Jul 07, 2019 By Leigh Price

in Marketing, Marketing Cloud, Social Media Marketing

3 Ways Marketers Can Democratize Social Data Across an Organization

According to our recent State of Marketing report, marketers are now an organization's most ardent advocates for social data. A major insight from the annual report shows marketers have become the cross-functional glue for customer experience.

Traditionally, marketing teams have only used social data to drive social media marketing. In an era where customer experience comes first, however, this is no longer enough. Sales, service, and marketing must work closely together to build and deliver amazing, connected experiences. Bringing everyone together onto a single social data platform and democratizing access is key; social data enhances and benefits everyone’s role.

Here are three ways you can take social media beyond marketing and build experiences customers will love.

Three ways to break down silos and build a connected social data platform

1. Democratize social data for sales

Social media holds a treasure trove of information about acquisitions, product launches, and news stories that impact your target customers. Sales reps with access to this information can speak more meaningfully with customers about their companies and industries, which is an important part of building long-lasting relationships.

Having instant insight into social media news keeps your marketing and sales teams in-the-know about their customers’ successes and pain points — and gives you an edge on the competition. To do this, your sales and marketing teams need to have access to the same social media data on the same platform. The right technology can take this a step further by automatically identifying and creating leads based on that social data.

2. Connect your service team to social data

Today’s customers expect personalized, seamless experiences. If a customer calls with a sales query on Monday, they expect to be recognized when they reach out on Facebook on Tuesday. Being able to connect these interactions across different marketing and customer service teams is critical to engaging customers and leaving a lasting impression.

The first step is to align your marketing and customer services team on the same platform. Since 55% of marketing teams now collaborating with service teams to manage and respond to queries on social1, many brands already see the value in connected customer experiences.

When marketing and customer service teams work from the same social data platform, they can connect social personas to customer records and use customer history to personalize future interactions.

3. Measure your social business transformation

Understanding how each department — marketing, sales, customer service, and beyond — impacts business gives you insight into what works well for your audience (and what doesn’t), so you can continually improve how you engage with customers across their entire journey. Having all your data in one place is key to understanding this whole picture — and being able to share progress and performance with your team and executives.

Take the first step

Right now, you might be thinking, “Ok great! Where do I start?” The first step is to identify gaps in your social data platform and where to improve your customer experience. Ask yourself:

Can my contact center show me a customer’s history in relation to my social media marketing activities?
Do I have a seamless method of transferring social sales leads to the right team? Is this automated?
Does senior management have a single view of how social media is impacting our organization?

The answers to these questions will show you how a connected social data platform might help different teams deliver connected customer experiences across the board.