Chapter 4

Courting the Social Customer

The entire social CRM world revolves around the social customer, and it's this social customer who led corporations into the new paradigm of social business. Consumers are more educated, savvy, demanding, and active than ever before. Businesses must adapt to meet the needs of these social customers.

Empowered with a network of knowledge, the social customer has forever changed the way business is conducted. Businesses need a strategy to harness the buying power of consumers online. In this chapter, you get a clearer picture of the who, what, when, where, and how of social customers. You learn about their habits and communication methods. This knowledge is essential to building a strategy to reach social customers.

We discuss the media that social customers use and how they use them. This chapter also provides insight into social motivations and behaviors so that you can better approach social customers and ultimately earn their trust to do business together.

Exploring the Habits of the Social Customer

Facebook's rapid growth caught many businesses off guard. “Hey, I guess we need a Facebook page,” echoed across quite a few marketing departments. Then it was, “Jon in IT says there's a whole lot of chatter on Twitter.” It seems there's always a new social media platform to explore, but without an understanding of these social media sites and a strategy for utilizing them, businesses are lost. Misguided social pages can be found across the web. Many businesses have been merely reacting to the phenomenon of customers gaining control of the marketplace and media, learning as they go, but they were missing an understanding of the evolving social customer. Here are some questions that might have remained unanswered for these businesses, including yours:

Enterprise didn't and still doesn't control the multiple channels where the social customer is influencing business. Taking a look at consumers' habits gives businesses — enterprise and small alike — a chance to be in the middle of the social conversation.

Looking at customers' buying patterns

Marketers have long thought that consumers gathered several brands for consideration and then went through a narrowing-down process until one brand remained for actual purchase.

However, a consumer's decision-making and buying process includes far more than a bucket of options to buy. Today, consumers don't just narrow down their buying options. They add and eliminate brands during a longer period of consideration. After they make a purchase, customers' brand loyalty depends on their experience with the product and the company they purchased from or that made the product. Customers are comfortable terminating their relationship with a brand at any time. Also, throughout this process, consumers share their experiences with their social networks online.

Understanding how customers use mobile devices

Information sharing takes place in real time. It takes just a few seconds to post to Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network. With the growing number of mobile devices and smartphones, consumers have an enormous amount of data at their fingertips. More inclined to search the web straight from a mobile device or fire up an app, today's mobile consumer rarely picks up the phone to talk directly with anyone for information-gathering purposes.

Meeting social customers where they interact claims a crucial element of social CRM, and more and more, they're using mobile devices for those interactions, as follows:

Having all this information constantly available in real time empowers today's consumers. Here's a quick list of a few ways that social customers use mobile devices in the buying process:

Mobile consumers use their devices to locate stores, restaurants, movies, and other services nearby. According the same Google study mentioned previously, 9 out of 10 smartphone users took action based on a mobile search. Smartphones make smarter shoppers. Meeting customers on their mobile devices gives you a more targeted shot at a transaction.

Think about your business, and how consumers are likely to use their phones in relation to your product or service. How can you improve on that experience? The answer may be an app, a mobile-enhanced website, or a more aggressive presence on existing mobile apps like Yelp, Foursquare, and so on. Conduct market research to see what consumers are already doing, and find out where there's a hole in the mobile market that you can fill.

Understanding the change in advertising

Individuals, not businesses, control much of the way advertising is consumed today. TV watchers can fast-forward through recorded advertisements when watching recorded shows. Mobile users can skip ads on games. Today's empowered consumers demand that ads offer attention-grabbing content, creativity, and innovation.

People still read the newspaper, watch television, and listen to the radio. Advertisers still advertise in traditional media, and many consumers still respond to those advertisements — but it isn't always the response you expect. Traditional ads often prompt the social consumer to conduct mobile searches or connect to their online social network for information. Advertising is still alive and well, but it's very different from what it was even a few years ago. A print ad is no longer a single entity. It's tied to your digital and mobile presence as well.

