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Social media is now an integral part of marketing strategies. These platforms enable marketers to interact with their existing customers, attract new people to their business and share their company’s vision.
With over 4 billion active users, social media is now the place to be for brands. Marketers need to up their game to cut through the noise and gain followers.
As a marketer, you have probably tried various social media strategies over the years. You have created engaging and relevant content. There is a high chance you have launched online ads to target your audience on these networks. You might have even collaborated with brand advocates.
However, have you tried including voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in your social media marketing strategy? This technology can help you improve the customer experience and stand out from the competition.
This article will teach you how you can use VoIP to improve your social media marketing strategy.
What is VoIP?
VoIP is advanced technology that enables you to transmit voice and multimedia content over the internet. This means you don’t need to have traditional phone lines to connect with your existing and potential customers.
VoIP has become the go-to solution for businesses because it is easy to use and implement. It doesn’t require any hardwired infrastructure or local phone services. All you need is a stable internet connection to reach and communicate with consumers.
On top of that, marketers have turned to VoIP as it improves the customer experience. Your business is always available to consumers because of VoIP. This technology generates virtual phone numbers, allowing you to directly communicate with customers and solve their issues more efficiently.
All of this builds trust and indicates to your customers they can rely on you.
Bear in mind, however, that VoIP isn’t only about making and receiving calls. It comes with numerous features such as business texting, team collaboration and call forwarding. These features streamline the communication process and ensure you reduce the number of missed calls.
The majority of marketers choose VoIP as it is an all-in-one package:
VoIP ensures your support representatives offer the best service to your customers. For instance, let’s say that an agent’s telephone starts ringing. For some reason, they are unable to answer at that particular time. Typically, this would be just another missed call.
However, it doesn’t have to be thanks to VoIP. If you leverage VoIP, that agent can direct calls to another colleague who is able to pick up the call and help the customer.
How to use VoIP in your social media marketing strategy
According to past research, 90% of IT leaders would stop buying on-premise communication tools by the end of 2021. Moving to the cloud is now a trend most businesses seem to embrace. At the center of that trend is voice over Internet Protocol.
A VoIP system works to integrate all your communication channels. It relies on social media to improve a customer’s experience with your brand.
Once you start communicating with a consumer on social media, you can exceed their expectations by making a personalized phone call courtesy of VoIP.
For example, imagine that a customer is complaining about an order issue on Twitter. They tagged your brand to voice their dissatisfaction. Instead of continuing the interaction on Twitter, you can ask them to send their order number and personal phone number so that a member of customer service can contact them.
This resolves the issue quickly and proves your brand is willing to go above and beyond to impress your customers.
This is just one of the reasons why social media marketers include VoIP in their strategies. Other reasons include:
- Improving customer satisfaction
- Promoting your products
- Boosting customer reach
- Expanding your online presence
- Giving more options to your customers
- Growing with extensive analytics
Let’s go over the above to show you how VoIP can improve your social media marketing strategy!
Improve customer satisfaction
Customers have become less patient. As a social media marketer, you must keep track of consumers’ experiences on social media to ensure they are satisfied with your brand.
According to a survey, consumers want their issues resolved quickly and access to support that is available 24/7, among other things.
VoIP lets you improve customer satisfaction by giving them the service they need. This is possible thanks to the advanced features these systems offer. For instance, your go-to VoIP solution should have:
- Queue management
- Call handling
- Call forwarding
- Automatic welcome messages
By leveraging these features, your business is able to provide information quickly to customers. You also ensure they reach the right representative who is knowledgeable about their issue.
Resolving queries is a much slower process on social media networks. You can speed it up and impress your customers with a VoIP solution that enables you to get in touch instantly.
With VoIP, you can be available at all times as well. Some of these solutions offer call routing and forwarding. Calls can be forwarded to your personal phone, ensuring you are always able to pick up. If you are unavailable, you can also set up rules which will forward incoming calls to another employee.
Promote your products
VoIP service providers have another useful feature. You can set up different telephone numbers for your customer service. Why is this beneficial for your business?
Imagine your social media marketer launches several ads on these networks. Each of these ads invites customers to contact your business on a different phone number. Based on the number they use, you will know which ad they saw.
For marketers, this means you can track the performance of your online advertisements or marketing strategies. It is difficult to know which ad or strategy will resonate with your customers. By assigning different phone numbers to numerous ads, you will understand what the customers want to see from you.
Without this insight, social media marketers cannot create successful online ads that convert. Rely on VoIP to:
- Understand which ad has a higher response rate
- Learn your customers’ preferences
With this knowledge, your team can develop strategies that persuade potential customers to give your business a chance. This will move them down the sales funnel, resulting in an increase in conversions.
Boost customer reach
Social media is great for attracting potential customers. As so many people use social media, marketers have higher chances of getting their brand in front of new people.
With social media, you can explore and acquire new customers. Posting high-quality content and engaging visuals is not enough to get prospects to purchase from your brand. This is where VoIP comes in.
Your social media marketing team should track comments, status updates, hashtags and tweets to see who is mentioning your business. Chances are that some of those mentions come from potential customers.
Research shows that 54% of consumers use social media networks to research products. They might come across your brand and post comments to find out more about your products.
When this happens, you should leverage VoIP. Make a personalized call to potential customers to move them down the sales funnel. You can discuss sending their free samples or showing them how your products (or a specific one) work.
You don’t need to wait for customers to mention your company. You can also invite them to check out your products or services on your own.
In the example above, the company asked social media users to book a demo with them. Once a customer submits their personal information, a sales rep or a customer service agent will contact them using VoIP to tell them more about the brand.
Expand your presence
If you run a business that operates globally, you should interact with customers living in a particular location. Most brands abandon this idea because it is expensive to set up a local presence.
A VoIP service provider can provide a cost-effective solution for this. You can set up an internet-based phone line with a number people from a specific country can use. This expands your company’s presence, making you available all over the world.
A local phone number will appeal to new clients. They won’t need to dial long distances and worry about additional charges. Your brand will be there for them whenever they decide to contact you using the number they see on your social media accounts.
Customers will be more trusting of your brand as well. They will see a local number that looks familiar to them. Although you are headquartered in another country, they will see you also operate locally.
Give more options to your customers
Marketers must analyze their target audience to understand their needs and wants.This helps them find out how customers want to interact with the brand.
As different consumers have different preferences, you should strive to be available on as many channels as possible.
That is why you should adopt an omnichannel approach to interacting with your customers.
Ensure customers can reach you using any channel they prefer. This will make your brand more available to them, especially if they need quick solutions to their problems.
Most VoIP service providers offer omnichannel customer support.
For instance, a client sees your social media marketing campaign on Instagram. The ad attracts their attention, but they want to learn more. Instead of going back and forth on Instagram, they might want to call for more information. Add the phone number to your social media accounts to make things easier for them.
Grow with extensive analytics
Data is everything in social media marketing. Your VoIP solution should offer precise analytics about the performance of your call center.
By analyzing data, you will understand customer behavior trends. The majority of customers might contact your brand at a particular hour after finding the number on social media. You should have as many customer support agents available at that hour as possible.
Having access to these metrics will tell you which areas need improvement. This ensures you provide the best customer experience.
Conclusion
Customers’ needs are changing quickly. Over a decade ago, they were satisfied to have one channel to communicate with their favorite brand. Today, however, customers want to have as many options as possible.
VoIP ensures you improve your service by being available to consumers. It streamlines the communication process, making it easier for customers to reach you quickly. Include VoIP in your social media strategy and watch as your campaigns generate the results you need.
