When Customers Give Ultimatums & How To Keep Your Cool

Although this next blog isn't necessarily related to marketing, it has a good message that can help keep your online reputation clean (which is directed related to your online marketing campaign). It all started with a customer last week that had an unfortunate experience with our service. One of our contracted travel providers had to make a last minute change on the reservation which was not to the satisfaction of the guest. After a few attempts to satisfy the customer with freebies and credits, we thought we weathered the storm since there was no word back from the guest for almost a week. It wasn't long after the customer returned home that she left a barrage of emails expressing her dissatisfaction. Worst of all, she threatened to report us to consumer agencies and write terrible reviews about our company on trusted websites. We were given an ultimatum and it was an important we reacted carefully to avoid any additional work or negative feedback throughout the internet.

Now first off, I typically have the tendency to feel anger when I see these emails from customers. Especially since my company always gives an extraordinary effort to compensate guests and this customer was still not satisfied. Lately, my attitude has changed because this is not necessarily a complaint as much as a strategy from the customer. The customer strategy is as follows...

1) Tell the business what you want.
2) If you don't get what you want, threaten them lawyers, bad write-ups, etc...
3) If that still doesn't work, at least make them feel REALLY bad about what they did to you.
4) If you still have time, write bad reviews anyway because it makes you feel good.

So what does a business owner do if they have a customer like this? First off, don't promise anything until you get all the information to give a proper response. It's too common these days that businesses will make decisions from emotion or speculation. Give the customer a chance to speak and try to do it through email so you have documentation of it. After you get all the information, make a decision on what you want to do. Whatever you do, deliver on every promise you make and don't make it contingent on whether or not they write bad reviews. Trust me, they will write them anyway and this could create an opening for them to ask for more. Consumers are smart and they know how a bad reputation can affect your business. They use these bargaining chips to their advantage so don't make it seem like a big deal. Thankfully you have the ability to respond to most reviews these days so business owners have a voice.

And lastly, the most important advice is to be friendly and understanding no matter how bad the situation can be. The minute you lose your cool and become disrespectful, the customer is fueled and ready to do damage. Just think about it; when do we make our worst mistakes in life? When we make decisions out of impulse or pure emotion! Think about it...

Don't Let Social Media Put You Out of Business

Ok, so maybe my title is a little misleading, but I promise I have a good point to this blog! So the other day I was sitting in my office thinking what I was going to post to my business facebook page. As any good marketing person knows, social media is a great way to reach customers on a more intimate level right? So I sat there for 5 minutes thinking on what to say, but then I had a phone call. I then quickly went back to it thinking a little more about what to post. I wanted to make it engaging so users wouldn't let it fall to the bottom of their news feed with Uncle Bob's post about how he caught a bass on his last fishing trip. So finally I came up with a good post and sent it out to the facebook world. After an hour, I looked at the facebook post and saw 4 measly likes and no comments. I thought to myself, "Why in the heck do i waste my time with social media if I struggle to get a response from users?" So I acted on my thoughts and really thought about why I do so much social media when my returns seems to be minimal. Was I letting the social norm of creating and managing  a Facebook Business page dictate my involvement with social media? I then wrote down these questions to myself and tried to figure out if social media was really worth it.

1) How much time do I spend posting and managing my social media business pages?
So if I took the above scenario in account, I spent 10 minutes just making/monitoring a post on facebook. I also have a Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus page I currently manage. I post just about every single day and sometimes more than once. Let's say 30 minutes per day is spent on managing social media, which is not too far fetched for a small business. In a given year, that's more than a month worth of managing social media! As they say, time is money, so I could easily value these 185 hours at $3500.

2) Can I track sales to my website from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube..? What are they?
Using my site analytics, I was able to track sales from the SM websites (Google Analytics has conversion tracking, it's a must have!). The sales numbers were poor and did not reflect the amount of effort I put in. The numbers do not include phone sales, but this is only a small percentage of our business so it wouldn't have made a big difference. The total that was reported on my GA was just a little more than the hours I put in. Depressing? Yes...

3) If I spent some money on SM advertising, would it help?
I thought to myself at one time that maybe I need to be more aggressive on Facebook and advertise.  Maybe I should promote more posts or do some general banner advertising. Maybe I need to dedicate someone to interact with the users more closely. Well, I tried all of that earlier this year and the results were poor at best. I promoted posts with promo codes and very aggressive deals, but little to no results. I even tried posting local events and pictures of the area, but what does my company get out of that other than a few likes?

4) What posts in the past had the most response?
I looked at my previous posts and saw that my best response was when we gave away free stuff. So does that mean I have to give away free stuff to get someones attention? I never really saw an uptick in sales in the item we were giving away, even with an aggressive promo.

So I've come to the conclusion my strategy wasn't cost effective and I needed to make some changes.

-Considering that Social Media can help build trust in a website or company, I continued my pursuit on building a strong fan base on my social networks by adding widgets on my website, blog, and email blast. My nearly 3000 FB fans spoke louder than a post about the weather.

-I decided to post more infrequently, but enough to keep my brand in front of my past customers. Since my customers are coming back once every year, there is no point to bombard them with promos and advertisements that they can't take advantage of. I instead focused on keeping them updated with what's going on in our destinations. This included interesting photos and stories that tied into the products we were selling. What I didn't want to do is for someone to stop following our social networks so I was conservative with my postings. I treated my social networks as a digital billboard and I was more concerned with my post impressions than my interactions.

-I utilized the Google Plus extension for my Google Adwords campaign, that has helped increase my followers on Google Plus, but also my sales. If you don't have a Google Plus Page, make one now! it helps your SEO.

If you are using several weeks (or even months) of your work year to manage your social networks, then it's time to reevaluate your social media strategy unless you are seeing results that are measurable (especially if you're a small operation). Don't let the media or other competitors dictate how much time you need to spend with social media.  This is something you need to figure out on your own. Could you be using that 20 or 30 minutes per day doing something else that will give you a better ROI? Don't rule out old fashioned grassroot marketing such as meeting clients/partners face to face.

Now that I told you a little about my story, it's time to take a closer look at how much time you spend advertising your business on social media and see if the results measure up. What do you find?