Permission-based advertising grows as consumers become fed up with intrusive ads. E-mail marketing laws have led the way for opt-in advertising. The good news is that this shift to consumer-empowered advertising offers more targeted messaging opportunities. Advertisers can segment audiences and hyper-focus ads to cater to individuals' preferred methods of receiving marketing messaging.

As technologies evolve and change, advertisers have to adjust quickly to stay in front of the right audiences. Channels like YouTube and Facebook empower DIY-style advertising for low budgets and high creativity. Advertisers need to tailor ads to be more personal and highly innovative to capture today's social customer.

On social networks, customers provide a wealth of information. They willingly volunteer information about their interests, relationship, workplace, and more. All this data is available for your brand to use — you just need to put it into action.

Recognizing how customers use social media

At the heart of social media is being social. That may sound silly to read or hear, but it's surprising how many businesses miss that point. The social customer accesses social media to connect with family and friends, seek out old friends, and make new relationships.

Often, a need for entertainment motivates social users to get online or open an app on their mobile device. Mostly, their attention is focused on the social network they're interacting with. They're alone and looking for something to grab their attention. If you plan carefully, that something may be your content, but keep in mind that a customer's primary goal isn't to view your ad. Social customers are looking, first and foremost, for human, social connections, tapping into their established networks for advice, suggestions, and recommendations. They also vent, rant, and share honest opinions through multiple channels. They may also seek product reviews and customer feedback, or offer up their own opinions. All these actions are social in nature, even if they involve your brand.

When your brand provides value in this social context, social media offers a place for your business. Consumers search social media for tangible value, such as coupons, discounts, and so on. The upcoming sections of this chapter discuss how you can influence and interact with your customers.

Influencing the Social Customer

In order to influence this new type of customer, you have to give customers what they want. Remember the social customer is empowered with knowledge. Relevancy presents the key to influencing these consumers.

Keep in mind that roughly 84 percent of a Facebook page's fans are already current or past customers. This will help you craft a more relevant approach to your social messages. Getting customers to share your content needs to be your ultimate goal, not trying to upsell them. Yes, you can sell on Facebook, but your efforts will seem hollow given the social nature of the site. Quality over quantity rings true with everything about Facebook. Having one hundred engaged fans weighs more than 1,000 fans that never share your content or return to your page.

Providing relevant content to your fan base will be the only way to mobilize them to start talking about your brand to their friends. Social CRM is about managing conversation — not about managing the customer. In the new world of social CRM, the customer is in charge. Customer-centric strategies will be your only hope for influencing conversation that actually benefits your brand. To help you craft what customer centric might mean to your business, the following sections explore why people share content and how to make your brand's content more worthy of sharing.

Knowing why people share

Word-of-mouth nods on social networking sites create strong conversion opportunities, but only a very small segment of your customers will interact with your business on Facebook. Facebook recommends aiming to convert 10 percent of your real-life customers into Facebook fans. Though that number seems low, remember it's about quality not quantity. You have to remember what your business posts are up against. Your status updates fall into a Facebook user's timeline alongside updates from their mother, brother, sister, daughter, and best friend. The relationships with those people are likely to run deeper than with any business or brand.

Creating content that people want to share

Using your own personal experience on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks makes considering your audience's motivations seem less mystical or mysterious. You're a consumer, too. Tap into your own habits to know why others share. Here are a few questions to ask yourself that may help generate share-worthy content:

Interactive content lends itself to, well, interaction. Motivating your fans, followers, and subscribers to interact with content and then share is more likely with photo contests, videos, polls, and questions — content that makes them feel something. Earlier in this chapter, we talk about offers and discounts motivating people to engage with your brand online. Give them a good deal and encourage them to share it or even incentivize them to do so. We've told you that's why they're looking, so delight them with what they want.

Sharing the recommendation

When Facebook users initially click Like on your page, you can prompt them to recommend your page to their friends. The same is true with Facebook Ads and other content. If you get a recommendation, they like you. They really like you!

