Getting to the customer is the greatest challenge every business has. Once we get the customer the goal is to keep this customer coming back again and again. If we are really lucky we might get this customer to joyfully and adamantly recommend our business to their friends, family and associates. Many would agree that the real turning point in any business is when people start coming to you!
Traditional advertising, marketing, and public relations still work to meet this challenge but require increasing personal and financial resources in order to be truly effective. Traditional customer loyalty programs require further expense and complexity.
At the same time the traditional consumer and business partner is becoming much more sophisticated than ever before. They expect a relevant information exchange, rapid response and communication from whomever they do business with.
All our customers have an expectation that they should be able to get information about us on their search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), recommendations and referrals on Linked In, get the real scoop on us from their friends and family on Facebook , understand what we know and the way we do business from our Blog (web log), rapidly find information that is relevant to them on our web page, get updates on their e-mail, and get instantaneous announcements and critical information on Twitter.
While all of these technologies and options can be overwhelming, social networks and the web is presenting a unique set of opportunities to get closer to our customers, bring them together as a group and utilize them to access an even wider base of new customers through referrals. Proper management of these new platforms will give us the opportunity to better anticipate what our virtual base wants and provide it to them, increase their loyalty, and improve their overall satisfaction.
The information gathered through these exchanges will allow us to more effectively target our traditional marketing and publications dollars so that we get a wider reach on the same budget. These efforts are further enhanced by utilizing the new media options provided by the web.
As we utilize this new ecosystem of solutions we have an opportunity to get a bumper crop of growth!