#004 – Social Media, Customer Service, Best Practices & Recurring

Intro

On today’s show we’re continuing on the Online Business Roadmap and we will be looking at SOCIAL MEDIA, CUSTOMER SERVICE, BEST PRACTICES and RECURRING.

Welcome

Hey guys, and welcome to Episode 4 of the SystM Online Business Podcast.

I’m your host, Richard Bailey and in today’s episode we’re going to take the next steps along the roadmap to create an online business.

We have split the MANAGE process into 8 simple steps and in this episode we will be looking at the next four steps – which are SOCIAL MEDIA, CUSTOMER SERVICE, BEST PRACTICES and RECURRING

Ok, so let’s get started.

Social Media

Over the last few years, the use of social media as a marketing tool for small businesses has rocketed.

So now not just the giant multi-national franchised companies are making use of social media, but even the smallest of local, super-niched one man band companies can promote their products and services to a highly targeted audience.

To increase your chance of success with social media, you will need to choose the best place to spend your time. There are many social media platforms to choose from and knowing which ones to concentrate on, is paramount to your social success. Obviously video content is best suited to Youtube. Whereas long form text content is ideal for Medium. Shorter text content and/or images work well on Twitter and Facebook.

It also helps to plan your social media strategy well in advance. Perhaps plan content around certain specific dates like Christmas of Valentines Day or around dates specific to your niche eg. band t-shirt promotion when a band is touring or royal themed products at the time of a jubilee or royal wedding.

But the most important aspect of your social media content is that it must be social. It’s not a one way conversation like newspaper or television advertising. It’s a two way conversation with your audience or prospective customers. Perhaps ask a question or start a discussion.

Social media also requires a bit of restraint with the way you promote your business. Nobody likes to be “sold to” all the time. Get the balance right between promoting your products and services and creating discussions.

You can also join in other peoples discussion, as long as the topic is relevant, you don’t hijack the discussion and have the correct etiquette.

As different people comment on your content, you will run across different points of view, and you will need to handle negative comments in the right way. Probably the best way to quash negative comments is to reply, apologise if required, and offer to discuss further in private. This way people will see you are responsive yet don’t need to see all the gory details.

Numbers are a good way of tracking the popularity of your social media following. However don’t let the numbers be the only thing you focus on. It’s much better to have 100 highly targeted and responsive followers than 1000 people who don’t reply, don’t comment and not likely to becoming paying customers.

Your social media presence is perhaps one of the best ways to show people what your products or services are all about. Give value when ever you can and more people will check out your paid content.

Ideally your social media content should be light, reactive, yet fun.

Customer Service

As with any business, it’s imperative that you care for your customers. Creating a business that cares about customer service in turn creates loyal customers.

It’s reported that a loyal customer is four times more likely to buy from you, than a new customer. They also tend to spend more than new customers.

Loyal customers can also be your greatest fans and make a great source of referrals. So from giving a new customer a great service, you can turn them into loyal customers, who will not just buy more, spend more, but will also bring you new customers.

One of the advantages of being a small business is you can do things that don’t scale. Perhaps helping a customer out of hours or going the extra mile. It doesn’t have to be the norm, but this will make a great impression and is something a larger company may not be willing to do.

Another great strategy for customer service is to be transparent. Be truthful when a customer asks “Where is my product ?” If the customer can get a glimpse behind the curtain, and see that we are all human, then fewer problems will occur and can be dealt with more easily.

A lot of small businesses invest time and money chasing new customers, when it is much easier to get an existing customer to buy again or spend more. Don’t overlook your existing customers.

Your customer service systems can also have some form of automation. Decide early on, how much interaction is needed with customers and if you can pre-empt questions and solutions by allowing customers to self-serve. Creating a FAQ or support documents ahead of time can save a lot of repetition.

It’s also a good idea to keep a record of your interactions with customers, either by email or support tickets. This way you can see what has or hasn’t been done for a customer and also helps track your systems that are working or may need looking at. When you look at your KPI’s or company reports it’s a good idea to also include your customer service data.

If you can see trends creating particular problems or even staffing issues, it’s good to see these alongside all the other numbers, like sales revenue and profits. Do these sets of data correspond to each other for any reason ?

We can see that customer service is a very important part of a small business and can even be the difference between success or failure. You can stand out from competitors purely based on superior customer service.

Collect data as you go. But there’s no point having data if you don’t use it. Interpret the data and use it to improve your product, your services or your team.

Continually tweak your business with the help of great customer service.

Best Practices

Let’s take a look at some of the best practices that can be used to make your online business a successful one.

So we assume that we will need a website. This is the equivalent of the front of a brick-and-mortar store. So first impressions are really important.

