Social Media: Encourage Customers to Create Social Proofs

I have always believed that social media marketing is a referral marketing. To succeed, in this kind of marketing space, marketers need to create ample opportunities to enable their customers to showcase social referrals. Any kind of reward would provide an ideal back-up for this kind of marketing strategy.

What makes social referrals unique?

Today's customers are techno-savvy. Before making any buying decision they tend to search for company information, product review or customers' feedback. Their final decision to buy the product is largely depended on the opinion they form after going through available product information. Instead of spending hours on company website to read product information they are more interested in reading live experience of customers. In such scenario, your customer testimonials available on different platforms form a major part of your lead generation program.

We have often seen marketers add customer testimonials on their website. However, testimonials or referrals available on social sites considered to be authentic and true. This makes the brand more trust-worthy and customer-friendly.

How marketers can encourage?

For me, social media marketing is all about human. It has humanized the whole marketing scenario. Be it a selfie or plain text, customer testimonials available on social platforms not only makes brands real but also makes it humanized. It has provided marketers an opportunity to convert these referrals into creating new customer base.

The whole idea is to keep your existing customers happy and use them to create new ones. Marketers can have multiple social channels to use these referrals for their own benefits.

Here are some ways through which marketers can encourage social referrals.

1) Incentive-based programs

2) Special discounts

3) Loyalty programs

4) Special contests and announcements

5) Special recognition

It is very important to believe the fact that humanizing marketing concepts and taking customers seriously are two important basics of social media marketing.