Does it make sense for a fitness club to tell its members to join now? No, because they’re already members.
Does it make sense for a pay channel to tell its subscribers to subscribe today? No, because they’re already subscribers.
Yet, these and other types of businesses do this every day on Facebook. I get it, the need to sell is strong. However, following a customer acquisition approach is wrong.
Many social media platforms, including Facebook, are best used organically (non-advertising) for customer retention. That’s because the people who follow your account are likely your members, subscribers, clients, diners, etc.
Remember the saying that the best customer is a repeat customer? They are already familiar with your brand, product and/or services. You don’t need to go through all the steps of the product adoption curve (awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, adoption) with them again.
Instead, you’re going to focus on some or all of the aspects of customer retention, which includes reselling, upselling, loyalty marketing, referral marketing, customer service
Examples:
- Maintain top-of-mind awareness with your customers by posting on Facebook on a regular basis until they are ready to buy again (reselling).
- Offer a bonus for every family member a customer brings in (referral marketing).
- Ask what new features of your product your customers would like to see in a future edition (research).
Here’s a case study. Plex is a client-server media player system, meaning you can use it to, say, stream your music from your home computer onto your work computer. Recently, the company posted a discount for a lifetime pass to “thank” its customers.
Unfortunately, the lifetime pass is not a good deal for existing customers who either a) already paid full-price for a lifetime pass or b) are paying the monthly subscription fees. In addition, one commenter astutely noted that it doesn’t make sense for Plex to be thanking prospective customers, for whom this post is actually intended.
In this case, Plex should have run this post as a Facebook ad only–since it is a customer acquisition post–and while I’m picking on the company, it should have run the promotion around Black Friday or Cyber Monday, instead of the seemingly random date of Nov. 15.