Are you struggling to promote your newly launched product among the masses? Do you have doubts about how to increase the reach of your service? Are you confused about how to build an online market for your start-up? Do you want to learn how to use social media as a marketing tool? Well, this article might be a good start to learn about social media marketing.
As recent years saw the rise of social media platforms, they went from being mere networking sites to essential tools to build brands. “Brand” here generally denotes all products, services as well as creative content. You can sell anything over social media if you can convince the audience about the quality of your product and how it can solve a consumer’s problem.
Among social media apps, one of the most popular applications used, to build brands has been Instagram. Owing to its multiple interactive features and more than a billion active users with at least 500 million users accessing the site daily, Instagram is a go-to app for brand promotion. In this article we will extensively discuss one particular aspect of social media marketing, that is more essential than realized – customer feedback.
Customer feedback and its importance
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” - Bill Gates
Building products and gaining a customer base cannot be complete without feedback from customers, as they comprise the changes you should include in your product. It is the reviews one gets about their product or service from their customers based on what they liked or disliked. You cannot build a perfect product without knowing what is presently wrong with it, which only customers can highlight the best. They provide a better and impartial perspective about your product and changes based on feedback can ensure growth and improvement. It is one of the measurement tools for the success of your brand, which is why more enterprises these days are focusing on customer reviews.
Around 89% of shoppers read reviews before purchasing anything online and 79% of consumers say they trust online reviews equivalent to personal recommendations. More and better the customer feedbacks, more people will be interested, which ultimately brings an increase in popularity. As the social media age provides a platform for the whole world to interact, businesses are using better marketing strategies and are more concerned about product reviews.
Following are five of the most efficient strategies to collect customer feedback on Instagram one must try while building a strong online following for their brands or services:
1. One on one customer interaction through inbox messages
Instagram makes customer-seller interactions a lot easier even if you might not follow their accounts. As your following flourishes, it becomes increasingly difficult to respond to all customer queries single-handedly. But responding to as many messages or reviews as possible assures customers and builds their trust.
It is efficient to hire people to manage your business’s social media accounts, as full-time jobs or internships, if you wish to reach each and every query, as well as for posting regularly. For accounts you do not follow, message requests appear on the top-right corner, which runs the probability of remaining unnoticed. Hence, you might want to check the requests as well from time and again, and turn on your notifications by selecting push notifications under settings, to ensure no customer message goes unanswered.
2. Monitoring brand mentions
You can politely request your customers to mention or tag your page whenever they share your products or post anything related to them, as this can help gain opinions from people out of your customer sphere. Brand mentions do increase reach, but it is even better if a customer can spread positive reviews about your business. It helps you receive more perspectives from people and an idea about where your business stands.
Similarly partnering with social media influencers, sending them your products to try and review, can help start conversations about your business on a larger scale. With their already built following, popularising your brand becomes easier.
3. Asking questions in captions and stories
Besides regular content, questions in post captions can prompt conversations in comments, and more follower responses. Ask about their experiences related to your product or how it helped the customer and what new modifications they wish to see. Try reading their comments and responding to them, or at least reacting to the comments using Instagram emoji reactions.
Using question stickers like DM me stickers in Instagram stories and replying back to them is also equally effective and engaging for your audience. You can even use questions similar to CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) questions in your stories. These are simple yet tactful interactive approaches one can try to keep their business page more active.
4. Creating polls in Instagram stories
Instagram includes a lot of features, which if rightly used can definitely boost your audience. Polls sticker in stories is a great way to collect customer feedback instantly and can help you study your customers’ likes and wishes. For example, if it is a poll between any two products you create, you might get to know which ones are the customers’ most and least favorite, i.e., an easy comparison study.
Based on the number of people generally responding you can also find out more about your target audience and your regular customers. If you wish to gain more responses in polls, you can include polls while conducting giveaways, like as a registration step for entering the giveaway as most e-commerce companies do. People like to enter giveaways for the free goods and are mostly ready to fill out customer feedback quizzes as a prerequisite.
5. Know your stickers
Instagram is a hub of interactive quirky stickers serving many purposes at once. The poll and questions stickers as already mentioned, are an easy way for instant reviews and for hosting Q&A sessions.
There is also the Quiz sticker, which not only helps collect feedback but can be used to educate or aware people of the greater purpose of your brand and the problems you wish to resolve for your customers. Also, the emoji slider sticker is an interesting measurement tool to learn about how your customers feel about your brand. Remember to use relevant stickers based on your inquiry.
Be regularly active on social media
Lastly, consistency is the ultimate key. To engage better, you have to post and interact daily and try to revolve your content more around your consumers. Online marketing has been a cost-effective yet efficient way to gain a large audience and advertise with low or no budget at all. Try posting quality content that can do justice to your products, and follow trends especially using business-centric audios. Hashtags are also a great way to reach people searching for content relevant to your business and those who can be a potential target audience.
Working on customer feedback can help earn loyal customers, who at times can help business growth more than marketing. Customer satisfaction should be our fundamental goal, and keeping existing customers satisfied should be equally important as chasing new customers. Also work continuously towards your brand, as quality will speak for itself.
Also read:
- Importance of Social Media Marketing for Business Growth
- Social Media – Blessing or Bane?
- How to Promote YouTube Videos Via Social Media Channels
- How Social Media Is Affecting Our Mindset and Style of Living?
- Social Media and Stress
- Why do some People Become Dependent on Social Media?
- Top Tips to Create Amazing Music Videos for YouTube
- The Impact of Smartphones on the Development of Children
