As digital marketing executives, we are responsible for a lot of areas, from creating marketing strategies, targeting customers, and last but not least, increasing customer retention. We are trained to create content that will entice and exceed customer’s expectations, always putting people before products. Moreover, your customers are tired of listing sales pitch after sales pitch, which means keeping an eye on establishing a right connection with them.
Hence, here I share some insights regarding why customer engagement is so important, and what should we do to improve it.
- Why is building a customer engagement strategy so important?
Building a customer engagement strategy is relevant because it is like creating another level of connection between the business and the customer. With a customer-centric organization with a solid customer engagement strategy, you will increase customers’ loyalty while engaging more intimately with them, adding some extra value to your business.
2. What are some customer engagement tips (e.g. social media/digital marketing advice)?
The best customer engagement tip is being on top of a superstar customer service. If customers are satisfied with the brand’s performance as well as it is customer support service, it is more likely that your business will get more recommendations.
Some steps when creating an effective relationship are:
- Identify your customers. Identify those customers that are exploring your product or service and engage them: set their characteristics, use some metrics to determine their location (for example), and recognize your ideal customer behavior pattern (motivations, etc.).
- Track the points of interaction. Keep an eye on how they interact with your brand within your online platforms.
- Offer them customized service. Because not each of your buyers is the same, you should be anticipated and create different strategies that respond to their different demands. More generic marketing strategies are often prone to be left behind by customers.
- Ask more questions. Starting the conversation is the smart move, but you have to keep working on that. Questions are the best opportunity to get into your buyers’ brain: evaluate how to construct a proper conversation via email or social media and you will make the most of your returns.
- Create engaging content. If you want to create a rapport between you and your target audience, you must focus on offering content that educates them. Thus, your customers are looking at you because they need something they cannot accomplish alone, so you have to solve your problems via content, being specific this, actionable and entertaining.
3. What are some great customer engagement tools and why are they so helpful?
- Social networking sites. Relying on social networking sites to increase customer engagement is what 63% of millennials do to stay in touch with their favourite brands. Moreover, your customers can get in touch with you in a more direct way, while having the opportunity to establish a two-way communication channel. LinkedIn is normally the favourite for B2B companies, while B2C businesses rely more on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- Virtual assistants and bots. Chatbots are a top resource for your customers, as when they have questions they will need someone around who answer them. You will be able to approach your audience in a more proactively way, by simply saying: Hello, how can I help you?. Live chats are on the rise now, and this could be the perfect way to minimize the response time to your customers’ needs.
Some good examples of customer engagement software tools are:
*ChurnZero. This tool can track users’ behaviour and satisfaction. You can also easily personalise to enhance customer experience. It is easy to use and has real-time alerts and notifications.
*SurveySparrow. This is an affordable tool to get feedback from customers. It is a conversational style interface that can also be personalized.
*Delighted. It is a survey and customer feedback software solution with some multichannel options such as email, websites and SMS. This tool is very easy to navigate through and while it can be integrated with other apps such as Slack, although it needs more robust-data sharing capabilities.
*Feedier. Customers can complete surveys while being incentivized with tools such as sending vouchers, coupons, or monetary rewards. However, users are missing more integration options and tools.