6 Ways to Improve Your Customer Engagement Strategy
In a business marketplace that’s more digital, saturated and fast-paced than ever, the implementation of a solid customer engagement strategy is paramount. Whether your goal is to build relationships, foster customer loyalty or attract eyes to your business in the first place – competition for customer engagement is at an all time high. So how do you go about standing out from the crowd?
In this article, we’ll dive into the intricacies of customer engagement. We’ll cover everything you need to know – from the basics of what it is and why it’s important, to providing six proven strategies that will have your customers feeling just as passionate about your business as you do.
Get in touch to learn more about how Red Letter Days Corporate can help you on your way towards increased customer engagement.
What is a customer engagement strategy?
In simple terms, a customer engagement strategy is a planned set of actions that creates a customer experience that brings customers back to your business time after time. Building a relationship and positive sentiment with your customers is essential to moving beyond one-time purchases and increasing retention.
It starts with a comprehensive understanding of your customer base, whereby you’ll identify their needs, preferences and any potential pain points. From here, you will need to nurture a relationship with your customers at every available touch point.
Over time, an effective customer engagement strategy will allow you to meet and exceed customer expectations. A study from Hall and Partners found that up to two thirds of a brand’s profits depend on successful customer engagement, so there are tangible and bottom-line benefits to keeping it at the heart of your business strategy.
How to improve your customer engagement strategy
While the concept of customer engagement is relatively simple, incorporating it successfully into your business requires a lot of care and detail. It’s important to remember that customer engagement is multifaceted and incremental, requiring a series of small interactions that contribute positively to holistic success.
Below we will lay out some of the things you can do to strengthen your customer engagement strategy.
1. Get to know your customers
To achieve a highly engaged customer base, you will need to start by working out who is most likely to fall into that category. Start thinking about demographics – is your target customer base predominantly male or female? What age group do they fall into? What sort of income do they have at their disposal?
Psychographics and behavioural analytics will allow you to engage on an even deeper level, and can be gathered from customer feedback initiatives like quizzes, customer profiles and social media polls. Once you’ve compiled the data, you will have an accurate Ideal Customer Persona (ICP) that will be of endless benefit to your engagement strategy.2. Provide a personalised customer experience
If you want your customers to develop a more positive relationship with your brand, you’ll need to ensure that their experiences feel as personalised as possible. Data compiled from customer feedback initiatives (as referenced above) is invaluable when it comes to catering content to your ideal customer.
Above all, you will need to ensure that you’re providing a quality product or service that will keep customers coming back for more. Centralising a personalised customer experience throughout every stage of the consumer journey will maximise your potential for customer engagement.3. Promote your business with helpful content
One of the biggest factors affecting levels of customer engagement is trustworthiness. Consumers want to buy from brands they can rely on, and one of the best ways to create this reputation for your business is by providing helpful content.
This involves everything from emails and blog articles to social media posts and informational video content. Aside from aiding your customer engagement strategy, content that’s helpful to your customer base will also provide valuable support for customer acquisition.4. Embrace an omnichannel approach
When evaluating the effectiveness of your customer engagement strategy, consider the channels you are using as a business to build customer relationships. The most effective strategies utilise an omnichannel approach, instead of allowing individual touchpoints to act in isolation.
Adopting an omni-channel approach involves the integration of all channels across your business, creating a consistent and seamless experience for your customers through every stage of their journey.
Aside from increasing levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty, an omnichannel approach will solidify your brand’s identity and attract the exact kind of loyal customer you’re looking for. A study by the Aberdeen Group found that companies implementing an omnichannel customer engagement strategy retained 89% of their customers on average.5. Prioritise social media
It’s no secret that social media has become an indispensable tool for any business, but when it comes to customer engagement, its importance can’t be stressed enough. Not only does social media provide companies with a direct line of communication with their customer base – it serves a multifunctional channel for advertising your business and compiling valuable customer insights.
Research by GlobalWebIndex found that 54% of consumers use social media when researching products and services, highlighting the massive potential for increased customer engagement through a prudent approach to social media.
6. Measure key customer engagement metrics
No matter how great a connection your customers have developed with your business, failing to measure and report on key customer engagement metrics can cause you to lose out on potential growth. Engagement metrics essentially provide a numerical measurement of customers’ relationship with your brand, and provide crucial insights for your strategy going forward.
Examples of these metrics include Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), website session times and bounce rates. Allocating time to distribute a Customer Satisfaction Survey can also give you valuable data on how well your engagement strategy is working.
Learn how to maximise customer engagement
Whether you’re focused on attracting new customers, increasing loyalty, optimising bottom line growth or honing your brand identity – a comprehensive customer engagement strategy is essential.
A highly engaged customer base which values and trusts your brand is a cornerstone of any successful business, and will ensure that you and your team continue to thrive long into the future.Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help enhance your customer engagement strategies and build a more loyal and retained customer base.