Now that Google Plus is in Open to All mode, I decided to analyze it and see how it can be used for Business.
I have started using Google Plus sometime back, thanks to my friend for sending me the invite.
The one feature that forces me to keep using G+ is the concept of circles. Social networking is more or less a virtual world trying to give the same experience as the real world. And in real world, we have all our own logical circles based on the various parameters. We have school friends and then there are colleagues who are friends. Then there are people whom we just know. There are people who are not friends as such but important for professional growth. You have a 3 am friends who are probably more than friends. But as the recent Airtel ad says "Har ek Friend Jaroori Hota hai" meaning (For non Hindi Reader) "Every friend is needed".
Many a times, one would want the information to be shared only to a confined group of people, only to a select few. This purpose of virtual circles is very well imitated by G+ circles.
Organization have been using Social networking for quite sometime now in full throttle mode. I have seen many ads where the Facebook fan page and Twitter handle has replaced the web URL. So how could Organization benefit from this unique feature of Google Plus.
What Business wants?
Anybody who has attended a marketing presentation would be aware of the concept of segmentation. For the newbies, segmentation is all about categorizing the customers based on certain parameters so that organization can customize its products and services to cater to a particular segment. E.g banks issuing Gold, Platinum and Silver credit cards based on certain criteria.
There could be multiple functions within an organization using the concept of segmentation to achieve their goals and targets. Obviously the parameters and the criteria used by each function for segmentation could vary.
Yes you got it right….The idea is to use Google Plus circles to imitate the segmentation.
How Google Plus fits in?
Yes, the strategy is simple. Use the Google Plus circles to imitate segmentation and interact with the segment specific customers in a more customized, specialized approach. The goal is to use the strategy to increase the stickiness, to increase the customer loyalty, to improve the customer engagement with the brand, with the product and services.
ROI of the strategy
1. The offers and discounts on services and products are better targeted.
2. The customer service team could focus on the premier customers in a much better they as they have a dedicated circle. This will ensure the business reached the target customer much much more accurately.
Challenges
To ensure this Innovative approach fulfills its target of making customers more loyal and sticky to, effective communication would be the key. Check out this post of mine to appreciate the importance of Effective communication, lack of which could kill the Innovation.
Icing on Cake...
Google could win the social networking war if it integrates a Social network analysis tool, something similar to Google Analytics, in Google Plus. The idea is to enable Organizations manage their circles more dynamically based on the inputs from the customer social engagement with the brand, products and services. This will in turn empower the Organizations to reach to its customers in more accurate and effective way and are using Google Plus. Isn't it what Google wants too?
Let your Creative juices flow in the Comments section folks…
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customer loyalty,
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customer segment,
segmentation,
target customer,
google analytics
1 Comments
Why no comment on this one ?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, Google has just delivered a REAL revolutionary service. For the reasons you've mentioned, of course, but for many others as well. Making all google services integrating to end by all converge into one and only service fully featured is something we never attended, and we never even expected, considered, imagined.
Now that it is being made real, well, we're starting to understand the power of it.
You are focused on segmentation /circling, which is according to me one of the most important feature to handle in a business only point of view (businesses are Google's customers, but to "sell users" to their customers, google knows that satisfying their users is the key point, and G's doing it pretty well, yet better and better each week ! So our vision of it has to take into account all the other uses developped by Google in this service than the business-only use).
this said, I totally agree with you about the expectation of an Analytics-like tool integrated into the handling and managing circles tools.