Most businesses trying to conquer the online world need to have a complete understanding of how to build a relationship with their customer that aims to improve their brand building, reputation, lead generation, etc. Customer engagement measures the company’s engagement with the audience across different touchpoints. Interacting with the customers often helps with brand building and strengthen your connection with your audience. This method adds value to your company by improving your online credibility. Understand that your relationship with your customer is more than just the transactional process. You want to make sure that they see your brand as their go-to solution and encourage repeat business.
What is Online Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement online is more than the services, support, and sales. It pertains to an ongoing business practice that helps your people anticipate the needs and desires of your target audience. This process also includes keeping in touch with your audience to encourage a long-lasting relationship that will eventually lead to loyalty and promote business growth. It is sometimes referred to as user engagement that pertains to the active interaction with your audience through developing a message that motivates, interests, encourages, and educates them. More and more businesses and professionals are adopting this strategy to increase their online reputation and build brand awareness.
What Are the Benefits of Customer Engagement?
With the range of marketing platforms and channels available today, one might wonder why they still have to invest in customer engagement strategy. If you are still in doubt if this adds value to your online reputation and brand awareness, here are some of its benefits.
Improving Loyalty through Healthier and Stronger Customer Relationship
To take advantage of the rapidly developing internet presence, businesses are starting to focus their resources on online marketing strategy. Nonetheless, companies are still struggling to find the secret behind building long-term and sustainable relationships with their customers to encourage loyalty and profitability. An effective customer engagement strategy is essential in helping the brands connect better with their target market in a manner that will enable them to continue their interaction with the business. If you are willing to go a mile to engage with them to guarantee a purchase, there’s a chance of building a better relationship with them. Be sure that you will regularly interact with them on things that they will find relevant and exciting. Remember their aspirations, motivations, priorities and needs. Customer engagement is more than just talking to them regularly; it is about adding value to the customers’ lives.
Encouraging Repeat Customers through Customer Engagement
Based on the numbers released by Bain & Company, an increase in customer retention of 5% will deliver a 25% increase in the company profits. Numerous studies have attested to the power of an engaged customer in driving significant profit to your business. Therefore, you should never undermine the value of retaining your customers. While there may be several methods that you can use to encourage repeat customers, engaging with your customers consistently and nurturing your relationship with your target market remains on top of the marketer’s book.
Developing a comprehensive and systematic customer engagement blueprint will guarantee that your connection with your audience will continue even after completing the purchase. Your relationship with them will only grow, and they will eventually become a loyal ally of your business, promoting your business’s online reputation and credibility. By reaching out to your audience through their preferred platforms, you can only continue to educate them about the Unique Selling Proposition of your company and help them take advantage of it. You can remind them about the features and benefits, inform them of the latest trends, and the news and advancement in your industry. Having a clear user engagement strategy will help you comprehend the audience’s main pain points when using your service or products. It will help you address their common concerns or use this insight for future product development.
Better Upselling and Cross-Selling Opportunities
We’ve mentioned before that with online customer engagement, you will be gaining insights on some actual numbers. You will understand what part of your strategy works and what needs to be tweaked. You will also have some idea of the behavior of the audience. The information will help you personalize your recommendations. You will be more accurate with your offerings and realize opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell. With this, you can find ways to better deliver intelligent and relevant recommendations and boost your customer lifetime value. Customers will likely appreciate you, which can indirectly impact your online reputation.
Boost the Number of Subscribers
Whether you are using your newsletter, push notifications, or blog posts to reach out to your customers, your audience will only opt-in to your subscription if they find you credible. Therefore, you need to prove your business’s worthiness and reputation by providing them with content that adds value to their lives. It should also come with a solution to some of their pain points. Moreover, constant interaction with your audience would be instrumental in helping them realize the value that you can offer. With this, there is a higher chance that they will subscribe to any of your brand communication channels. If they find you credible, they will treat you as their primary source for industry news, the latest trends, and the best deals that you can offer.
Customer engagement online helps you win the interest and loyalty of the customers. It will be easier for them to recognize your brand on other platforms with this. They will have a better connection with your brand than your competitors, who don’t always engage with them. It is an excellent method to use if you want to boost the number of your subscribers.
Shorten the Buyer’s Journey with Customer Engagement
Your customer engagement strategy does not only affect your existing customers. It also has a direct impact on converting your prospects and shortening their sales cycle. If you have a comprehensive plan and execute them properly, it can be an effective method to encourage your leads to give your business offerings a try. Whether it is about educating and informing your potential customers about the best practices or making the information easily accessible, the opportunities to interact with your prospects will be endless. You can also use this to anticipate their problems and provide solutions or establish your online reputation. With this, you can cater for the needs of different segments of your audience. You can stay on top of their mind and significantly consider your business when they require similar services or products.
How to Keep your Customers Engaged
In today’s age, customers expect that the brands will engage with them. They prefer a company that cares about the things that matter to them. They also hope that the company will respond promptly. If you want to experience the benefits of customer engagement, we’ve made a list of some of the best strategies that you can use to develop meaningful and long-term relationships and trust with your customers.
Using Live Streaming Video
Companies who want to succeed in conquering the multiple online channels and engaging with their potential customers should not miss the opportunities presented by live streaming videos. Compared to promotional videos, live streaming videos allows you to communicate with your prospects and customers in real-time. This makes them a powerful customer engagement tool. It helps you deliver your unique value proposition, promote your company branding, and establish a relationship with you. Based on the reports of Yahoo, viewers can develop that feeling of connection, immediacy, and excitement when watching a live stream. It increases the organic traffic to at least 157% and boosts the conversion rate to around 30%. Moreover, those who watch a live stream is 67% more likely to purchase the product or service discussed.
Increase Your Social Media Presence
One effective customer engagement strategy is to have a social media presence. Having a social media account is now a must-have for any business. According to the latest report, about 65% of marketers have increased their investment in their social media marketing. Sadly, most companies use this platform to post and share content. It is such a shame since this channel offers massive potential, especially in interacting with the customers and keeping them engaged. You can build your business page on various social media platforms. However, instead of posting and sharing pictures and random memes, try to answer the common questions that you will encounter. Like some comments and respond to them. Engaging with them will make them feel valued.
Offering Live Chat
None of us wants to reach out to the company’s customer support hotline, only to be placed on hold for 10 minutes. This is such a frustrating scenario, and most often, we will decide to choose their competitors. A live chat, just like the live stream, would be an excellent opportunity to engage customers in real-time. You can immediately respond to their concerns. It enables the customers to interact with your brand and get the necessary information they need. Invespcro mentioned that 63% of the customers would be returning to a website that offers a live chat feature. Live chat also boosts the conversion rate to 20%. It helps simplify the buyer’s journey and improve the customer’s satisfaction rate. Moreover, it relieves some burden on your support team.
Building a Solid Digital Community
Another unique online customer engagement method is to build a lively online community. If you want your customer to interact with your brand, you need to give them the platform to do so, and make it accessible. You will not only provide them with a channel to connect, but it can also boost your brand awareness. Choose a platform that will allow the audience to develop content, become your brand ambassadors, or answer questions. A community will enable you to draw your audience who shares the same interest. It increases the probability of building a community of loyal customers.
Customer engagement online offers a range of benefits to different companies, regardless of their nature and target audience. It boosts your marketing efficiency, develops a positive online reputation, attains competitiveness, and establish trust with your customers. Ensure that the different platforms and channels you will use will not encounter any connectivity issues. This guarantee a seamless interaction with your audience.
Tags: reputation management