December 4, 2009

There are many times or reasons that a small business will receive an influx of new customers -- such as around the holidays for retail stores, during a new product or service launch, or after a local advertising campaign.  While new customers are great, returning customers are even better.  Social media offers a number of opportunities to turn your new and existing customers into repeat customers and fans.

Hook New Customers on Social Media

The first thing you should do is direct new customers to your social media accounts.  A good way to do that is to incentivize that act of becoming your friend, fan, or follower.  Offer those who have just made a purchase a discount on future business in the form of a coupon, but tie it to your social media presence.  For example, retailers could let customers know at point of sale that if they become a fan of your business on Facebook, they'll receive exclusive offers for discounts on future purchases.  Or customers could be given instructions to tweet out a special hashtag with a message about your store after they follow your Twitter account, and once that's done you could send them a direct message with a special offer.

This is not unlike the common practice of taking down email or mailing addresses for mailing lists, but social media puts the user more in control since, when properly used, it is a two-way medium.  That's actually an advantage to small business owners because active, engaged customers will be more likely to give you their attention. 

Concentrate on Building a Community

Once you have users signed up to follow you on social media sites, the trick to retaining them as customers is to keep them wanting to come back.  That means constantly engaging them with new content, exclusive offers, and information they can't get elsewhere.  The best way to grow your community is to consistently offer them quality content.  That means forgoing the sales pitch most of the time.  

Customers join communities because of the quality of information and because they want to be privy to news about sales, coupons, deals, new products, or changes to your business (e.g., new hours, changed location, or updated menu items).  But that doesn't mean they want to receive constant sales come-ons.  Delivering quality, helpful tips and information to your customers will make them more likely to want to do business with you and help build your online community.

Restaurants could share recipes or tips for properly reheating leftovers, for example, while plumbers could offer instructions for simple home fixes.  Retailers could offer honest reviews of new products, and doctors could offer alerts about the latest medical research or health care policy updates.  Get creative -- what sorts of information can you provide your customer community?  This type of content will help to build your social media community and turn new buyers into return customers.

Play Favorites

Social media is a great place to promote your general sales and events, but you should also consider offering your social media fans exclusive deals that cannot be had elsewhere.  Online-only offers will keep fans returning for more and it will help to build a community around your store, service, or brand, which is what social media is all about.  

It's certainly true that you should treat all of your customers well, but it doesn't mean you should treat them all the same. Those customers that have taken the time to sign up as your fan, friend, or follower have shown a heightened interest in your brand that should be recognized.  By plying your social media followers with occasional exclusive deals or discounts, you can help turn customers into fans that will evangelize your business to others.  That way, you can turn new customers, into return customers, who in turn attract more new customers for you.  That's the type of cycle that social media, when put to work properly, can help you create.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, RBFried  

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Join the conversation ( 6 )

• Steven Jenkins 2 years 4 months and 29 days ago

  

  Over the year we have seen an increase in the amount of "social" originated traffic that has come to http://www.imintrouble.ca. Our focus in the new year will be to start building community more and more.....But as this trend become the standard...... Will it's effects not be deluted?-S Jenkinswww.imintrouble.ca

• Reid Peterson 2 years 4 months and 29 days ago

  

  If you were to "spy" on your FB friends and Twitter followers, you might notice that the majority of them are "fans" of dozens (and some hundreds) of businesses, plus also following hundreds (and some thousands) of others on Twitter. I mention this to point out the fact that if you're using social media to play favorites and offer specials and promotions there, you'd better have some consistency and repetition so that your fans and followers are seeing your content.

• PC Response4u PC Response4u 2 years 5 months and 0 days ago

  

  Nice write up and would have to agree that this is a good way to retain customers and also get the all important repeat sales through using such social media networking sites, if offering a discount on a repeat sale retains a customer then makes perfect sense to me... rather then lose a sale to a rival company.I am hoping that this is as successful for many other companies as it is for www.pcresponse4u.co.uk in the new year of 2010!

• Pinny Cohen 2 years 5 months and 0 days ago

  

  It's also very important to "be real", as I explain here:http://www.pinnycohen.com/2009/12/23/marketing-wisdom/social-media-marketing/

• Manuel Martinez 2 years 5 months and 3 days ago

  

  I am the founder of ProjectGreenBag.com. We found a tremendous boost in sales and traffic from our social media sites. We now have many supportive and loyal fans! http://www.ProjectGreenBag.com

• Jill Fehrenbacher 2 years 5 months and 15 days ago

  

  Great points, all. As the web continually becomes more and more real-time, our customer interactions will too. It's going to be crucial in the coming years, and given small businesses slant toward customer service, it's a point on which SBOs will be able to differentiate from larger brands and in some cases oust competitors.