Present Face of Advertising

It was so funny to read about Radio-Television-Internet evolution. You start to realize how much has changed during one decade. It took 38 years to reach 50 million users via Radio, 13 years via Television and… only 4 years via Internet. Today there are lots of families who don’t watch TV at all or listen to the radio. They can find everything in the internet – latest news, films, music and even relatives and friends (although I don’t like the last part “relatives and friends” as it leads to a lonesome life, but I’ll speak about it in one of my future posts).

It’s become easier to target and reach an audience directly, and the traditional television, radio and magazine commercials advertising changed to different channels, like mobile, social networks which target a much more broad audience, raising brand awareness in a short period of time. Old methods are no longer essential in the ever-growing digital world.

Now we deal with tech-savvy consumers who are more in control. As a result, it became more difficult for advertisers to keep consumers interested in the brands. They should come up with innovative strategies creating messages that grab the attention of the audience. Add this is not at all easy – find right consumers, create a right message, choose the right time, and finally provide a great customer service.

“74% of today’s customers use at least three channels when interacting with a company for customer service”, according to Ovum. After all most companies are still using stand-alone, single channel experiences, which irritates many customers, they want to be heard instantly.

Note that 90% of all purchases are subject to social media influence. So let’s be active, creative, interesting and outstanding but at the same time realistic - here what our customers want from us!

Be Where Your Customers Are!

Gone are the times of waiting on the phone to talk to a rep or waiting for an email response. Multi-channel marketing replaced many different activities and positioned in the first place.

“72% of online American adults now use social networking sites” (PewResearch Center)

Is it really so important to be where customers are and why?

The reason is that you should be in all the places where your customers are searching for information and help them find it, answer all their questions and do this as fast as possible. Customers raise their issues through social media and they don’t like to wait. If you’re late, you lose your customer – that’s the reality.

25% of consumers who complain about products on Facebook or Twitter expect a response withing 1 hour (AmericanExpress OPEN Forum)

Being on social platforms not only gives you direct access to your customers, but also gives your customers direct access to you.

“97% of customer issues can be resolved by proactive social intervention. On top of that, 40-50% of those customers end up saying positive things about the company online” (Dell Investigation).

Whether these are social media channels, different forums, blogs, comments section of articles written about your company, you should be everywhere and be ready to take action.

And which social channels to use? Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are must-channels for nearly every field.

“Facebook has 1.11 billion monthly active users ” (Facebook)

“61% of social media users primarily use LinkedIn for professional networking” (Lab42)

“Twitter has over 550 million users” (StatisticBrain )

From my own practice, I can say that I made great relationships with many authorities in my field via Twitter  and I become happy with every new thousand followers I have.

I cannot ignore Google+ too, as once I noticed to have the most link clicks from this channel.

“70% of brands have presences on Google+ ”(Simply Measured)

Pinterest? Yes, it also became a very popular one and the number of users is rapidly growing.

“Pinterest has around 50 million users” (Reuters)

To conclude I’d like to say that social channels are not only a must, but should also be something like “useful and pleasant” – that’s the secret to your success!

Twitter - Build Your Brand Awareness!

Twitter became one of the most popular social platforms used by the great part of the companies worldwide. It’s used for broadcasting, engagement, content sharing, driving traffic.

Many companies have more than one twitter account (Dell has 44 Twitter accounts.) Anyway statistics shows that personal accounts have more followers than companies. Here you can see the statistics of the top Twitter accounts for the year 2013.

It was so interesting to read some facts about Twitter that I decided to put the most important ones here. (Most stats provided by Twitter via Hubspot.)

So…

• Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users
• 300,000 new users sign up per day
• There are over 100,000 Twitter applications
• Twitter receives 180 million unique visitors per month
• 37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet
• 63% of Brands have multiple accounts
• 97% of major brands use Twitter(Apple does not use Twitter or any other social media)
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet

Did you know?

• The best time to tweet if you want to be retweeted is on Friday at 4 p.m. EST (says Social media scientist Dan Zarrella)
• It’s recommended to use a maximum of two hashtags per tweet
• Weekends are the best time to reach customers on Twitter
• Tweets with media (a photo/video) get 3 to 4 times more engagement than those without
• Twitter is good for busy hours (7AM-8PM). This, of course, will depend on your target audience and company type, but mostly it works.
• Even though the tweet can contain 140 characters, try to use 100 characters (120 at maximum) to make it retweetable. First of all it attracts attention and, secondly, people can add their comments when retweeting.

In one of my next posts I’ll try to put some great free Twitter analytics tools that I ever used to measure Twitter effectiveness.

Sources:

http://www.firsttracksmarketing.com/social-media-marketing/new-twitter-usage-information.html

http://brandconsultantasia.com/2013/08/19/further-proof-that-you-need-twitter-to-build-your-brand/

http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/

Enhance Customer Service Reputation

Most businesses understand and value customer loyalty, but it can be a challenge to implement strategies which inspire loyalty in their customers. Knowing and understanding the customers’ needs – this is the basic driver behind successful business. The more you know about your customers, the more effective your efforts will be.

Customers want good service – so much so that they are willing to pay more for a product if they are assured of receiving good service along with it. By providing that level of service, businesses can transform many first-time visitors into loyal long-term customers, increasing sales and inspiring referrals from satisfied customers – critical components of ongoing prosperity and success.

However, although much is spoken about the importance of a good customer service, some research suggests that little progress is being made towards improvements in this area:

“The surveys and research available for major markets worldwide make it clear that customer satisfaction indexes haven’t really improved for most industries over the last ten years. In fact, they have only kept steady or even declined”. Seven Customer Contact Trends 2015

Social Media Role

Today, social media plays a strong role in many people’s lives, resulting in customers’ attitude and experiences reflected across different social platforms. While no company likes to be publicly disgraced, when a bad customer experience is made public via social media, a new opportunity is presented. Now a rep has a chance to turn the disgruntled customer into a loyal one by solving the complaint in a good manner.

Research indicates that 62% of customers used social media for customer service, and 47% of social media users said they “actively seek” customer service through social media. 30% of customers prefer social media to the traditional customer service phone call. And 55% expect a response that same day.

Beyond reacting and responding, nowadays many companies use social media to proactively inform their customers about existing problems, and the corresponding resolutions, and in this way avoid complaints.

A reputation for good customer service has become a key factor for businesses. A good social media customer service strategy will ensure success in this area.