The entire goal of marketing is to increase customer engagement and build a relationship with customers. Today's buyers' personas, preferences, and dislikes are changing, making it critical to develop an innovative customer engagement strategy in today's marketing landscape.
The term "customer engagement" is distinct from "customer conversion." To increase customer engagement, you must first focus on customer experience improvement. Customer experience has risen to prominence as a primary concern for organizations in recent years, and 2022 will be no exception.
Small firms, on the other hand, encounter a few obstacles on the road to client involvement, including:
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No time or internal resources to implement a customer interaction strategy
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Lack of in-house customer engagement experts
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Outdated systems as well as, using too many systems and software that require outside help for integration.
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Diminished Brand Loyalty
How and Why Does Customer Engagement Matter?
Customer engagement is the act of communicating with consumers across a range of channels to develop your connection. However, keep in mind that client involvement should be omnichannel, which means your strategy should be consistent across all platforms and mediums that consumers utilize.
Nearly 78% of customers seek omnichannel customer engagement. (Outgrow)
Customer engagement is critical for small businesses because it benefits both buyers and suppliers by raising closure rates while remaining consistent with current B2B customer expectations. Engaging customers before, during, and after purchases strengthens their emotional connection to your business. The more innovative the customer engagement strategy, the stronger the customer’s connection to your brand and the longer they will be loyal customers.
“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.”
- John Russell, President of Harley Davidson
According to Outgrow, 64% of customers want personalized experiences based on previous encounters.
The benefits of customer engagement for your small business:
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Promotes brand experience
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Improves customer experience
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Increases sales funnel velocity
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Increases customer loyalty and trust
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Provides valuable customer feedback and insight
In addition, be consistent in your customer engagement strategies. Concentrate on developing a more customer-centric marketing approach to increase consumer engagement and satisfaction.
Interesting Tips to Increase Customer Engagement
“Make your customer the hero of your stories.”
- Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
Go for Omnichannel marketing:
Today's customers connect with brands across a variety of channels; thus, you must be consistent in offering a uniform customer experience across all touchpoints. The answer is omnichannel, which unifies consumer interactions across numerous communication channels on a single platform.
According to the Aberdeen Group, businesses with exceptionally high omnichannel customer interaction retain an average of 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for businesses with poor omnichannel customer engagement.
An omnichannel customer engagement strategy can:
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Serve your customers where they are
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Engage with customers in real-time
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Improve customer service
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Gather better customer insights
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Enhance the shopping experience
Focus on Social Media
The most effective tool for client involvement in social media. Multiple goods and companies compete for user attention on social media, as a result, you should focus on techniques that increase customer engagement.
Regular posting on the platforms is vital, as is responding to consumer comments and concerns and engaging in social media interactions with customers.
Rather than just communicating with consumers, initiate a discussion with them. To do this, engage them with interactive material like polls, contests, and quizzes. Develop a thorough strategy for your social media engagement campaign that provides a long-term home for each consumer.
Utilize Relationship Marketing
Establishing a strong relationship between a business and a consumer is critical to brand loyalty. As a result, employ relationship marketing as a marketing technique as it may be applied at any stage of your organization. Relationship marketing is critical since it enables businesses to maintain close contact with their clients.
Relationship marketing (or customer relationship marketing) aims to forge deep, even emotional, customer ties with a company, which may result in repeat business, free word-of-mouth advertising, and information from consumers that can produce leads.
Push Notifications
Push notifications have been shown to significantly increase consumer engagement. Push notifications are brief messages that appear outside of the browser on a user's mobile or desktop device. Due to widespread mobile internet access, it is the optimal mobile engagement strategy.
Customers are notified about special offers, events, product or service promotions, flash sales, and news. With push notifications, the challenge is to get the information and timing just right. Push notifications will undoubtedly enhance consumer engagement and conversions.
Implement Native Advertising
It is important to target the audience and engage them, and native advertising is one of the best
digital engagement strategies. Native advertising has grown over time and now encompasses a variety of ad formats, ranging from video advertisements to app install advertisements to carousel-style advertisements. Marketers may utilize native advertising to pique customers' interests and encourage them to engage with their content and brand.
This is a well-known instance of native advertising. Netflix and Spotify are two well-known companies that make great use of their customers' data to create relevant, personalized experiences. In 2017, the platforms teamed up to create a unique sort of
native advertising that garnered worldwide attention.
Netflix and Spotify teamed up to promote the Netflix original series "Stranger Things." Users may activate a "Stranger Thing" mode, which automatically allocates them to a playlist based on a character.
Not only did this help advertise the program through backdrop graphics and logo design, but it also resonated with listeners since the playlist selections matched their personal listening preferences.
Native advertisements are not only more effective than standard advertisements, but they are also more amusing and engaging, resulting in more clicks, sales, and brand exposure. This was a popular engagement strategy example.
Bottom Line
Customer engagement
strategies for small businesses vary in complexity according to the stage of the firm. Proper customer engagement may assist you in attracting clients to interact with your organization. Additionally, it can provide them with a positive client experience, resulting in positive word-of-mouth exposure. As a result, you'll attract a new wave of clients to your business.
FAQ:
How do you build customer engagement?
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Deliver exceptional client experiences
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Boost the effectiveness of your social media promotion
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Create a brand that is relevant and meaningful
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Utilize conversational marketing
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Make use of push alerts
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With video, you can capture people's hearts and minds
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Concentrate on retention
What are customer engagement strategies?
The customer engagement strategy is described as the process of developing strong relationships with customers by gaining knowledge of their journey and how they interact with the business over time.
How important is customer engagement?
Customer engagement is a critical component of every successful business. Increased customer involvement equates to increased earnings for your business. Engaging customers before, during, and after purchases strengthens their emotional connection to your business.