Use Social Media to Increase Customer Retention

With the digital developments of today, it’s evident that social media has been embedded into our daily lives. Social media has transformed our interactions, engagements, and communications with one another. These changes have been so impactful that businesses started adopting social media into their marketing strategies to stay relevant. 

For businesses, social media has presented an opportunity to directly interact with its clients. This avenue has allowed companies to learn the personal stories of their clients, gain valuable feedback, and build lasting relationships. By maximizing these social media interactions with customers, companies reap the positive benefits of having a better customer retention rate. 

In this guide, we explore the ways that a business can improve its customer retention rate by utilizing its social media channels. From understanding what your customers want, building a strong company presence, and crafting high-quality content for increased engagements. We’ve created a roadmap fit for any organization looking to improve its customer retention rate.

Are you ready to enhance your social media’s effectiveness? Let’s dive in.

What is customer retention?

Before we get into how you can maximize your social media channels, the first thing you should do is understand what you’re working towards. Learning what customer retention is and why businesses are always trying to increase it is critical to your mission, simply because you can’t fix what you don’t know.

So, what is customer retention? Customer retention is the ability of an organization to keep its base of customers over time. There are multiple factors that are taken into consideration as to why clients continue to choose you over your competitors, some of these are:

• Customer satisfaction
• Customer behavior
• Product quality
• Branding

Given the factors above, it’s safe to assume that customer retention is reliant on multiple factors that directly relate to your company. 

Why should you focus on customer retention?

Acquiring customers takes a considerable amount of effort and financial resources, that’s why once you’ve attracted a new client, you should focus your efforts on keeping them – especially because it’s a lot cheaper to retain old clients than gain new ones. 

Companies love repeat customers, why? Because research has shown that they spend a lot more than new consumers. In fact, studies have shown that at least 65% of a company’s revenue comes from its repeat clients.

Happy customers are also more likely to sing praises about your company. Now, that’s an effective marketing tool that’s completely free. 

How to solve for customer retention rate

As we’ve mentioned above, customer retention is an important aspect of any business. So, it’s crucial that you understand your company’s current customer retention rate to see where and how you can improve. 

To help you get started, we’ve written the formula computing for your business’ customer retention rate:

(Total Number of Customers - Number of New Customers )Total Number of Customers Since the Start x 100 = Retention Rate

Now that you have the formula, let’s put it to the test. So, let’s say that you wanted to check your company’s retention rate for the previous year. 

After checking your records, you found the following information:

• At the start of the year, you had 892 customers.

• Between January and December of last year, you gained 189 new customers.
• By the year’s end, you had a total of 732 customers.

Given these numbers, this is what your retention rate will look like:

(732 - 189)892 x 100 = 60.9%

According to the formula, you have a retention rate of 60.9%. This is a good value to have but, how good it is, depends on your industry. Different industries have different customer retention benchmarks. To see if your company is performing up to your industry’s standard, you can do a quick search for retention rates for businesses like yours. 

Maximizing your social media channels to enhance customer retention

Now that you know what customer retention is and where your company stands, it’s time to set your sights on improving customer satisfaction. Your customer’s satisfaction has been proven to be a driver of retention. One aspect that you can focus on to keep your clients happy is to maximize your communication channels to provide them with a good experience with your brand.

Since social media has become an integral part of the marketing strategy for most businesses, it’s time that you exercise some of the best practices in servicing your customers on social media. 

In this section, we talk about some actions you can take to utilize your social media channels to enhance customer retention. 

Build a strong social media presence

The first step in making your mark on social media is to build a strong brand and a stronger marketing strategy. You’ll want to cover your bases and understand who you’re talking to, what your goals are, and how you’re going to execute them.

Once you’ve narrowed down who your target market is, you’ll want to create a content plan that appeals to them. As you craft this strategy, you shouldn’t forget to follow your company’s branding, write according to your organization’s voice, and adapt your company's tone depending on the publishing platform.

For example, memes are great conversation starters if you’re aiming for a younger demographic. Memes can show that your company doesn’t take itself too seriously and that you can keep up with trends. So, while the younger generation can appreciate this kind of communication tactic, the older ones may not understand it all. 

Before we move on to the next step, we have a small tip: You probably have multiple social media channels for your company. To give your customers a better experience, keep the same username across these platforms. That way your customers can easily find you.

Create valuable content

Social media is more than just how your page looks. You may have an amazing feed but, if you’re not giving your customers value, they may not engage with your brand at all.

Going the extra mile by writing informational captions and designing colorful infographics can be a creative way to dole out helpful content for your clients. Use your brand’s social media channels to share tips, tricks, and promos for your loyal customers.

Don’t be afraid to use your channel to create specific offers for your clients, talk about your advocacies, and promote any exclusive events you may have. Remember! Your mission is to provide value and foster meaningful connections with your visitors.

By creating impactful content like what we’ve mentioned above, you’ll surely keep engagement and customer retention at an all-time high. 

Another small tip: You can keep your finger on the pulse and set up your Google Alerts to tell you when people are talking about your brand. Take note of these trends and see how you can adapt them to your strategy.

Offer exclusive discounts and promotions

Use your social media to do good work for your clients and share exclusive discounts and promos for them. Let’s face it, everyone loves a good steal, and what better way to keep clients happy than to let them know that you have deals lined up for them?

By using your social media channel to publish any discounts, promos, and loyalty programs you may have, you can drive engagement up and keep customer retention rates high.

Some brands use online shopping and social media to their advantage by offering exclusive discounts and products to their followers. 

Other companies combine the power of social media for their physical sales by asking clients to take screenshots of their posts to show to their staff for an in-store discount. 

Engage with your customers

Have we mentioned how important it is that you utilize your social media channels to engage with your customers? It’s true, customers love it when companies recognize them for their efforts.

Here are some steps you can take to improve your customer service through social media. 

• Reply to their posts
• Reshare their stories
• Promptly reply to their messages
• Repost their content – with consent, of course.

Resharing stories and reposting photos are great ways to increase your social media content. The best part? It’s absolutely free! So, show off your client’s latest snaps and take advantage of user-generated media for your company. 

In addition to the benefit above, social media lessens the gap between your brand and its market. By taking the time to personally reply to messages from customers you can increase customer satisfaction. You can also take this opportunity to ask if they can write a review for your company on Yelp or Google - if they’ve had a great experience with your services and products.

Monitor your customer’s feedback

Studies have shown that 77% of consumers have higher opinions of brands that implement customer feedback. So, don’t just read the feedback you receive, put it to good use and implement it. Not only will you improve your services, but you also show your clients that you take their feedback seriously and are open to improving your services. 

While it’s true that replying to messages can be overwhelming and time-consuming, you can simplify this process by having a template of responses ready to be copied and pasted.

Conclusion

We’ve talked about how customer retention is more than just the discounts and promotions your offer. It’s also about the experience and care you provide for your customers. 

Now, with the numerous social media channels that you handle, it can be difficult to stay on top of all of them. That being said, you may want to find a software that can simplify your job by keeping all of your inboxes in one place; giving you data about your company’s social media performance whenever you need it; and allowing you to schedule posts in advance to automate your workflow.

If you’re looking for a powerful software that can do the tasks we’ve mentioned above, why not check out Iconosquare? Iconosquare can provide you with a platform where you can manage all of your social media accounts in one place. 

Simplify your life as a social media marketer, choose Iconosquare. Reach out to us today and get a FREE demo! 

How do you improve your customer retention using your social media channels?

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