The Burrito King

As I was shopping in the Circuit City liquidation craze yesterday I was prompted to write about how difficult these times may be for businesses but more so how the ones that are still around can take advantage of the time to secure their future.

Businesses today need to be thinking about how to differentiate their business and capture customer loyalty today in order to ride the wave of spending that will come in the future or grab the dollars that are in the market today. Consumer spending will turn around in the future and when it does will they choose you?

Studies have shown that building a relationship with customer can increase your business double digits and who wouldn’t want that. Can social marketing help you with this? YES. Just consider some of these numbers from companies that have implemented programs.

Dell – Dell’s forums and message boards have received over 1,000 ideas of howto better their products. They have over 4,000 conversations about consumer problems.

Sony – Sony’s Backstage 101, Digital Darkroom and Frontline Focus Groups reported that 78% of their users are more likely to buy Sony and reported sales increasing 16% yoy.

Dollar Rent a Car – even with a shrinking market and strong competition, in the first four months of the campaign Dollar’s revenues at La Guardia were up 20% compared with the previous four months. Revenues in 2007 grew 24% year over year.

So what can your marketing departments do in 2009 to engage your consumers and turn that relationship into buying power and brand advocates for your brand? Even with marketing departments cutting budgets some 15-30%  you should be considering re-arranging the existing marketing budgets to incorporate some of the below programs that have proved successful for others.

            Forums & Message Boards– do you have forums on your site to help with:

a.       Customer service issues and avoid an expensive service call

b.      Gathering customer feedback, ideas to better your products

c.       Start to build your community and gather data on consumers

Content – instead of building one TV commercial consider the below and syndicate that content across the web.

a.       Content that helps users understand how to get the most out of category of products.

b.      Develop content to support your top 20 Service Call Issues

c.       How-to guides about how to use your product in their lives. This is not about speed/feeds or set-up it’s about how to take the best outdoor photo or restore an old photo.

Embed your brand into social networks – this is not a sales pitch or about setting up a Product Fan Page. It’s about providing relevant information and getting feedback.

a.       Set up a twitter account and provide industry information, case studies, discounts, etc.

b.      Facebook/MySpace – set up sponsored groups/fan pages about your industry or category that can help users. Dell set up a Social Media guide for small business on FB. Visa set up a business network for small businesses to share information about their companies and find partners.

c.       Do a blog if relevant or if you have heavy content create your own Youtube channel.

Branded Communities – depending on your product/category try creating one or all of the following.

a.       Research community – an online focus group can not only gain valuable insight but can begin to build your community

b.      Education-Social Network Community – set up a community around key categories within your industry. Like a digital photography community, scrapbooking, SMB issues, fitness, finances, etc.

c.       Employee/Vendor communities – these can share best practices from other divisions, improve performance and sharing documents, answering questions, etc.

Theses are just some of the things you can do today to engage your consumers, improve brand loyalty and gain key insights that will help you get the most of the dollars spent in the market today and prepare yourself to be the brand of choice when spending increases in the future.

Invest in your consumers today so that they will invest in you tomorrow.