Page 73 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

To be included in the consideration stage, use tactics such as product compari-
sons, special promotions, sales discounts, decision tools, and calculators to con-
vince prospects.

The consideration stage is arguably the most important one because this is the
point at which you can snag a loyal customer or forever lose one to a competitor.

Social media marketing plays the most important role at this stage. This is because
the referent, expert, and positional influencers (which we define in Chapter 1)
help a prospect determine whether he should make the purchasing decision.
Increasingly, while making choices between different products, prospective cus-
tomers look to each other for advice and guidance.

People ask their friends for advice, search the web for customer reviews, and
read expert opinions from credible third-party sources. In fact, a study titled,
“On Brands and Word of Mouth” that appeared in the Journal of Marketing
Research in August 2013 showed that people spread the word on brands online
for three reasons: social, functional, and emotional. No longer is it enough to
know that people share product and brand opinions online; you need to pay
attention to what sharing takes place in your product category and the motiva-
tions that drive it.

Your role at this stage is primarily connecting that prospective customer with
these credible third-party sources of information. Now, you may feel that con-
necting a prospective customer to a bad review or to another customer who may
not have liked the product is a bad idea, but it isn’t necessarily so. Prospective
customers are looking for the best information about a product, and they respect
companies that help them research the product more thoroughly. This is impor-
tant because as a Forbes 2018 study pointed out, 71 percent of consumers who
have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recom-
mend the brand to their friends and family. With that in mind, don’t hesitate to
use your existing customers to help you market to your prospective customers. It
only helps.

You can’t hide bad reviews on the web, and by pointing to all the reviews and not
just the good ones, you establish credibility with your prospective customer.
(Besides, we would hope that the positive reviews far outweigh the negative ones.)
It is critical to note that reviews do make a big difference, and it is better to have
some bad reviews than none at all. In fact, the number of reviews and average rat-
ing on a product correlate closely with conversion to purchase, according to a
March 2014 Bazaarvoice study on Internet Retailers.

CHAPTER 3 Getting in the Social Media Marketing Frame of Mind 57