[Masters of Marketing] Top 5 Reasons to Hire Community Managers During the COVID-19 Crisis

Masters of Marketing is a weekly video series featuring senior marketers from brands, tech companies and agencies sharing their ideas, industry trends, best practices and tips.

In honour of International Women's Day and the women who have contributed to our research and community-building efforts, every senior marketer we feature this month will be women.

During peacetime, community management seems hard to articulate in terms of ROI. Management always has a hard time understanding the importance of brand love and customer relationships. But at a time like this, when cost-cutting and sales are plummeting, and in-person relationship nurturing is nearly impossible, you need to safeguard digital relationships. That's where community managers come in.

Mathilda D'Silva, Founder and CEO of Ocean Purpose Projects, shares why you need to harness the power of your community managers to make sure you are keeping your customers are happy.

Highlights:

Community managers need to have a mix of skills, depending on the industry they're working in. How do they add value to your company?

1. Your business' personal Sherlock Holmes

They detect customer problems, solve them or escalate them to the relevant support teams. They work closely with internal teams to route enquiries to them.

2. They listen to your customers

They are always actively listening to what customers are saying and giving feedback to internal systems with suggestions on how processes can be improved.

The two roles above are necessary because only 1 in 26 customers complain when they are unhappy. The remaining 25 quit or jump to competitors without saying a word.

3. They are your business' number one supporter

Most of the time, a community manager is also your customer. They can be thought of as a soft-sell cheerleader, who constantly engages with your most vocal customers and celebrates their interests.

4. Nurturer

Community managers keep an eye out for people who keep commenting on your social media pages and their issues and take the time to convert them to fans and even superfans. These people react better to someone who genuinely cares and can suggest options for you.

5. Frontline defence for your brand

Community managers alert relevant departments of problems like customer dissatisfaction, product or service issues and dissent from online trolls and spammers. 77% of customers would recommend a company to a friend where they've had a great experience, according to a survey by the Temkin Group.

If you are an experienced senior marketer from a brand, agency or tech company willing to share your marketing secrets and would like to contribute to the Masters of Marketing series, click here to get in touch.