to make experiences more personal is by ensuring that social media interactions and email newsletters include the recipient’s first name. Here’s an example from Visme of how to do this on Twitter.
Having a personal connection with your followers is key whether you are dealing with customer service issues or simply interacting with Tweets.
5. Create a relatable brand voice
A great way to connect with your audience and build strong relationships is by being relatable. Your social media should be enjoyable, and while you don’t have to be too casual, there are ways you can let your audience enjoy your brand voice.
To be more like MoonPie, share humorous content, jump on memes that relate back to your brand, and take every opportunity you can to bad mouth the sun.
You can make your brand more relatable online by sharing memes that are timely and relevant to your brand. Use current lingo and take a look at other brands to see if you can get any ideas.
6. Offer rewards and incentives
If you’re looking for a way to give something back to your audience, try organizing contests and giveaways. This is a great way to offer rewards and incentives to the people who support you.
To enter this giveaway from Aerie, simply leave a comment with their branded hashtag and tag a friend. It’s quick and easy, and it gets their followers excited and engaged.
Posting flash sales on social media is a great way to share discounts and freebies with your followers.
This is an example of how Fast uses engagement to get potential customers.
You could create a Twitter account that is specifically for handling customer service requests and product support issues, like Sprout Social does. If you search “support” or “customer support” on Twitter, you will see many examples of customer service Twitter accounts for different industries.
7. Share user-generated content
Customers love when brands are tagged in their photos on social media. This is called user-generated content, or UGC, and is a helpful tactic both for community building and for filling up your social calendar with hyper-relevant content.
For example, online swimsuit retailer Cupshe uses UGC in their social strategy to showcase their customers wearing their different styles and sizes. In turn, they tagged the original account who shared the photo of herself in one of their bathing suits. It’s important to note that you should be sure to ask permission before reposting a user’s photograph onto your brand account.
A way to build a community and encourage customers to share photos of your product is to create a branded hashtag. Share this in your bio, as seen below on A Color Story’s Instagram bio.
8. Provide value on social media
Other content will simply be about sharing information in an entertaining or captivating way. There are many different types of content you can create on social media. Some content will be more promotional because your business is about making a profit. Other content will be about sharing information in an entertaining or captivating way.
Promotional content should be balanced with educational and free value in order to keep audiences engaged. This can be in the form of freebies, discount codes, or knowledge.
You can share information about your business in an visual way on Facebook or Instagram using a carousel, or create a Twitter thread like Grammarly did.
Blog content and educational videos are a great way to inform your audience and show off how beneficial your product is. By providing free value, you can attract new customers and build relationships to keep them coming back.
9. Build an online community
The final suggestion for creating customer relationships is to develop a sense of community. This can be done by initiating a Facebook group, or another online community, and using branded hashtags. By doing this, you are inviting your audience to participate in the community.
An example of a highly active Facebook community is The Daily Carnage, a marketing-focused Facebook Group run by agency Carney. The agency publishes posts in the Group, but the conversations tend to be member-run and always all about marketing.
10. Humanize Your Brand
The days when brands were unknown entities to customers are gone. The need for transparency has been built by the web and social media, which 54% of users consult before making a purchase. Therefore, it is vital to be active and engage with social media users.
When you respond to customers in an honest and natural way, your business persona becomes stronger.
Monitor social media for customer feedback Analyze customer sentiment Respond to customers in real-time Social media monitoring can help you improve customer service by providing feedback from customers and responding to them in real-time.
Track Sentiments
You can use social media analytics to see what the dominant sentiment is among customers in your industry.
For example, if you are a vegan hair color brand that sells conventional Indian shades, you may be able to expand your product colors by monitoring the sentiments of the conversation spreading around through your social media monitoring tool.
- Decrease Customer Churn
One way to prevent a high rate of customers leaving is to communicate with them. When you engage with them on social media, you give them a reason to keep coming back to you.
A message like “Hey, we understand your concern about the product. Would you mind telling me about your problem in detail so that we can work on it?” can help you get your customer back. Your human touch to the message has the ability to delight the user.
11. Surprise Your Customers
You cannot build customer relationships simply by following a set of rules or guidelines. Every customer is different, and you need to be able to adapt your approach to each individual customer in order to create a strong relationship.
Secondly, you shouldn’t wait till your campaign goes viral to start celebrating. Celebrate the beginning, the small successes, and the milestones along the way. Skyscanner didn’t wait to start celebrating – they started right from the beginning. Remember to break protocols and be flexible and casual. Secondly, celebrate the beginning, small successes, and milestones along the way.
Aim your efforts at doing something that is unique and different from your competitors. Your competitors are likely trying to build strong customer relationships by responding to user inquiries and engaging in one-on-one conversations. If you want to stand out and get noticed, go the extra mile to impress your customers. One way you can do this is by creating memorable moments for them. Customers generally don’t expect brands to go above and beyond for them, so by doing so you will definitely surprise them.
The company quickly responded and not only directed her to a place from where she could buy the same model but also thanked her for being a loyal customer. An example to learn from is Gaylord Opryland. A user who stayed at Gaylord Opryland for three years in a row loved the clock radio in her room. When she tried to find the same model for three years and couldn’t, she took to the Twitter page of the company mentioning the same. The company quickly responded by not only directing her to a place from where she could buy the same model, but also thanked her for being a loyal customer.
12. Deal With Complaints Instantly
Although a customer may not tell you directly, they are likely to appreciate your good service through comments, reviews, or ratings. However, if they have any issues with your product or service, they are much more likely to tell others about it. Because positive feedback is less likely to go viral than negative feedback, it’s important to act quickly if you receive any complaints.
If you use social media monitoring tools, you can get alerts in real-time about negative mentions of your brand. These alerts can be set for different channels, such as email, app, Slack, or other platforms. As a result, every time there is a rapid increase in mentions, you can be alerted. Together with your reputation management team, you can figure out a damage-control plan. In most cases, when you respond immediately, customers appreciate that you care about them and the situation calms down. This can save your brand from becoming prey to disappointed customers and trolls. Moreover, when you answer a complaint, customer advocacy increases by as much as 25%. In the opposite situation, when you do not do so, it decreases by as much as 50%.
13. Embrace the Bright Side of Social Media
Social media can be used for more than just negative comments and trolling. You can use it to your advantage by promoting your brand.
As we said, if a customer is happy they may take to social media to express their appreciation. If they do, you should aim to respond to them. Showing them that you value their opinion and are grateful for their kind words is essential. You can use social media monitoring to keep track of any positive mentions of your brand.
When you address comments from happy and satisfied customers, it builds your reputation as a trustworthy brand.
Squarespace does a great job of highlighting their customers and how the company is helping them achieve their goals. They use happy customers as examples of their good service, which helps them build strong customer relationships.
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