As a continuation of The Benefits of Customer Communities to Strengthen Social Strategies (Part 1), here are some additional benefits associated with using online forums and customer communities to support your business’ social networking strategies.
- Customer communities can generate word of mouth among consumers: When potential customers are deciding whether or not to purchase your business’ product/service, they will more likely than not read reviews posted by other customers. Unlike other forms of direct marketing – such as email campaigns or product commercials, the word of mouth generated in customer communities is typically not disregarded by potential new customers, as they tend to trust and rely on other consumers’ experiences with your business.
- Customer communities can increase traffic to your website and, as a result, improve your website’s ranking in search engines: When businesses host customer communities on their business’ website, they will naturally draw more traffic to the site as existing customers return to these forums to ask questions/resolve possible issues and as potential new customers visit these forums to learn more about your products/services, as well as other customers’ opinions of them. In SEO land, more traffic to your website translates to higher rankings in search engines, which has the added benefits of attracting even more potential new customers.
- Customer communities can generate new business leads: By seeing what types of individuals or other businesses are inquiring about your products/services, you can gain insight as to new potential business leads and have your company’s sales team directly reach out to them.
