When you engage well, you leverage well!
Even the best digital marketing company fail at leveraging effective customer engagement strategies while drafting a marketing strategy. The reason is simple, they limit their CX by putting just images and videos on their social media handles, which is just not the case.
Did you know, a survey conducted by Statista in 2021 revealed that 44.5% of professionals worldwide consider their CX to be a primary competitive differentiator? In fact, another survey revealed that 81% of market leaders around the globe rely on pre-produced videos for their CX.
Focusing on your customer engagement strategies will not only hook your customers but will also make them KEEP COMING BACK TO YOU.
Convinced enough but puzzled more?
Don’t worry, we got you covered. In this article, we have shared our top 3 secret customer engagement strategies that we personally use to build stronger customer relationships and increased retention.
Customer Engagement – The Essence of a Marketing Strategy
Before unlocking my secret customer engagement strategies, let’s first briefly understand what is customer engagement.
Customer engagement is cultivating and maintaining a close relationship with the customers even after the transaction has closed in order to interact with them regarding their experience with the brand.
With a special focus on customer engagement, the businesses don’t just emphasize extracting revenue but at the same time, create significant value for their users which eventually flourishes in sales growth and customer loyalty.
To understand better, consider these examples:
Coming across a BTS video of product-making while scrolling through your Instagram feed.
Receiving a personalized newsletter about a product launch in your email.
Reaching out to customer care for returning a product and receiving exceptional support.
The examples are endless but the ultimate goal remains the same – giving the customers much more than a sale, an EXPERIENCE. Whether you have hired a digital marketing company to handle your marketing or you do it in-house, if your marketing strategy focuses on customer engagement, consider it well-equipped.
3 Customer Engagement Strategies that will help in scaling your marketing strategy
Scale your CX by incorporating my below-mentioned key techniques in your marketing strategy:
Make your loyal customers feel special – more than your girlfriend or boyfriend!
Customer engagement strategies are not meant to be a one-way street
Don't miss even a single chance to ask for feedback
1. Make your loyal customers feel special – more than your girlfriend!
It’s not just the girlfriends who demand extra attention, customers are equally needy too. The key here is to make your existing customers feel wanted and worthy. A whopping 75% of costumer state that rewards play a significant role when it comes to favoring a brand. Not only favor but making your customers feel special also promotes customer retention which is a very important advantage for a company as retaining existing customers is much cheaper than acquiring new ones.
A marketing strategy can incorporate one or many strategies at the same time to offer rewards and benefits to existing customers to increase their loyalty towards the brand.
Some fair examples that you may utilize include:
Membership program - Introduce a membership or loyalty program that rewards existing consumers with points, incentives, exclusive discounts, bonuses, or promotions. Offer these loyalty members some special bonuses time-to-time to continue making a noteworthy experience for them.
Referral Programs - You can encourage referrals by rewarding new clients. This way you can make the existing customers feel benefitted and the same time utilize them as your communicator to grab new clients.
Personalized messages - Send your customers personalized letters or messages to thank them for choosing you over other brands. Personalize these messages by using their first name and the service or product they purchased from you. You can also offer little presents or special discounts via email to grab their attention.
Birthday/Anniversary wishes - Keep records of the anniversaries and birthdays of your existing customers and send them an SMS or mail to wish for the same. This is an exceptional way to make your customers feel important as they see you in their inbox on their special day. Cheery on the top, you can also offer them a special birthday or anniversary discount as a cute gesture.
2. Customer engagement strategies are not meant to be a one-way street
Every digital marketing company in the world considers social media handles and content marketing as their precious stones as they are the drivers for engagement with today’s rational customers.
However, interactive content is something that holds much more power in comparison with random images, videos, or for that matter, digital ads. Amidst the high competition, it is just not possible for the one-way, monotonous content to make a place for itself as when the content is two-way, it directly appeals to the customers to engage with it.
In fact, interactive content is considered to be the future of Internet marketing, and here is a fun fact - In 2013, the most surfed story on website of New York Times was a quiz.
Some highly engaging and appealing content formats that you may use include:
User-generated content
Raffles for sharing content
Gamification elements and games
Shoppable videos or video bots
Instagram stories with “ask me anything” sticker
Instagram stories with “add yours” sticker
Quizzes
Surveys and polls
Contests
Live video sessions
Asking your customers to share their reviews on the product/service, seek what product/service they would like to see next, encourage them to create unboxing videos, etc. could also be used for added engagement. The possibilities in this pool are virtually unlimited as it all depends on your creativity and imagination. You can customize the use of these content formats as per the nature and identity of your business but missing them is a big NO-NO!
3. Don't miss even a single chance to ask for feedback
Feedback is the key to gaining insights into what the customer thinks of your product or service. Asking your customers to provide feedback shows that you care and their opinion matters to you, making it an integral part of a marketing strategy.
Feedback is information shared by one individual to another in light of prior behavior or action. Take note that feedback doesn’t always have to be positive as it can also include criticism too. It completely depends on you, that how positively and constructively you take that feedback.
Also, make sure that you also make the customer feel that their feedback has been processed so that they feel more involved and important in the process.
Below are the four reasons that highlight the importance of collecting feedback from your customers:
Feedback already exists everywhere as we keep sharing such information with one another in random conversations. However, leveraging this for your benefit is an art that you must learn.
Whether it’s online or offline, gathering feedback makes the customer feel heard and empowered which is the ultimate goal of the pool of customer engagement strategies.
Gathering feedback can inject motivation in your customers as they feel appreciated and valued eventually flourishing the customer relationships.
Feedback gives the brand a meaningful direction and helps in creating a personalized experience for the customers.
You can collect feedback from your customers using surveys or live chats on your website. You can additionally utilize social media and email inboxes for a more personalized reach.
Final Note
The top three customer engagement strategies shared in this article are tried and tested by us, however, there are many more to it, which you can invent as per your imagination and creativity.
To sum it up, we would definitely say that you must not miss such customer engagement elements from your marketing strategy to stay ahead of the competition. But always remember, the opportunities we are talking about are also handy to your competitors and therefore you should try to interact and connect with your customers on each and every possible occasion.
Additionally, no matter what customer engagement strategies you choose to employ, keep a note that you have to be consistent, without fail. Stay focused on your target audience and be with them, right from the identification stage to their whole brand journey.
Rest assured, you will get your way through better customer engagement and get rewarded with their loyalty and trust.
Stay EXCEPTIONAL and CONSISTENT!