Asda: How to leverage social media

Dominic Burch, head of social media at Asda, who is speaking at Marketing Week Live next month, on how to leverage social media.

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Listen in an unobtrusive way.

Things about products, prices, advertising, people working in-store. If you do nothing else in social media as a brand you should be at least listening in to all of those conversations and spotting where there are things that you need to fix or learn positive stories about your business that you weren’t previously aware of.

Think logically about where to put your resource.

We focus on Facebook simply because our core customers are mums aged between 25 and 35 and half of them are on Facebook every day for 15 minutes. We are always picturing a mum who is outside the school gates and having a quick scan through Facebook as she waits.

Behave well.

Be really focused on every single post being relevant and engaging to your target rather than having a vain approach of needing to have more fans than competitors. Equally, just because everyone in the world is talking about the current buzz, you need to stay true to who you are and talk about what makes sense for your brand.

Amplify your existing marketing and PR.

You can use social media as a relatively low-cost way of reaching a large audience. If you are really focused on making the content engaging your customers will do the hard work and pass on your content on your behalf.

Dont change your strategy in-store.

We are not doing anything new just trying to think what the social element would be. Is it about using wifi and augmented reality or is it about uploading pictures or checking into something? We want customers to take their phones out of their pockets when they are in-store, interact and find a touchpoint with the brand.

Find out more here: http://www.marketingweeklive.co.uk/mw

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Show that you listen Ensure the business takes action on the back of customer feedback – Perception is key to our businesses success and regardless if we think something is working if our customers are saying different then it is our duty to act upon that feedback. Closing this loop reassures your customers and lets them know that we take feedback seriously. You need to make your approach dynamic.Put value on itWe have built customer experience results into monthly bonus for staff – this shows our customers that we believe in customer feedback and if we aren’t delivering for our customers and the customer experience scores are low then our staff won’t get a bonus. It shows our customers that their thoughts are at the heart of our every day job.Tailor to your audienceBusiness customers rate a more rounded experience and use a time period to rate customer experience – consumer customer experience is much more transactional. In order to get the best you need to tailor your programme to the requirements of your customers – looking at different mediums for feedback and utilising the best one for your core group.Help improve their digital livesFor our brand helping our customer learn about new technology is essential to success as is improving their digital lives going forward. We need to make it simple for our customers to understand and drive loyalty through messages about who we are and how we can help them.Rachael Broughto nis speaking at Marketing Week Live in June. Find out more here: http://www.marketingweeklive.co.uk/mw

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