Source Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash
We are witnessing incredible digital evolution in this era.
As much as it brings remarkable benefits in the form of convenience, it has undoubtedly resulted in a generally shortened span of attention. As a result, it has become a challenge for brands to grab a customer’s consideration for long.
Being a car enthusiast and highly keen about technological advances in them, I follow several automobile brands on social media. I often engage on their posts and even send messages in private chats to get answers to my queries. Some of them are quick to respond wilfully, while others reply trivially. However, worst are the ones who don’t pay any heed and ignore the followers’ comments and engagements.
It goes without saying that I am quick to click on the unfollow button when I notice a brand is being oblivious to what its customers are trying to say.
On the contrary, brands that respond in a meaningful way gain my trust, and I won’t ever hesitate to buy from them.
Why are customer engagements so crucial for a brand’s success?
CMO of MasterCard, Raja Rajamannar, shares how they continuously try to find ways to engage with customers. He says that their approach enables them to have two-way engagements with customers rather than simple one-directional conversations. He reveals that such engagements are more fulfilling to the consumers.
The sole purpose of keeping your customers engaged is to make them emotionally invested so that they continue to buy your products. For some brands, acquiring a lead or getting a sale is the ultimate goal to consider their engagement efforts successful.
With this article, we strive to help brands reap the benefits of customer engagements. Below are some tips that you can consider adopting in order to keep your target audience and customers meaningfully engaged.
1. Make your brand resonate with your target audience
If customers cannot feel relatable to your brand, it means you are portrayed as an inhuman profit-making business to them. Change the way the audience perceives you by showing them that your brand is just like a human that feels about their problems and satisfaction.
Developing a brand persona that resonates with the target customers is a great way to make them believe that you stand up for the same ideals as they do. For example, Nike is a sneakers brand whose target audience is athletes and fitness freaks. The brand posts regularly about famous athletes to show that it also has the same value and respect for the customer’s ideals.
2. Deliver premium customer service
Swift, top-notch customer service has made several brands leave their competitors behind. A customer wants to be heard and valued both before and after making a purchase. If you serve him exactly what he wants, the chances are that he will buy from you again and will recommend you to his friends and family.
You can use calls, SMS, and even social media to be there for your customers. Being consistent about providing an incredible service will prove to be an engagement booster for your brand and bring repeat sales.
3. Use chatbots on your website
What could be better than totally avoiding waiting time for your customers when they need guidance? But I can’t stay online round the clock; you must be thinking.
Don’t worry. Technology comes to the rescue as you can be available 24/7 to attend to your customers with AI chatbots on your website, and social media platforms.
Chatbots take care of frequently asked questions like business hours, packages and pricing, and simple troubleshooting so that your customer support team can attend to the customers with complex inquiries.
4. Respond as soon as the audience interacts
You post a blog, social media post, or a video, and potential customers, and the general audience begins posting comments and sending you messages in the inbox. You may even get a lot of emails if your business email is mentioned publicly. Now what?
The worst thing you can do is to ghost after posting content. Instead, staying and responding to every engagement will bring you hoards of loyal customers. Understand that for customers, it is a huge deal to get a response from the brand and take advantage of it. Whether the comment is full of praise or a complaint, you need to answer it in a way that will help you win the customer’s trust for life.
Look how Reebok sprinkles some sass but stays within limits with one of their prompt replies to their followers.
When you fail to engage with an interacting follower, not only you lose him, but it leaves a bad impact on all the other audiences. They will sense your disengagement and comprehend it as your brand’s disinterest in its customers.
5. Provide value that compels them to stay connected
Customers stay when they feel attached to the brand and its values. They know that they will get value from the content you post, and unfollowing you will give them FOMO (Fear of missing out).
Your website should have an interesting blog section, which will be a convincing source for your customers and followers to stay connected. You must generate content that guides the customer through their pain points. For instance, a kitchen appliance brand can write an in-depth post on how to choose between two separate models of an appliance or how to safely clean appliances.
Also, make sure your logo quickly grabs viewers’ attention and communicates your company’s core values in an interesting way. For this purpose, you can take the help of professionals like Logo design valley to create a solid logo that speaks for your company.
6. Make good use of customer reviews
No advertisement can bring the same impact on future sales as a customer’s review does. If someone uses your product/service, and are satisfied with what you are offering, they will recommend you to their friends and family via social media, or word of mouth.
Never take these reviews for granted. They possess incredible convincing power to attract new customers. Rather than getting inspired by an ad, the general audience tends to trust other people’s opinion more.
Imagine how effective the following type of review must have been on customers looking to buy a car from Mitsubishi Motors.
One more way to boost engagements is to put up a feedback form on your website so that customers can give their reviews about your brand.
7. Keep the customers engaged with personalized communication
When you add a touch of personalization while interacting with your customers via call, email, SMS, and replies, it works wonders to trigger their preference for you in future.
Addressing the prospect by his name, mentioning a thing he purchased in the past, or remembering their birthdays are some tips to personalize the communication. When you use it in emails, it can boost your open rate by 26%, as reported by Wpforms.
8. Social media strategies to bring high engagements
The yearly report by Hootsuite reveals that users spend as much as two and a half hours daily on social media.
By using engagement tactics on your brand’s social media platforms, you can take benefit from the time spent by users there.
Contests and giveaways are worth investing strategies to drive customers to engage with your brand. Look how Hershey’s has taken advantage of the Halloween season to engage with its customers via a fun contest.
Moreover, polls, quizzes, live video events, and using unique hashtags and asking viewers to use it for user-generated content are also tested ways to increase meaningful connections with the customers. Don’t forget to engage back on UGC as it will further push the leads down the conversion funnel.
Summing Up
As you are now equipped with valuable insights regarding customer engagements, and you know more about it than before, it is time to take action. Follow the tips mentioned above to boost your customer engagement.
Don’t forget to share this article with other business owners and comment below if any of these brought you quick success.
