The times…they are a-changing!
It used to be that you had to market to your customers on a regular basis, reaching out to them at regular intervals with more and more messages about how and why they should do business with you.
Let me tell you my friends, things are changing!
With the advent of social media, and by that I mean…
- Blogging – WordPress, Blogger, etc.
- and many, many more…
…customer behavior and expectations are changing, moving from the “old way” to the new way.
When people look to shop for something these days, they don’t open a catalog, or yellow pages the way they used to. Now, they ask their friends for advice (not so different, right?) but they do it through social media now. They aren’t just asking their coworker or next door neighbor…they are using Twitter and Facebook to ask, “What do you think?”
And this is powerful!
If you aren’t a presence on the internet, you are MISSING OUT ON A LOT OF MONEY!
A young woman wanted a camera to take on vacation and so she asked for advice from her friends on Twitter. A CMO (chief marketing officer) for Kodak was on Twitter, monitoring for this type of query. He reached out to her and suggested one of Kodak’s least expensive cameras that might be a solution for her situation.
This is a 6+ billion dollar company! And they are on Twitter, chatting with their customers about the pros and cons of an inexpensive camera. How incredibly powerful is that? It used to be that to get in touch with the executive of a huge corporation, you really had to have connections. Today, if you want to stay in the running for business, you need to be using social media.
A recent article caught my attention about a local Phoenix restaurant, Z-Tejas. One of their customers was really unhappy with a recent visit to their restaurant and tweeted about it. Instantly, one of the owners of Z-Tejas contacted their unhappy customer and sorted out the matter. Had they not been monitoring Twitter, they would have NEVER known how unhappy this person was, and that they were tweeting about it to anyone on their list. I’m not as active on Twitter as a lot of other people, but my list is over 400 people.
Would you like 400 people to read about a bad experience? Or would it be better to have 400+ people see that you appreciated how much of a problem this was for one of your guests, and you actually took steps to fix the problem? Believe me…negative advertising can cost you a LOT of money.
By monitoring Twitter, being attentive, and alert to a problem Z-Tejas was able to reach out to this unhappy customer and fix the situation. This kind of advertising is worth its weight in gold!
Today, people Google everything. According to the February 2010 study from Compete.com blog, 3 out of 5 customers all use search engines when shopping for something, and that includes when they are shopping locally. They want to know who has what they’re looking for. Not using social media can be killing your business.
Everyone who knows me understands how important shopping locally is to me. If you don’t let your local customers know about you, how interested you are in them, their concerns, and how you might be able to help, they will find someone else to solve their problems.
And, very often, that is money you won’t be collecting, and if it isn’t local, the entire community suffers.
To that end, I can be found on Twitter as @KathleenBirming and @SmallBizBits. I can also be found here on Facebook as Kathleen Birmingham. And if you want to stay up on my Small Biz Bits, please “like” my page here.
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