Social media digital strategy consider as fundamental tool to target and gain customers in order to display a certain product or service to public , also it helps to spread the word of mouth to other people which they might be friends , family or even others , according to ( Rudolph , 2014) ‘’Social media today is the ultimate word-of-mouth marketing , Getting people to connect with the business online in the social space helps spread the word about who the company is and the products and services that company offer’’ . Also social media can enhance business a great advantages when engaging customers into their product or service, and to give feedback to improve the business core value, also to increase sales revenue and to be more competitive within any industry, according guardian (2016), global airlines has generated more than $40 million from social media platform.
Using brand advocacy and eWOM is essential tool in order to change customer complaints, also to ensure customers advocate brand or service to their friends , family , and to monitor their behaviour through different tools and measure how effective is a strategy , according to (Guellil, 2014) argue that brand advocacy is the likelihood that your clients and consumers will advocate your brand to their friends and acquaintance will be directly correlated to your business growth’’, in order for companies to implement this strategy , there is several way it can be done through , first company needs to monitor customers compliments or complaints in any website or any other platform that has individuals who mention the business using tools such as Google search , Google’s blog search and Google Alerts , according to (Hines, 2017) tools such as Google search , Google’s blog search and Google Alerts will help you find any pages or websites about your business that allow users to add their own feedback , many of them will automatically pull information from other public listings like the Yellow Pages. Also you can possibly be notified when new activity happens to your business profile using google alerts .
Second , once the company has identify the compliments and complaints , business has to reply to negative comments or complaints, if a company responds to complaints it is more likely to change public perception about the brand, stop the snowball from growing and turning things around like shown in the mock up comment, however if a company did not do so it would result to more negative comments such as shown in the picture which causes communication barrier from the brand to the unsatisfied consumer (Guellil, 2014)
| Hello Robin from the Ryanair Team,
Our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused to you by Ryanair’s system, we would like to kindly ask for your booking reference sent via customer service email at: customerservice@ryanair.com for the car so we can resolve your issue as soon as we can and follow up further to provide your refund of 25 EUR. Any further queries do not hesitate to contact us! |
Another way of turning complaints into compliments is through brand advocates which are consumers who have positive feedback and genuine love for the brand, who have used and love the brand, who are not paid to advertise, and these are the people in which most people are likely to trust upon whilst making purchasing decisions , their feedback needs to be replied by the business team, in order to show a customer care and would result in that customer may share or spread the word which would be great advantages to the business .
Hello Doriana Thank you. We are pleasured to have you fly with us. We will take into consideration your feedback you gave us and make sure it does not occur again. Many thanks, Ryanair Team. |
Although brand advocacy has great advantages to business and need to put in consider, however, brand advocacy also has drawback to business, such as:
- Brand advocacy does not reveal the true impacts on consumer and activist decision making.
- Since other mediums such as social media influencers like bloggers exist, brand advocacy may not be as effective or may not reach as much audience as other strategies.
- It can be difficult to sustain
- May overlook other strategies
- Risk of results
Rudolph, Klint. “Social Media’s Role In Your Digital Marketing Strategy – Xcite Media”. Search Engine Marketing & Web Development – Xcite Media Group. N.p., 2017. Web. 1 May 2017.
Guellil, J., (2014). Advocacy and Consumerism: Toms Case Study. Journal of Human Rights (p27) Vol.4 Issue 2
Topham, Gwyn. “Airline Industry Profits Expected To Increase By 12% In 2016”. the Guardian. N.p., 2017. Web. 1 May 2017.