Marketing is All About Messaging
Have you ever needed to contact a company and been put on hold for twenty minutes only to have the call dropped? Have you ever sent an email expecting a response in a couple of days only to be disappointed after a few weeks never hearing back? Remember this feeling when you are considering your own business's social media channels because that is how your customers feel when you leave their Facebook messages on read or even unread.
Studies show that around 40% of consumers who send a message to a business's social media channel expect an answer within one hour. You read that right. One. Hour.
If you fail to hit that hour-long wait time, then that customer is more likely to consider your business less trustworthy or considerate of their time. And the longer they wait, the worse their opinion of your business is until the taste in their mouth is bad enough that they'll just find your competitor instead. A sour social media interaction is more likely to make that customer think much, much less of your brand in terms of credibility and reliability. They're more likely to look elsewhere for a similar product and you've missed out on a potential customer for life.
Yep. The inverse is also true. If a customer (or potential customer) has a positive interaction on social media, especially if that positivity is continued over time, then they are more likely to stay loyal to your brand. That means you not only lose the specific cost of the single sale from a missed message, but it's highly likely you lost out on many future sales and a strong relationship with a loyal customer.
All if this tells us business owners one thing: always respond promptly to earnest social media messages. Taking one minute of your time to respond to a potential customer will pay dividends down the road.
Studies show that around 40% of consumers who send a message to a business's social media channel expect an answer within one hour. You read that right. One. Hour.
If you fail to hit that hour-long wait time, then that customer is more likely to consider your business less trustworthy or considerate of their time. And the longer they wait, the worse their opinion of your business is until the taste in their mouth is bad enough that they'll just find your competitor instead. A sour social media interaction is more likely to make that customer think much, much less of your brand in terms of credibility and reliability. They're more likely to look elsewhere for a similar product and you've missed out on a potential customer for life.
Yep. The inverse is also true. If a customer (or potential customer) has a positive interaction on social media, especially if that positivity is continued over time, then they are more likely to stay loyal to your brand. That means you not only lose the specific cost of the single sale from a missed message, but it's highly likely you lost out on many future sales and a strong relationship with a loyal customer.
All if this tells us business owners one thing: always respond promptly to earnest social media messages. Taking one minute of your time to respond to a potential customer will pay dividends down the road.