Customer engagement is all about how you interact with your customers, whether online or offline. The idea is that the interactions you have with your customers will encourage them to feel positively towards your business. 

Unfortunately, businesses can no longer rely on eye-catching logos, slogans or celebrity endorsements thanks to the creation of social media. Business owners are now expected to be always online to respond to their customers. 

Customer engagement is one of the most vital parts of a marketing strategy, underlining the entire logic behind why marketers market. How do we build a relationship with our customers to ensure they choose us over our competition? 

Customer Experience

One way to get ahead of the competition is by creating a great experience for your customers. To deliver an excellent standard of customer service, you need to map out all the ways you plan to interact with your customers. A good starting point is making sure you have a website, emails and all your chosen social media platforms set up. To find out which social media platforms would be best for your business read our previous article.

Things to watch out for are customers waiting too long on hold to speak to a member of the team, online checkout being too complicated for customers to understand or even posting social media content that does not suit the tone of your audience. 

Branding

Creating a brand personality is a way for customers to get to know you and what your business is about. Having good brand awareness also means that your target audience will be able to spot you out from the competition. 

A customer chooses to engage when a business has reassured them that they have something relevant to them and that they exist. Brands help to communicate a sense of authenticity, for example, an eco-friendly business will only source its materials from suppliers who have similar values to them and ethics. This way customers are aware of where their products are coming from and feel safe engaging with the brand. 

For businesses to be successful, they have to work to create a sense of connection with their customers, but branding helps to attract their attention and opens up potential opportunities for further engagement. 

Conversational Marketing 

The concept of a 9 to 5 job is now a thing of the past. Customers expect to connect with a business and receive an instant response. However, some small businesses can not provide this level of service to their customers every minute of the day. This is where conversational marketing tools like chatbots can come into play. 

To help guide customers around your website, you could implement a chatbot, an automated chat service. Technology that can mimic human conversation patterns and create an engaging customer experience for when your team can not be of assistance. The benefit is that the customer knows they are talking to a bot, as long as the communication is effective they will not mind. 

How We Can Help

Here at Humana, we support a variety of business owners with our world-class digital marketing support through our sister brand BeMySocial. 

For business owners looking for support with engaging more effectively with their customers, Be My Social also offers a social media management service. You will have access to all of their resources and will have a world-class team behind you. 

To find out more on the benefits of using a digital marketing agency to help with your customer engagement, contact a member of the BeMySocial team by calling on 01302 494 050 or by filling out their online form.