Philip O\’Brien – 29/08/16
Social Media, the great saviour of the small business. If I\’d a euro for every time I’d heard this comment!
Social media has levelled the playing field in many respects. It allows smaller businesses with modest budgets to compete with bigger brands.
Yet almost all businesses employ social media without realising a fraction of its potential.
Across a cluttered medium how will your business stand out?
It seems like everyone is posting content. However unless it’s relevant, interesting and solves a problem it’s actually a waste of time.
Therefore knowing what customers want is especially relevant to success.
Goal Setting
Almost all businesses talk to their customers through blogs, social media and other mediums. But are they hearing their customers?
Content Marketing guru Joe Pulizzi nails it when he suggests that;
“we focus on our organisational goal and create content we believe drives that organisational goal.”
Understanding our customers is crucial. Otherwise we are trying to sell to customers who are sick of sales strategies. Furthermore how can we align organisational goals with customer needs?
Listening to customers by monitoring feedback provides invaluable insights. Whats really important to customers? This should influence our organisations goal setting.
Premier Listening
Premier Inn launched a €25 million initiative featuring comedian Lenny Henry called “Wake Up Wonderful”
By listening to customers Premier Inn discovered what was especially important to them. As a result they focused on the mattress quality. In addition they demonstrated great customer understanding. They understood that the important issue was customers attaining a good night’s rest.
This provided Premier Inn with the “why”. The \”how\” was provision of top quality mattresses.
By listening to their customer requirements, Premier Inn gained many loyal customers.
Consequently the lessons we can take from this are;
- Listen to your customers
- Only provide quality content which solves a problem for them
- Don’t try to sell them something immediately
Therefore listening to customers secures greater engagement.
As a result customers grow closer to your brand. Furthermore this provides a very valuable business resource. Customers become salespeople for your business, in person and on social media.
Finally, the value you provide becomes a Point Of Difference. Therefore your business stands out from similar businesses.
Maybe it\’ll take some time. It\’ll probably seem like a strange route. But customers will communicate on social platforms. And despite many changes in the business landscape over the last number of years, the customer is still king!
Contact Creation Media today by mailing info@creationmedia.ie or call 071 91 33484
