Instagram is a fantastic platform for growing a following of active, engaged, and supportive audiences for your brand. However, many businesses make the common mistake of prioritizing other business-building activities, leaving customer service, a well-grounded social media marketing strategy, by the wayside.
This is often a bad idea.
Marketing your business and acquiring new consumers is merely one piece of the larger business jigsaw. Building effective customer relations is another. And although Instagram is one of the world’s most populated social networks, true profits don’t come from one-time customers.
Up to 70% of customers use Instagram to find new products and those numbers only turn into loyal customers through sound customer relations. The brands that end up with successful sales are those that engage Instagram users on the platform and build relationships with them.
Want to get in on the customer relationship marketing action? This post teaches you how crucial it is to establish connections with Instagram users. It also explains 8 strategies for incorporating relationship-building techniques into your business.
Let’s begin!
The Importance of Building Customer Relationships
Acquiring a new customer through lead generation or a sale, in no way implies your job is finished. You need to create customer relationships on your page so they keep coming back – and even start advocating for your brand through personal promotions.
Nothing beats word-of-mouth marketing, and building strong relationships with your product consumers is a terrific way to keep them interested in what you offer. Customers that are enthusiastic about your business will not only continue to purchase your products and services, but also tell their friends and family about you.
Using Instagram is an excellent approach to connecting with your target audience while building brand loyalty. It holds several advantages for getting to know your consumers because you can engage, and establish connections with customers.
How to Build Customer Relationships With Social Media
While there are many opportunities you can adopt to build customer relationships, we are focusing on how you can do so through Instagram. Since you have taken the time you gather followers, you should be able to nurture a good relationship with them.
Below are eight ways to create effective customer relations with your Instagram followers.
1. Establish a Customer Service Channel
Creating a dedicated customer care channel is a terrific approach to getting started with customer relationship creation on Instagram. There are several ways to go about this.
First, you could open an Instagram account for the sole purpose of answering questions from your customers. This account can provide needed support to various concerns and address different customer difficulties.
Usually, customer service channels on social media platforms are created with “support” or “customer support” included in the username. This can help search for the customer service channel of various brands on social media.
Additionally, you could create another Instagram account to service your customer needs. Your followers can input customer service requests via messages or be directed to a support page on your website through links.
When managing support accounts make sure responses are timely and meaningful to your followers. This not only increases your patronage and following
but also generates a solid reputation for your brand.
Having a customer service channel doesn’t magically build customer relations with your Instagram followers. Having a channel for feedback and comprehensively using feedback information is a different matter entirely.
You need to show your customers how invested you are in their needs by carrying out their suggestions on various issues.
Listening to consumer inputs and incorporating them is a vital step in winning their confidence and loyalty. This is particularly the case when launching a new product or a new feature of your business on Instagram. It demonstrates that you understand your customer’s problems and are prepared to act on them for their benefit. This will help in creating trust and build a foundation for customer renewal.
3. Implement Social Listening
Another way to have beautiful relations with your Instagram customers is via social listening. It is the process of examining specific keywords online to help you locate significant mentions of your brand or topics related to your business.
You can use social listening to know and filter what people are saying about your products and other brand-related topics. Using such information, you can restructure your marketing campaigns to create more meaningful messages to customers. You can also make informed decisions to help customers through specific problems. These can greatly boost organic Instagram likes, comments, and followers that trust your brand.
➤ Personalize Customer Experiences
Personalization is another excellent method to strengthen customer relations. Consider including a live chat widget on your website for customer assistance and queries.
Your audience will be able to interact with someone who addresses them by name and gives a genuine experience. Other methods to customize experiences include using a customer’s first name in social media conversations and email newsletters.
Making a personal connection is essential whether dealing with customer service concerns or simply commenting on your follower’s posts.
4. Create an Online Community
Creating an online community is another sure way to improve customer relations on Instagram. You can invite your followers to form a community via a link in your profile or use branded hashtags for posts and comments.
You may start your own Facebook Group, a Slack group, or look into other community-building platforms. You can also create pages to follow on Instagram to build a social community of like-minded audiences. This is an excellent approach to keep people talking about your brand, even if you aren’t directly selling to them.
5. Use a Familiar Brand Voice
One of the finest ways to build customer relations is to maintain a familiar tone. While you don’t have to be excessively casual on social media, there are still ways to allow your audience to appreciate your presence via your brand voice.
You can share amusing content and use memes relevant to your business. These can help build a familiar rapport between you and your customers. When out of ideas, you can look to other brands and develop ways to become more approachable online.
Also, in your written content, you should maintain a particular style and tone of writing.
6. Post User-Generated Content
Customers love to share and tag brand merchandise on Instagram. This is known as user-generated content, and it is an effective strategy for both community development and acquiring relevant information.
If you’re a fashion business, for example, you may utilize your social strategy to feature people wearing various apparel designs and sizes. You can then tag the original users whose posts you use and make good comments about them. However, it is critical to obtain permission before reposting a user’s photos on your Instagram account.
7. Provide Rewards and Incentives
Everyone loves free stuff, so do not hesitate to create contests and giveaways on your Instagram page. It is one of the quickest ways to build customer relations and it also attracts potential customers.
Discount offers and giveaway competitions should be effortless to partake in and also provide excitement to your followers. You can build customer relationships, and customer loyalty, by sharing flash sales on social media, offering freebies, and providing discount codes.
Bottom Line
Having an Instagram account for your business is not as effective unless it helps you build customer relationships. Whether you’re aiming to improve brand awareness, appeal to customers, drive engagement, or gain loyal customers, it all boils down to cultivating customer relations.
By following the tips we’ve provided above, you can slowly build healthy customer relations and improve the overall appearance of your business.
