Encourage prospects to discuss the products.When you’re designing your online catalog, encourage prospects to discuss the product with their friends and family. Make it easy for them to take the product into Facebook to solicit opinions from others using services such as ShareThis (www.sharethis.com), pointing users to the brand’s business page on the social networks, and including email links, too.
Connect prospective customers to each other.By setting up discussion forums, you can create spaces where prospective customers can exchange notes on the potential purchases that they’re considering. Also point them to existing satisfied customers or real-world testimonials that visitors can rate and comment upon.
Set up a Twitter account and respond to customer queries.It’s important to watch the chatter about your products and brands across the social web. Where appropriate, respond in a thoughtful, helpful manner to the questions raised. Correct misrepresentations of your products in a similar way, especially those on Twitter. Twitter is useful for customer service. Companies such as Comcast have had great success in using it for responding to customer queries and concerns. But the tone you respond with is critical: You always run the risk of sounding defensive. You’ll probably be doing more damage to your brand than good if you allow yourself to get defensive on Twitter.
Track a list of websites, blogs, and discussion forums where the product’s target customers spend their time.Track activity on these sites, and participate in conversations about the category, competitors, and customer needs in an authentic, productive, and useful manner.
SMM at the preference stage
At the preference stage, the prospective customer leans toward making a purchase. He has considered several products and established his favorites. He likes the product that you’re pushing him toward. By this time, the prospective customer is concerned with confirming that he’s getting good value for his money and that his purchase will be suitable for his needs. At this stage, you may offer free trials and 30-day money-back guarantees. Generally speaking, you hope your prospective customers have developed an emotional attachment to your brand that will push them to purchase your products.
By the time a prospective customer is at the preference stage in the marketing funnel, she has probably evaluated all the competitive alternatives to the product. She has found information about them through product brochures, the product websites, and customer reviews across the web. As she enters the preference stage, she’s likely to talk to her friends some more and get their opinions. This may have less to do with whether one product is better than another from a feature standpoint, but the customer can get a feel for your brand as well. The prospective customer also views user-generated content about your brand at this stage.
You must be very careful at this stage. It’s important that you establish a trusted relationship with the prospective customer. The prospective customer needs to feel that he will get good customer service after he makes the purchase. He wants to believe that his decision will be a good one over the long term, too. You can build that trust and allay those concerns by talking to the prospective customer in an authentic, personal, and genuine fashion.
Consider these SMM tactics at this stage:
A blog, or several blogs, that discuss the product: Granted, blogs are valuable at the awareness and consideration phase as well, but they matter the most at the point of preference. Customers want to hear from you at this stage more than ever and it’s important to frame the benefits of your product in ways that your customers will appreciate them the most.
Podcasts with interviews and product explanations: As a supplement to blogs, podcasts are an appealing way to explain the product to prospective customers in an engaging fashion when you’re not in the room with them. Running your own podcasts, appearing as a guest on someone else’s podcast, or advertising on a podcast network are all valuable strategies for marketing at the preference phase. To learn all about podcasts, which are audio blogs that are easily distributed online, take a look at Podcasting For Dummies, by Tee Morris (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
YouTube clips of product demonstrations: With prospective customers establishing their preference for the brand, video clips demonstrating the product and explaining its benefits are helpful. Publish your videos to a site such as YouTube so that customers can easily find them. Posting on YouTube also gives people the opportunity to comment and rate the product videos.
SMM at the action stage
The action stage is when the prospective customer makes the purchase and becomes an actual customer. He goes through the process of buying the product, whether he does this online, via the phone, or in a store. During the action stage, focus on making the process as smooth, efficient, and hassle free as possible. You should put a lot of effort into making the purchasing experience a positive one because it is one of the first direct interactions that the customer has with your company.
Most marketers argue that at this point in the funnel, you should not play a role. Either the customer was positively influenced enough to make the purchasing decision or he wasn’t. If he’s at the point where he’s taking action, he should be allowed to take that action without any distractions whatsoever because even a positive distraction is still a distraction. However, if the purchase is a high-consideration one, you can make the purchasing process social in a way that doesn’t distract from the purchasing but enhances it instead.
At the point of purchase, the customer wants to know whether he is making a suitable purchasing decision and if his social influencers approve of his decision. Providing him with data points that he can share with those influencers and a means to broadcast the purchasing decision helps him. He can broadcast his purchasing decision and influence his friends to make similar purchasing decisions. And by providing valuable tidbits of information, he’ll have valuable information to share.
The point of purchase also serves as an opportunity to upsell other products and services. This is a traditional marketing tactic that’s been used in both the digital world and in physical stores as well. By highlighting other products that customers just like him purchased, social influence can play a role in encouraging that customer to make additional impulse purchases at the point of sale. For example, say you’re buying a pair of Gap jeans from Gap.com (as shown in Figure 3-4) and as you’re about to check out, you’re told about a nice shirt to buy and that most people who bought the pair of jeans bought the shirt, too. You’re more likely to add the shirt to your shopping cart. That’s using social data to influence a purchasing decision.
FIGURE 3-4: Gap.com recommends a shirt based on what’s in the customer’s shopping cart.
Consider these SMM tactics at this stage:
Highlight related popular products. As depicted with the Gap.com example, showcasing popular products relating to the ones already in the shopping carts often leads to impulse purchases.
Provide tools to broadcast the purchase. This is necessary to allow for the customer to do remarketing for you. The customer should have the tools to easily broadcast his purchase to his various social networks. (Remarketing refers to someone doing further marketing on your behalf after