Marketing departments are increasingly working with IT departments to integrate new technology and systems into their customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage, monitor and measure both the firms and the audience’s presence online on social networking websites (McKee, 2012).

Social Relationship Management (SRM) is a term coined from using CRM techniques on social media to optimize social interactions. It is about keeping track of and handling a company’s online presence by engaging with audiences and monitoring relevant data to enhance relationships with a brand, attempting to strengthen sales.

When a firm spends too much time on acquiring information via emails and phone calls, they may not acquire trust- something that valuable relationships are built on (Gleeson, 2012). So how are businesses using SRM methods to engage with audiences and build trust?

Oracle Corporation and SalesForce.com are two firms that assist businesses in publishing, directing and analysing practical social media campaigns to build relationships with consumers (i.e. SRM). This is one way in which firms are finding ways to build better relationships with us on social media. McKee (2012) offers more information on this in his interesting article for Bloomberg – it seems that managing relationships allows for increased trust and brand awareness, thus customer retention.

Schaefer (2013) suggests that meaningless sale pitches and transparent promotions will not help to build social relationships online. It is essential to avoid spamming timelines with products and services for sale; businesses need to create value by directly addressing promotions to specific targets, entertain with competitions and images/videos/apps or monitor conversations to find customers and prompt discussions online.

The online community enjoy the novelty of a company ‘retweeting’ their tweet, a personal comment left on their Facebook page or finding a ‘like’ on their Instagram picture. Firms often do this to build trusting relationships as they engage in SRM.

See examples from Missguided retweeting a user and Jaffa Cakes directly tweeting a consumer below (figure 1), despite not being explicitly ‘mentioned’ in the initial tweets-
Figure 1

Missguided Tweets

Jaffa Cake Tweets

Source: Compiled by author

The effectiveness of building relationships via social media is to create electronic word of mouth (eWom) where value is developed from online users who generate content, augmenting the brand (Palmer & Koenig-Lewis 2009).

Although, Palmer & Keonig-Lewis (2009) suggest that the use of social media sites are extremely important as a crucial success factor for direct marketing, there is little consideration for when organisations do not utilise social media sites effectively, leading to failures in marketing and a breakdown of trust.

Organisations can have all of the software in the world for social analytics and social listening, but have little control over consumers spreading negative messages online. In many occasions businesses have opened a can of worms by themselves by instigating poorly thought out campaigns to activate discussion about their brand.

McDonalds attempted to evoke feelings of nostalgia by encouraging customers to share their happy memories of McDonalds on Twitter via the tag #McDStories (Schutte, 2014). Nonetheless, members of the public began sharing anecdotes of obesity, poor food hygiene, and unfair treatment of employees/animals (see figure 2). The number and type of responses were beyond anticipation and users over the internet were able to search and share more stories creating an online community of disappointed and disgusted customers. This was not the type of online community Palmer & Koenig-Lewis (2009) were referring to in their model of experiential marketing and so it is imperative for businesses to take negative eWOM into consideration.
Figure 2

McDonalds Stories

Source: Compiled by author

Click through to find out about more examples of both good and bad social media campaigns – Shutte, 2014. Although learning about these social media mishaps is humorous, there is still a very important point to take away from this. Organisations are building trust using SRM techniques and software, and can create operative relationships as a result of this. However, firms can very easily destroy trusting relationships by either not engaging at all, or not considering the possible limitations of the methods used, take #McDStories as a prime example.

The fast paced environment of social networking sites is different to other digital marketing channels- the expectation is that consumers can communicate with brands when they want to and gain swift and direct responses. It can be difficult to rectify poorly executed SRM programs on social media as dialogue is exposed to the public (regardless of whether the post has been deleted, someone surfing the World Wide Web has probably already taken a screen shot). Businesses need to monitor social media and rapidly act on comments and queries to demonstrate an understanding of consumer needs and build trusting relationships.

 

Aisha Merrick

#bbsdigmarket

 

References

Gleeson, B. (2012) ‘6 Ways Brands Build Trust Through Social Media’ Forbes, 31st October 2012 [Online] <http://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2012/10/31/6-ways-brands-build-trust-through-social-media/> [accessed 5 February 2015]

McKee, S. (2012) ‘How Social Media is Changing CRM’ Bloomberg Business, 8th June 2012 [Online] <http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-06-08/how-social-media-is-changing-crm> [accessed 6 February 2015]

Palmer, A., & Koenig-Lewis, N. (2009) An experiential, social network-based approach to direct marketing. Direct Marketing: An International Journal, Vol 3, p162-176.

Schaefer (2013) ‘Here’s why 100,000 people unfollowed me on Twitter’ Business Grow, 2nd April 2013 [Online] <http://www.businessesgrow.com/2013/04/02/heres-why-100000-people-unfollowed-me-on-twitter/> [accessed 5 February 2015]

Shcutte, S. (2014) ‘8 best and worst social media campaigns’ Real Business, 11th February 2014 [Online] <http://realbusiness.co.uk/article/25493-8-best-and-worst-social-media-campaigns/page:3> [accessed 6 February 2015]