Using social media for generating advocacy, reputation management, and customer service

Ivan CroxfordGeneral Manager, Digital Marketing

Services,BT Business

Engaging customers is still largely an offline activity by SMEs

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Face toFace

Phone Email Directmail

OwnWebsite

Most popularcomms methods

Research: Voice of the SME 2009

But is that how Consumers are engaging with businesses?

• 41% of consumers use search engines when researching new service providers and products (Verdict Research)

• 92% of people trust Word of Mouth as the best source of new product ideas (GfK/NOP/Roper)

• 62% of shoppers consult online communities before making a purchase. Only 27% of consumers go directly to the retailer. Because:–1. communities offer me unbiased facts about products

and services;–2. I trust the views of communities more than merchants;–3. communities help me find the best deal available.

(Quidco)

Do you influence WoM or is it out of your control?

70%

Smaller businesses are adapting … with financial services in the front line!

• 62% rate high search engine rankings on sites such as Google as very important to their business (BT Business Pulse 2009)

• 46% of companies with a turnover of less than £1 million say that social media provide tremendous opportunities for their business. Just 16% of companies with annual revenues of more than £150 million feel the same. (Econsultancy)

• 20% of SMEs are using support forums, Twitter and blogs to market their business and attract and retain customers (BT Business Pulse 2009)

• Financial services companies are:–the most prolific online advertisers, –most avid bloggers and –most likely to have dedicated marketing resources–But trailing in using online communities ….. (Voice of the SME

2009)

Social media enables SMEs to build stronger relationships with their customers

• Boost your online reputation

• Establish stronger connections with your existing customers

• Turn visitors, into customers, into advocates, into sales people

Tread carefully!

“It takes twenty years to build a

reputation, and five minutes to ruin it …”

Warren Buffett

But being open and transparent pays off!

“I honestly believe that if Redfin were stripped

absolutely bare for all the world to see, naked and

humiliated in the sunlight, more people would do

business with us”

Glenn Kelman, CEO

BT Tradespace …. A place for social commerce

Get Noticed:–Easy to set up business profiles –Strong SEO–Video–Analytics–Publish to Twitter

Build your reputation:–Recommendations/ fans /

Testimonials–Community discussions–Ask questions / Get Feedback /

Solve customer problems

Win more business:Traffic to your web siteSell onlineTake bookings

Examples

Keep updates

informative and not too

salesy

Add videos and images

Make testimonials part of your

business process

Turn your network into a

WoM marketing tool

Customer service is the

new marketing

Making online customer service work for your business

• Start the conversation: Seed content with common questions

• Promote the service in your customer comms – pre-sales and post sales

• Deal with issues openly – how you react to live service issues bolsters your online reputation

• Make it your fastest way to deal with customer service issues

In social media, your time is money …

• Most active Businesses on Tradespace get up to 20x more visits than the least active Tradespacers

• 40% of visitors to a Tradespace profile with video stay longer than 5 mins. Without video its only 20%

• Businesses that make the most sales on Tradespace have 3x the number of fans than an average user

• 72% of the top viewed profiles have been updated in the last three weeks

• Top 50 viewed Tradespaces have at least two different types of content e.g. photos, videos, news posts…