Return to article listWhy Social Media Is Good For You—Really
The revolution is upon us. Your clients are seizing control of your marketing and client services departments—and that’s a good thing.
The phenomenon of consumers talking to consumers on the Internet, called variously Web 2.0, social media, or user generated content (UGC), means that your clients, prospects, business partners, and even rivals are sharing online cheers and jeers about your product, service, shop, or hotel. That’s good? Yes—and here’s why.
You now have a way of interacting with your clients—and understanding what they’re thinking—that’s more direct and immediate than any tool you had back when marketing sat in one tower, client services sat in another, and dissatisfied consumers griped in private to guest relations or client services, or simply took their dollars elsewhere. An effective social media strategy (particularly important for the hotel, travel, and retail industries) combines marketing and client or guest services and results in greater consumer satisfaction.
We’re accustomed to thinking of marketing and client services as two distinct departments. In this fast-obsolescing view, marketing was an extension of sales or branding. It generated single-direction communications about the company or property that were passively consumed by the client. In traditional, offline media, this took the form of direct mail or ads in print or broadcast outlets. Online, marketing was single-dimensional--websites, email and newsletter blasts, banner ads, and other non-interactive forms.
Client services (CS), over in the other tower, was usually its own department that dabbled in sales but normally had a different director or VP level executive (sometimes the hospitality industry calls this role ‘guest relations’ but it performs similar functions). Consumers would send in complaints, make comments or place orders in the privacy of this department or call center.
These consumer opinions were proprietary company information, but the folks telling consumers what they should want (marketing) and the folks hearing what consumers actually thought (CS) didn’t always communicate. If a company wanted information about its consumers, they either needed a slick internal way of funneling and gathering information from CS, or the marketing department had to perform focus groups, polls, and other types of studies.
On the consumer side, when prospective buyers wanted information on a company or hospitality destination, they could purchase directly, ask a friend, or rely on a professional source such as guidebooks or consumer reports. (The travel industry in particular has so many guidebooks that another layer was invented—travel book critic.)
Web 2.0 has created a client relations/marketing revolution. Online reviews have taken the content from the hands of the company and the “experts” and given the power to the common denominator. People are relying on each other to provide information to a much greater extent than they look to professional sources.
And this helps you how? With a proactive Web 2.0 strategy, it’s advantageous to everyone.
- Client services: As customers move online and begin to talk to each other, good CS and hospitality guest relations departments should be monitoring and analyzing the data and reacting just as they would to a letter or call from an offline client. Plus, the public scrutiny keeps you honest: improperly run CS departments will be ousted as uncaring responses or unforgiveable delays become public knowledge.
- Marketing: Social media is a wellspring of free customer opinion data. Not only does UGC illuminate trends in the making, but it offers immediate visibility. Brand police can react and respond swiftly to negative comments, or squelch attempts to hijack brand guidelines.
- Direct marketers: Pay-per-click and search-engine optimization campaigns can funnel information to areas where interested people are actually proven to congregate. Unlike magazines or newspapers, where marketers essentially guess who reads what section, we now know exactly where online viewers really are, thanks to online analytics.
- Clients: buying power ain’t what it used to be. It’s good to have blogging power.
By any name, social media/Web 2.0/UGC is a new paradigm that isn’t really complicated or hard to understand. It’s simply an extension of what we already know. Companies—particularly in retail and hospitality, where online reviews wield the greatest power—need to adjust and incorporate a proactive strategy, as more and more consumers move their information and opinions online.