Читать книгу Social Media Marketing For Dummies - Shiv Singh - Страница 55

The action stage is when the prospective customer makes the purchase and becomes an actual customer. He goes through the process of buying the product, whether he does this online, via the phone, or in a store. During the action stage, focus on making the process as smooth, efficient, and hassle free as possible. You should put a lot of effort into making the purchasing experience a positive one because it is one of the first direct interactions that the customer has with your company.

Most marketers argue that at this point in the funnel, you should not play a role. Either the customer was positively influenced enough to make the purchasing decision or he wasn’t. If he’s at the point where he’s taking action, he should be allowed to take that action without any distractions whatsoever because even a positive distraction is still a distraction. However, if the purchase is a high-consideration one, you can make the purchasing process social in a way that doesn’t distract from the purchasing but enhances it instead.

At the point of purchase, the customer wants to know whether he is making a suitable purchasing decision and if his social influencers approve of his decision. Providing him with data points that he can share with those influencers and a means to broadcast the purchasing decision helps him. He can broadcast his purchasing decision and influence his friends to make similar purchasing decisions. And by providing valuable tidbits of information, he’ll have valuable information to share.

The point of purchase also serves as an opportunity to upsell other products and services. This is a traditional marketing tactic that’s been used in both the digital world and in physical stores as well. By highlighting other products that customers just like him purchased, social influence can play a role in encouraging that customer to make additional impulse purchases at the point of sale. For example, say you’re buying a pair of Gap jeans from Gap.com (as shown in Figure 3-4) and as you’re about to check out, you’re told about a nice shirt to buy and that most people who bought the pair of jeans bought the shirt, too. You’re more likely to add the shirt to your shopping cart. That’s using social data to influence a purchasing decision.

FIGURE 3-4: Gap.com recommends a shirt based on what’s in the customer’s shopping cart.

Consider these SMM tactics at this stage:

 Highlight related popular products. As depicted with the Gap.com example, showcasing popular products relating to the ones already in the shopping carts often leads to impulse purchases.

 Provide tools to broadcast the purchase. This is necessary to allow for the customer to do remarketing for you. The customer should have the tools to easily broadcast his purchase to his various social networks. (Remarketing refers to someone doing further marketing on your behalf after the person has already been a recipient of your marketing efforts.)