Engaging with your customers is an essential part of maintaining a business. But you can’t simply throw together an advertisement and expect it to be successful. Every move a business makes needs to be planned carefully. And your engagement efforts are no exception to this rule. Brands that successfully engage with their audiences have customer engagement strategies to help them.
What is a Customer Engagement Strategy
A customer engagement strategy provides businesses with a roadmap to follow when speaking with their audience. It will define everything from the marketing channels you should prioritize to tips to be consistent across all these channels. It is important for your customer engagement strategy to be as thorough as possible. The more detailed your strategy is, the more likely it is to be effective. Remember to update your customer engagement strategy regularly. Trends change very quickly in today’s world and you need to be able to keep up with them.
Benefits of Implementing a Customer Engagement Strategy
- Public Recognition
A customer engagement strategy will have a direct impact on your brand’s public recognition. Public recognition is a measurement of how likely a consumer is to know your company. The higher your public recognition is, the more likely the average consumer is to know of your brand. Marketing and engagement efforts are the most common way that the public will interact with your company. That makes them the perfect tool to reach a wider audience. Brands that have excellent public recognition have an easier time marketing to the public. That’s because consumers are more likely to engage with companies they already recognize.
- Public Perception
Public perception is frequently confused with public recognition because of how similar they are. Public perception is not interested in how much of the public is aware of your brand. Instead, it is concerned with how your audience feels about your brand. Companies with high levels of public perception are viewed more favorably by the public. Oftentimes, this can directly translate to an increase in sales. This is because consumers are more likely to buy products from brands that they trust.
- Customer Loyalty
Effectively engaging with your customers also encourages them to stay loyal to your brand. Communicating with your audience regularly builds trust with them. Over time, this trust will evolve into brand loyalty. This is important because customers are more likely to continue doing business with a brand they trust. Poor communication can actually drive consumers away from your brand.
Examples of Some Strategies
- Set SMART Goals
Every solid plan needs a good set of goals to help guide it. In the business world, those goals need to be SMART as well. SMART is an acronym that means specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Each goal needs to be specific because broad goals don’t clearly define an end result. Goals must be measurable so your company can clearly see if they have been met. It’s great for your goals to be aspirational, but they also need to be attainable. Don’t set a goal that’s out of your reach. Goals need to be relevant to the campaign in order to be effective. For instance, increasing survey response rates is a relevant goal for an engagement campaign. Finally, each goal needs to set a reasonable timeframe for when it should be completed.
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are metrics you choose to track your progress when working towards a goal. The more specific your KPI is, the better it will be for tracking your progress. Let’s say you want to measure the level of engagement your company receives specifically in New Zealand. In this situation, you may follow the number of orders that use NZ couriers. Be creative when deciding on what KPIs to track because they can lead to some valuable insights.
- Understand Your Audience
When you have a conversation with someone, it helps to understand who they are and what’s important to them. The same is true when businesses communicate with their audience. Understanding your audience’s demographics will make your communication efforts more effective. That’s because different kinds of people will engage with businesses in varying ways. For example, young professionals are more likely to engage with businesses on social media. In contrast, older consumers are more likely to engage with print media. Knowing where, how, and when to engage with your target audience is paramount. Understanding your audience also positions you to better serve them. For instance, understanding your audience’s shipping preferences makes it easy to provide them with a smooth delivery.
- Build a Brand Personality
Giving your brand a personality is one of the most effective ways to drive engagement. Consumers enjoy engaging with brands that have a personality that resonates with them. That’s because a personality makes your brand more relatable. It shows consumers that your company shares the same interests and values. An easy example of this is Red Bull. This energy drink company is known for being bold and high-energy, which appeals to its young active audience.
