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Introduction
Business owners recognize the importance of staying connected with their customers. However, with business growth comes increased complexity and demands that can compete with customer engagement, leading to a gradual decrease in the customer value that your business generates.
What to look out for
Early warning signs of such disengagement are:
- A feeling that you have to work harder to sell your product or service
- Stagnant or mature customer base
- Decreasing content interactions despite an increasing social media audience
- Underutilization of customer data and insight
- Marketing and promotions without a plan
- Increased dependence on a narrow customer persona.
A practical solution
To overcome this challenge, business owners must understand that they don't have to handle everything. A practical solution and approach is to:
- Use social media engagement for listening, learning, and gaining insight first and then for selling.
- Practice "social media brainstorming" to test and validate different approaches, messages, and CTA's.
- Adopt the discipline of tracking social media analytics and have a broad plan to leverage and apply insight and learning for better engagements and conversions.
- Track customer value creation metrics such as acquisition costs and customer lifetime value.
- Depending on their business, visit existing customers and prospect for new opportunities at least once a month.
Such an approach can lead to increased customer engagement and a more efficient use of resources
Our advice
While this approach might sound simple, it requires a mindset change for most businesses to get back to the basics of listening and conversing with their customers instead of selling. This shift in mindset can empower businesses to better understand their customers and tailor their offerings to their needs. In-house resources can be mentored and empowered to implement such an approach. Business owners can seek help from an outside party for implementation and monitoring. Rest assured that this approach has contributed to substantial improvements in not only sales but also customer value creation for many businesses.
