When your buyers find a great business solution, they want to tell others about it. When they find a solution that fails them, they really want to tell others about it. Buyers trust each other more than they trust advertising, so you want your best buyers to step forward and become your brand ambassadors.
While you can’t tell your customers what to say about you – nor would you want to – you and your marketing automation platform can create fertile ground on social media for fruitful conversations to happen. Here’s how to get them talking for all the right reasons.
Leave an Indelible Impression
If they don’t remember who you are, buyers can’t spread the word about you. What you do after the sale to reward buyers for choosing you can have a big impact on how often your name comes up in social media conversations. Keep them up to date about product upgrades, tips for use, and links they might find handy. Let them know you remember them, and they’ll remember to tell other potential buyers about you.
Get High Marks on Long-Term Reviews
Most businesses see satisfaction rates and review scores dip over time, but that isn’t because of a flaw in their products or services. It’s just a matter of percentages and the natural tendency of satisfied customers to stay quiet. If you sell to 50,000 customers and have a 99.9 percent satisfaction rate, the remaining 0.1 percent will do most of the talking, creating the illusion of fewer happy buyers than you actually have.
The solution is simple: Connect your buyers, ask them for feedback, and tell them why. Here’s where your sales/marketing integration matters most. With a fully integrated centralized database, you have access to your CRM and the wealth of information it holds. Look at when buyers made purchases or upgrades and use that to send out surveys and email review requests at about the six-month mark. Six-month reviews speak to potential buyers about your longevity, so you want your happiest customers to share their experiences as you help those who had problems find satisfaction.
Incentivize Relationships
The reward you get from an ongoing customer relationship is clear, but how well do customers understand the benefits of maintaining an active connection with you? Integrated sales and marketing data will allow you to drill down into each account and see what matters most to your buyers. Customers with a record of many customer service calls asking how to use the product, for example, could respond well to an email campaign inviting them to a webinar featuring tips and tricks. Top spenders might appreciate executive perks such as priority help-desk access.