The design of your website is vitally important on what your brand says to potential customers. The header (which can be seen on all pages) is the most crucial aspect of your site. The logo needs to be a good size, preferably in landscape on desktop.

The title of your site needs to be readable and not in a too fancy font that could confuse people. The navigation menu not only needs to work correctly, but needs to be set out in a meaningful way that makes sense.

The home page design can make or break the first impressions and its style needs to reflect the goods or services you are providing.

Make sure you have some way to contact you clearly visible on your site. A phone number, a chat window or a contact form.

Don’t, however, be tempted to put an email address in plain view on your site or you will be inviting spam emails to your inbox.

You can use your website to tell your story. Use an About page to tell the history of your business or to explain why you did this or that and say why you are passionate about the subject.

If you have an online store, it doesn’t just need to sell things. Relevant articles or original content go a long way to promoting your website to a wider audience.

A great way of adding content maybe an instructional video showing how to use your product or a simple introduction explaining the pros and cons, or a review, or a comparison with competitors.

These videos can then also be used on YouTube or Facebook or other channels with links back to your website to find out more information or to make a purchase.

Analytics are also very important when it comes to a website. This will allow you to see how many people have visited your site, where they have come from and if they have gone on to be paying customers.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) should be at the back of your mind with everything you put on your website. The right words will ensure a higher placing when people search for your products or services. The first page of a search engine is vital for an online business, as there is at least a 75% drop off for the second page and beyond.

It’s wise to have guidelines when listing products or writing content that ensures a consistent look and feel. We can use SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) to document the way we create content and the way it is presented to your customers.

Best practices allow us to get a head start on creating an efficient successful business.

Recurring

The standard business model that has existed for many years went like this. You sell an item to a customer. You try and sell to that customer again or try and find a new customer. All the work seems to be in the selling part. You are selling to a new customer or trying to sell again to an existing customer.

The model that has rocketed in recent years, particularly online and with the ease of payment methods, is the recurring business model.

In simple terms, this is where a customer agrees to pay a fixed amount (although it could be variable) in return for a product or access to a service that renews at a given time. The recurring aspect is not just the recurring payment, but also the recurring product or service.

The best way to visualise the recurring method is to look at one of the most well known advocates of this model – Netflix.

What started in 1999, sending Dvds in the mail, has now grown into an international giant that makes award-winning content of its own.

You pay Netflix a monthly fee and in return you have access to their huge catalogue of films and tv.

The fixed price helps you budget and gives you access to almost unlimited content that grows and grows month on month.

From Netflixs side, they know exactly how many customers they have and so they know what their revenue will be next month and the month after. This gives them greater clarity when it comes to making ongoing financial decisions. Netflix use the subscription type of the recurring business model, but there are others.

One of the most well known is the freemium type of business.

This could be a website that provides information for free. But also has a paid part which you can also subscribe to. The free content allows customers to get a look at the kind of content that would be in the paid area. You could call it a free trial.

Most membership sites have a paid subscription to enter the most valuable content area, but most of them also have lots of free content that will bring the right type of customer, who in turn can go from free to paid.

Within the last few years these kinds of recurring models have also been used with physical goods. This is where a customer will pay a set fee per month and will receive in the post a certain amount of that product.

A great company that does this is Dollar Shave Club.

There are also food companies that do this, and will send you a weeks worth of ingredients with instructions on how to cook them.

You can easily see where the content around these recurring models can be tailored to providing, not only evergreen information, but up to the minute content on the latest subscriptions that are sent out.

Most importantly, recurring income provides a business with much needed stability.

Summary

Ok, there we have it, the next steps on the road to making a successful online business.

To increase your chance of success with social media, you will need to choose the best place to spend your time. There are many social media platforms to choose from and knowing which ones to concentrate on, is paramount to your social success.

It’s reported that a loyal customer is four times more likely to buy from you than a new customer. They also tend to spend more than new customers. Loyal customers can also be your greatest fans and make a great source of referrals.

It’s wise to have guidelines when listing products or writing content that ensures a consistent look and feel. We can use SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) to document the way we create content and the way it is presented to your customers.

The model that has rocketed in recent years is the recurring business model. This is where a customer agrees to pay a fixed amount in return for a product or access to a service that renews after a given time.

So that’s the next steps along the Roadmap, SOCIAL MEDIA, CUSTOMER SERVICE, BEST PRACTICES and RECURRING

In the next episode we’ll be continuing along the Roadmap and we will look at the first four steps to SCALE an online business with AFFILIATE PROGRAM, LONG TERM EMAILS, OPTIMISE and BUILDING A TEAM.

So don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to get all future episodes.