Have you launched a Facebook group for your customers yet?

Facebook is far from being a uni-purpose customer engagement tool. Although business owners usually create a Page to promote their brand, there are plenty other sub-platforms that can reinvent the way you reach out to customers.

One of these is Facebook Groups. It’s an underutilized tool simply because brand owners perceive them as having a limited and narrow reach, at least when compared with the more popular Pages. With Groups, however, you can create consumer communities held together by a common interest. The tightly-knit relationships within these spaces make it easier for you to talk to customers, gather feedback, and generate interest around your products. Eventually, this can greatly improve your customer service and marketing strategies.

Maximize the use of social media groups by trying out these actionable tips.

1. Create polls to test new ideas.

Rolling out online polls can be considered a form of market research, although you may want to establish more sophisticated data gathering methods to suit your research objectives. In spite of this, polls can still give you a general idea about how your existing customers feel about your strategies in general. This will allow you to solicit suggestions to enhance your future innovations before implementing them.

2. Provide customer service.

Using a Facebook group, you can extend assistance to specific consumer segments. You may tweak the settings so that only pre-approved members can see the posts. Having one can reduce the volume of emails or calls you receive and creates a centralized place to handle customer issues. Even members themselves can talk about their own product experiences, allowing you to spot alarming trends in customers’ problems.

As a whole, Facebook Groups provides users a specific platform to ask questions. You can respond to them through comments (for simple inquiries), upload documents such as FAQs and manuals, and even post links to how-to videos from your YouTube channel.

3. Launch events, products, or services.

Facebook has always been a good tool for generating interest around new business ideas, be they events, products, or services. The best thing about posting these breakthroughs in an online forum is that it gives users something fresh and exciting to discuss. Plus, you’ll be able to provide your customers all the information they need, which is an effective way to help them make better purchasing decisions.

4. Gather insights and feedback.

The true measure of customer engagement is when people feel they can freely talk about your brand. Giving them a platform specifically for this can encourage them to share their opinions, suggestions, and feedback.

Brands need to place prime importance upon consumer insights, because ideally, they act as the foundation of all business strategies, especially customer service. To increase retention and build loyalty, your business tactics must always target the needs and wants of your market. Building a customer-centric culture requires the integration of people’s feedback into your call center and marketing department.

5. Start conversations.

Inviting customers to talk about your brand through a social media group can help you build brand loyalty over time. Consumers prefer brands that take the initiative to talk to them and keep conversations going. When they have a platform to voice out their concerns, customers feel they’re the center of the brand’s campaigns, which should always be the case.

As much as you can, always be open to customers’ ideas, and Facebook Groups is one of the best avenues for fruitful conversations. However, you must not stop there. To keep customers happy, show that you’re striving to build your customer service and marketing strategies around them.