A recommendation is a high form — if not the highest — of desired gestures from a Facebook fan. It requires consideration and significant action on the part of the user. Clicking Like on a Facebook page or ad is relatively effortless. Do you know how many pages you've liked on Facebook? Take a quick guess, without looking, and then compare your guess to the actual number. Chances are it's far more than you guessed, and that's true for most consumers. The average Facebook user likes about 80 pages. Clicking Like once is easy. Engaging and recommending is much harder.

How many of those pages did you recommend to your friends (or even visit in the last six months)? Sharing recommendations takes extra steps and effort and indicates a deeper level of engagement. Your content has to be pretty compelling to elicit that gesture. Keep that in mind when crafting messaging.

Talking to the Social Customer

Perhaps this section should be titled “Talking with the Social Customer.” No one really likes to be talked at with a bullhorn. Listening and responding appropriately is what makes conversation an art. You have to adapt your messages to what your customers want to hear.

Armed with knowledge, the social customer requires a relevancy in social messaging. This digital diva of a customer wants offers, discounts, apologies, recognition, recommendations, more information, transparency, and entertainment. It takes a shift in the mindset of a business to reach this customer. It's all about the customer. To implement a successful social CRM strategy, we all just have to accept that fact and grow to love it. This customer wants to be wowed, courted, heard, understood, and appreciated. Don't we all? Think of your own dating experiences and what you did to keep the attention of your would-be sweetheart. You put on your best behavior, crafted exciting outings, and cleaned up real nice. You listened to what he or she had to say about the past and future. You processed the new data and came up with a plan to win his or her heart forever.

Taking marketing beyond messaging

If the social customer is in control — and he/she is — marketing has to be more than brand speak that's aimed at the customer. Social CRM, social business, and the social customer revolve around conversations that build trust. An ideal result from that trust is brand loyalty, but you've got to earn it. And today's social customer is going to make you work for it. Traditional marketing messaging isn't enough to gain that trust.

Adding value for your customer up front

Offering incentives marks a significant piece of social business. The social customer has told enterprise through many studies that they want coupons, discounts, and incentives. So why do so many businesses avoid it? Perhaps it's because traditional messaging is just a habit that dies hard.

Permission-based marketing harnesses a captive audience of people who actually want to hear what you have to say. The empowered social customer can easily ignore marketing today. On Facebook, users can click an ad to remove it, as shown in Figure 4-1. Facebook then asks the user why he no longer wants to see the ad and requests information on what the user would prefer to see. That's power in the hands of the consumer.

Figure 4-1: Facebook gives advertising power to the individual user.

More and more information is becoming available about your customers' online behaviors. The unfortunate side effect is that many of them feel a bit exposed. When people feel like a target or number to be gathered, they tend to tread more lightly toward an interaction. If you can present your business like an open book with no secrets to hide, you can help the leery customers take the next step toward engagement.

Try messages like the following to add up-front value for the social customer:

Providing customer service they didn't expect

Some of the greatest social media success stories arise from unexpected, personalized customer service. One of the best examples — and one that's maybe a bit over the top — took place on Twitter, with Morton's steak house. Author Peter Shankman cried out in a tweet (shown in Figure 4-2) for a porterhouse steak amidst his weary travels through multiple airports. To his surprise, Morton's sent a representative to meet up with Shankman's arranged driver and deliver to Shankman a steak dinner, sides, and tableware. Shankman of course tweeted out the super delivery (shown in Figure 4-3) to his 10,000 Twitter followers. Big win for Morton's!

Granted, Shankman wrote a book on customer service and has an advantageous audience for any brand. However, Morton's steak house had to be listening to its social customers to realize the awesome opportunity in front of it. Small business and enterprise alike can hear opportunities to wow customers when they're primed to listen.

Figure 4-2: Peter Shankman tweets a joking request for a steak.

Figure 4-3: Steak surprise.