Customer engagement is a pressing issue for most marketers today. Engagement underscores the very reason for marketing: to build lasting relationships with leads and customers and make them come back. This is because better customer engagement results in happier customers and improves overall business growth and sales.
Why Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is important for the following reasons:
- Boosts brand experience
- Increases customer trust and loyalty
- Enables collection of customer data
- Provides critical customer insight and feedback
- Improves overall customer experience
- Increases the business’ sales
Customer Engagement Examples
As a company, you always want to impress your customers through interaction and engagement. Here are some forms of customer engagement examples that occur almost every day:
- A customer receives a business SMS message on their phone about an offer, with a link to buy it
- A customer lands on your product page and feels warm and welcomed
- A customer receives a business email newsletter about a newly launched product and a link to view it
- A company responds to a customer’s query about a product or service on social media
- A customer watches a video on social media of behind-the-scenes activities about how a company makes a product
4 Ways to Reach Out to and Engage Your Customers Online
Here are vital customer engagement strategies that will help you reach out to your customer and maintain a relationship with them:
1. SMS Marketing
Mobile messaging is fast becoming a key way brands connect with their customers. Consumers are fast becoming comfortable interacting with brands on their mobile devices. A reliable SMS API ensures businesses’ messages are delivered in time and seamlessly to reach out to customers whenever the business proposes to offer discounts, personalized promotions, or conduct surveys.
2. Optimize Your Website for SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of getting free (organic) web traffic from search engines such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. It involves tailoring your website and content to meet customer queries, direct them to your website or landing page, and encourage them to buy from you. Different ways to optimize your website include:
- Creating great content
- Improving website speed and ad campaigns
- Optimizing page titles and meta descriptions
- Using a call to action (CTA) to ask customers to buy or come back
- Make the website mobile friendly for better mobile marketing
3. Create and Distribute Relevant Content
The best way to engage with your customers is to offer them relevant content in ways that inform, educate, and entertain. You first need to research your customers and understand their needs and challenges. You’ll then create relevant and informative content that connects with the customer and addresses their needs and challenges.
Content can be in the form of blog posts, articles, product reviews, landing pages, product descriptions, social media posts, youtube videos, eBooks, user guides, or community engagements. The content you create, and share will determine the kind of relationship and engagement you forge with your customers.
4. Solicit Customer Feedback or Reviews
Make sure you can regularly collect your customers’ feedback. As a business, you can gather feedback through:
- Online forums
- Surveys
- Community engagements
- Polls
- And interviews
Feedback gives you a great way to have additional customer interaction, letting you know how they feel and what improvements they’d like. Use the feedback to improve customer experience, products, or services.
Endnote
Customer engagement involves the strategies you employ to interact with your customer. The idea is to make customers understand your brand, feel positive about it, and act positively towards your business. The interaction keeps the customers engaged throughout their buying journey. In the process, you gain customer loyalty and can also collect critical customer information.