The goal of digital marketing is to bring you more leads, drive engagement with your business, and increase brand awareness. Social media advertising, search marketing, email marketing, and paid search are all avenues for keeping your brand top of mind to your audience.

However, as a digital marketing company, we see many mistakes businesses make each day that drive customers away. Identifying those costly errors can help you increase your current client base and provide you with even more loyal, engaged customers.

  1. Not Responding In a Timely Fashion

Research shows social media has become the main place customers go for customer service. If you aren’t responding fast enough, chances are you are losing business permanently. According to Twitter, 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a company when their Tweet has been replied to within an hour.

According to Brandwatch, companies are really missing the mark on their response time, with their findings showing only 11.2% of businesses respond within an hour on social.

  1. Not Addressing Negative Reviews

You aren’t going to be the best for everyone, every time. However, not responding to negative reviews will make customers doubt if you care about their satisfaction at all. The best way to handle negative reviews when they arise is to acknowledge the issue, apologize, and suggest a path forward. Even if the mistake was not the fault of your company, if your customer believes the opposite to be true, you can still inspire trust by carefully navigating the situation and coming up with a solution that makes both parties happy.

  1. Not Describing the Product or Service in a Positive Way

It’s hard to believe that a business would speak negatively about their own product or service offering, but believe us, we’ve seen it. While we would never suggest you train your customer service representatives to lie to sell a product, there are better ways to get the right product in the hands of the customer than talking down about another offering. (Plus if the majority of your customer service team isn’t a fan of one the items you sell, it’s worth it to do additional research and see if you can’t improve the item in question.)

The best way to handle this tricky situation is to suggest your team say, “Based on my experience I’d recommend…” and have them select a better fit for the customer.

  1. Not Upselling

Upselling is a great way to grow your revenue. While many customer service reps are trained to do this over the phone, we’ve noticed not all businesses upsell on social media. It’s easy to upsell when a client leaves a positive comment or review by suggesting another service or product he or she might enjoy (after you thank them for the kind words). Also, while it’s not technically considered upselling, if you are out of a certain product, it’s better to suggest something else that is similar rather than lose the sale altogether.

These are just a few of the mistakes your business might be making to negatively impacts your reputation online. By ensuring your team is aware of these issues, you can prevent losing customers and increase brand loyalty.

 

If you have more questions about digital marketing, contact Organically via our chat and we’ll review your website and digital strategy!