Talk To Your Customers And Win Their Business.

The best thing to hap­pen to the web for small busi­nesses was The Social Web, because it opened up count­less new oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters to see, hear and react to what their cus­tomers were say­ing to them, about them and with them in con­ver­sa­tion (if they were will­ing to engage with the customers).

Yet very few mar­keters have moved suc­cess­fully into this space to date.

Many small busi­ness own­ers I speak to express a lot of skep­ti­cism for these tools (and I’m talk­ing here about plat­forms like Face­book and Twit­ter), because they don’t feel com­fort­able with them, or don’t under­stand how to use them.

Then I ask them if they talk to the cus­tomers that come into their shops, or call them on the phone. They laugh and look at me like I’m nuts, and (of course) answer, “Yes.”

“Then you can use these tools to help you draw more busi­ness,” I say.

Now they’re excited. And they should be. And so should you be as a small busi­ness owner who’s still on the fence about using Social Web tools to get more customers.

It’s not as daunt­ing to use these tools when you real­ize one impor­tant thing: the Social Web is as valu­able a com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form to you as any other, it’s just a bit less for­mal. Because essen­tially, it’s an ongo­ing conversation.

So what’s the big secret to success?

Same as it ever was. There is no secret.

No mat­ter what media you use to con­nect with your cus­tomers or poten­tial cus­tomers: being open, authen­tic, and respon­sive usu­ally works. On the Web, you have the extra lever­age of using or devel­op­ing your own tools to be inno­v­a­tive, and offer your cus­tomers spe­cial offers that you can track and mea­sure suc­cess from as you get more com­fort­able with your online marketing.

In fact, I know of one plumb­ing com­pany based in Rhode Island that has used some of these tools in a very inno­v­a­tive way, and it’s increased their busi­ness several-fold. (I’m cur­rently putting together a case study on them, so I’ll talk about them in a future post.)

The point is: The Social Web makes it pos­si­ble for you to not only reach your cus­tomers, but hear back from them, too, so that you can improve your mar­ket­ing efforts, and increase your business.

But how do I do that in 140 characters?

You don’t. Like I men­tioned, social media is a more relaxed forum for com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It’s not like a bill­board, or an ad you place in a com­mu­nity bul­letin, or on the local cable net­works. It’s an ongo­ing inter­ac­tion with your cus­tomers, so you don’t have to “do it all” in one mes­sage, or have a script writ­ten. You just need to know who you are (a.k.a., brand strat­egy), and respond to the com­mu­nity you are a part of (Twit­ter, Face­book, etc.), as they need you.

Think of it like a vir­tual neigh­bor­hood. When you’re strolling around the neigh­bor­hood, you bump into peo­ple, have con­ver­sa­tions, and gen­er­ally go about your busi­ness. In this envi­ron­ment, hard sells don’t work. Pitch­ing doesn’t work. But being authen­tic, help­ful and sin­cere does. It does in the online neigh­bor­hoods as well.

If most of your com­mu­ni­ca­tions are about inter­act­ing with and help­ing peo­ple, or respond­ing to oth­ers after lis­ten­ing to them, you engen­der trust, engage with peo­ple hon­estly, and cre­ate an impact­ful, emo­tional mes­sage, and get more business.

Is there a formula?

No. Every brand is dif­fer­ent. But the key to it all is stick­ing to your own voice, and real­iz­ing that the dig­i­tal chan­nels are com­ple­men­tary to your other media efforts. What you do online doesn’t have to be crazy, wildly dif­fer­ent or done just because “your com­peti­tors are doing it.” It just has to be con­sis­tent to what you’re doing else­where. And it has to con­nect emo­tion­ally with your cus­tomers who are expe­ri­enc­ing your brand in that space.

Tagged as: small business, Social Media