How do we align the customer experience with social media?
This was the main topic of discussion in our client meeting the other day. With so much emphasis being placed on integrating social media into the marketing mix, this was a conversation about its impact on the total customer experience.
Given this perspective, many conversations about social media start too far downstream. First, even those that begin with objectives, audiences and strategies often bypass the fact that effective brand management is an organization-wide endeavor.
What this means is that all internal stakeholders across business functions need to play together on the same team, as audiences who are tweeting, posting, updating and uploading don’t care much about individual silo practices. And this means that an effective social media program must be “socialized” across the organization, as all disciplines must work together to deliver the brand promise. And delivering this promise depends on having the processes and systems in place to enable this to happen.
So how will your organization align the real-world customer experience with social media:
• how should you/will you respond to customer’s real-time questions, comments or concerns?
• which conversations are more important to business and relationships, and how do you know?
• how will you empower your customers so that they become an extension of your marketing and your sales force, and add value back to your brand?
These are a few of the questions we discussed in our meeting the other day. If you have any thoughts about this subject, please share.
Eric,
I love your approach of going back to the brand promise. Really it’s where all your marketing activity starts.
I would add a couple of other questions to your list:
How will you be the same in social media channels as you are in real life, at the point of the customer’s experience?
Regarding social media overall: Will my customer use it?
Jay,
Thanks for taking the time to read, and for your comments.
I believe overwhelmingly the answer to your second question is yes. All the facts and trends support that customers are increasingly engaging through social channels. And there’s no reason to believe that the growth trend will slow. I think your first question is fundamental to my post. Aligning experiences, regardless of channel, is critical to successful brand-building. So your question — how will you be the same — is one that organizations across all customer-facing functions must collectively address.
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RT @ericbrody Aligning the real-world healthcare brand experience with social media [link to post]
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Promotion needs to concentrate on the unique selling point / differentiator of the product you are selling, so this would be promotion through media (the choice of which depends on place