If you’re a service-based industry, you face challenges that product-based companies don’t. Perhaps two of the biggest hurdles you need to overcome are how to compete with so many others vying for attention, and how to make your service more attractive, or ‘tangible’. Additionally, you may not get to meet your clients face-to-face, so you have to rely on other ways to build trust.
The field of social media management and engagement is large enough for several lengthy articles, but we should touch on it here, just to make sure the basics are covered. When you engage prospective and existing clients online, it’s critically important you listen to them. We all know the “join the conversation” mantra that’s been making the rounds. Well, a conversation involves listening too. Follow people—in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, even Pinterest—who are your clients, might be, or even those who are your competition. Read what they’re saying. Respond. Add to the conversation.
Other tools and techniques you can use include surveys, contests, and user feedback. Create a quick survey on Facebook, for example, by asking a simple question. Or go the route of Survey Monkey (who still have free offerings), or another survey service. Give away something! Have a contest that’s easy to enter, and that delivers something—a report, a free consultation, etc.—to pique people’s interest. Ask for feedback. Have a feedback form on your website, allow blog comments, ask questions in social media channels, and so forth.
Whichever methods you employ to sell more of your services online, learn to embrace and own the comments and feedback you get: doing this will lend itself to building a loyal online community.
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