For many organizations, listening and engaging customers has always played an integral role in their marketing strategy. With the proliferation of Social Media over the past few years, engaging customers has gone beyond providing an individual and one directional mechanism for organizations to understand their customers.
The redesign of Samsung USA’s website is a key example; front and center on the company’s home page is a social hub allowing visitor’s to ‘Join the Conversation’ by answering engaging surveys, Tweeting reviews, and recommending products through FaceBook. Through the website, Samsung has established a community of customers and staff where ideas, feedback and support are shared in a collaborative and (mostly) positive manner.
Embracing Social Media has had impressive results for Samsung. The statistics from the first 75 days of the redesigned site has been mapped out by JESS3, presented by thenextweb.com and show some remarkable figures:
Social Media has also helped to evolve the traditional face-to-face customer interaction and feedback methods. In-person surveys have long been employed to engage customers and elicit feedback; product ‘taste-tests’ are a prime example. The advent of mobile and tablet computing, together with widely available data networks and Social Media sites, have dramatically broadened the reach and effect of face-to-face marketing campaigns. QuickTapSurvey, an interactive tablet-based survey solution, features social media integration with FaceBook, Twitter, and Google Buzz, to leverage the social network of every user that participates in a survey. Ravin Shah, Head of Business Development at QuckTapSurvey, explains how Social Media has exploded the effectiveness of the face-to-face survey.
“Traditionally, in-person product surveys were effective because they not only exposed individual customers in the immediate vicinity to the product, but a ripple effect through word of mouth paid additional dividends over time. Now with Social Media, these dividends are greatly magnified and realized instantly. Imagine this: a teenager tries a brand new video game in a mall, participates in a survey ranking their favourite level, and publishes the results over FaceBook or Twitter. You have now engaged not just one individual, but their entire social network at once.”
Samsung and QuickTapSurvey are just two examples of organizations that have leveraged Social Media to more effectively engage customers. With the expanding global marketplace and increasingly fierce competition, Social Media is positioned to become a cornerstone in virtually every organization’s marketing strategy.
Submitted By: Rahim Lalani
Web References: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/12/14/1000-percent-increase-in-customer-engagement-samsung-shows-how-social-media-is-done/ , http://www.samsung.com/us/#latest-home, http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/files/2010/12/JESS3_Samsung_RedesignInfographic.jpeg, http://www.quicktapsurvey.com
To contact the author of this entry please email at: rahim_lalani@hotmail.com