DC Insights

Yelp and Google Places - Use Social Directories to Boost Business

It's good to know great ideas just get better with time (like wine of course). I've been helping clients with their social marketing efforts for over 18 months now, a standard in my mind. It is still on the cutting edge for others – regardless of how easy it is.

A good post by Kevin Stirtz, HERE, touches a bit on why and how a company should focus on social marketing. What is key, especially for small and medium sized businesses, is that this should and can be done with a minimal amount of resources (money and your time) – even if folks in the business are not online personally and socially. I covered this back in February of last year in my blog post, Recognizing Customers as Best Social Marketing Resource.

My clients can integrate a level of social marketing into their month to month activities to really extend their footprint online, the one place a majority of their clients are researching purchase decisions. Social marketing is nothing more than identifying and managing a company's profiles across multiple social directory sites (e.g., Yelp, Google Local). I can give my clients relevant presence on as many as 10 relevant social directory sites.

Some things to consider when thinking through this:

• Start with a universal 'Profile' that one can use to populate and manage the multiple profiles online
• Look for online directory hubs like SUperMedia.com to cover multiple URLs at once
• Don't worry about some less then positive feedback over time - consider having 8 positive and 2 negative reviews versus 10 positive reviews. . . the former is sometimes more compelling

Where things can get really powerful is when my clients start directing happy customers to the sites they want to boost presence on based on traffic patterns - that's how I'm able to give my clients a real edge over the competition.

Have other's had success with this? Want to know more on who and how I've been able to help them?

Customer Feedback Monitoring 101

As a follow up to last weeks post on using customers as a marketing resource, I want to provide some guidelines on how a company might take advantage of this great resource they have – their customers. Customer feedback on products and services, as a part of a company's online reputation, can be hugely beneficial in marketing those products and services. Best part is customer feedback monitoring does not require a large budget or resource allocations; just a set strategy, consistent processes, and the heart of customer service that makes businesses successful.

First, if you question whether customer reviews make a difference, consider:

• 70% of online customers say they trust posted customer opinions
• 24% of small businesses say an online review had a positive impact while only 4% reported a negative impact
• 88% of consumers perform internet research before they buy a product online

You also get to directly identify happy customers who can become primary influencers. As for negative reviews, ask yourself about some of the more confrontational consumer or business experiences you've had that were resolved to your liking – did that solidify a longer term commitment for you?

Policies and Procedures: To make this manageable and successful, be sure to establish a procedure for addressing feedback. First, be consistent with customer service across the enterprise (online and offline), i.e., leverage what already exists internally as a starting point. Just make sure to keep the customer experience and the goal of converting a repeat customer in mind.

Also, given the power/cost of 'space' on the web, be sure to publish customer-centric feedback policies for customers to see. Let them know you are listening/engaging to help them. Just make sure that you keep it KISS (keep is simple sam) for employees and customers. This is what a process could look like at the highest level:

If you still need to be sold, consider these benefit bullets and then contact me – there is so much unlocked potential in your customers:

• Converting unhappy customers creates repeat business and advocates for recruiting new customers
• Working through resolution processes allows companies to learn about and prevent issues from happening in the future
• While not all issues can be resolved – a few negative reviews will make positive reviews look more realistic

Have folks out there initiated similar strategies? How have initial or long term results looked? Any improvement suggestions for the high level process?