The importance of showing up is paramount in marketing. Let's get a little more specific— showing up refers to being available for customers through messages, meetings, and replies— basically through responsive communication. This means implementing a quick response time for your customers. This is crucial if you want to establish effective communication with your end customers. They should be able to reach you through your social media handles and official websites in different ways, including calls, messages, and emails.
In other words, such ‘showing up’ actions are called conversational marketing , which has become an important part of the industry today. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can show up!
What should be the next step for someone who already has set up ways to reach him through his websites and social media handles?
The individual needs to show up ! Yes, showing up, as in promptly responding to all kinds of communication, is extremely important. Experts have pointed out that many have lost deals because they could not attend the meetings on time. Of course, this does not mean that one should respond the very second that they are reached out to, but they have to do so as soon as possible. Time is a crucial factor for showing up and conversational marketing .
But how does one show up , you ask? We have some ideas for you:
This is one of the easiest ways of establishing contact. An automated response from a live chat bot needs less than 15 seconds to come through and is particularly helpful if you want to implement a quick response time. There are various other strategies that can be implemented apart from the automated response as well. The bot can collect the details of the questioner, convey a time within which their query call will be returned, and pass on the inquiry to the person responsible for handling it. The bot can also allow you to set up an appointment directly and at your convenience through an app or a page.
These need to be answered within less than 24 hours.
The idea that businesses must respond within 5 minutes is extremely important for emails as per ‘The Five Minute Rule’. However, most businesses today do not abide by this rule, so following this might boost your chances of securing clients by a huge margin.
The standard time for responding to a contact form is 15 minutes. This means that one definitely has more time than a live chat and an email to respond, but it would still need to be answered quickly. The best solution for this is to send it to an assigned person as soon as possible, who will then follow up with you as necessary. If needed, he can even schedule a meeting later.
You might wonder whether this is still in use, but it certainly is. It needs to be answered within 1 business day. The response is flexible —it may be through calls, emails, postal mail, or social media messaging, as the letter may demand.
As this is a critical marketing medium today, the utmost care needs to be taken with regard to social media comments. Social media pages, streams, inboxes, and comments must be monitored on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis. In fact, it is the responsibility of community managers to devise monitoring streams with phrases such as ‘Brand Name + Best’ or ‘Brand Name + Worst’ to keep an eye on the feedback and look to it so that it does not spread much on the internet.
This needs to be responded to extremely fast. Social media platforms like Facebook award badges such as “Very Responsive to Badges” for enterprises responding under 15 minutes in 90 percent of the cases. Given that all employees have working hours, how does one do this? Request the social media managers to download all the social media apps on their phones so that they can respond as soon as possible.
This is another important part of conversational marketing, which implements quick response time . Step back from your shoes as a marketer and think of yourself as a client who is interested in these services. You are impressed by the effective communication done so far due to the quick response time, but you still have some more questions beyond what was addressed by the person. Would you be interested in the company if it took an unnecessarily long time to respond to your query? The answer is no. It is extremely important for the company to provide clarity to the client regarding the timeline for addressing their query. Delays can happen, but the customer should be made aware of any such delay immediately.
Running a business is no joke, but you can be successful by maintaining quick response times, effectively communicating by showing up and following the principles of conversational marketing. Remember, while many factors are outside our control, showing up is not!
Sometimes, managing all aspects of conversational marketing can become overwhelming. In such cases, reaching out to specialists who can train your staff and smoothly use conversational marketing tools can be helpful!