Thanks to the rapid adoption of digital platforms, customer preferences and needs are always changing. This has made it more important than ever for business owners to pay close attention to what their ideal audience wants from their experience with them. The best way to achieve this is to create and maintain an effective customer engagement strategy.
What is a Customer Engagement Strategy?
A customer engagement strategy pulls together the best ways your brand can capture the attention of existing customers and its target audience to ensure they have the best experience possible when interacting with you at every step of their buyer’s journey. This obviously takes some serious thought and research to put together. In truth, your ultimate strategy will be a combination of engagement strategies that work the best for your brand.
Here are a few of the engagement strategies you should know and then tailor to your unique needs:
- Understand your customer journey. Implementing any type of customer engagement strategy is impossible without first knowing who your customers are and how they interact with your brand. Start by identifying (1) touchpoints, (2) bottlenecks, and (3) challenges customers to meet on their journey, from their first awareness of your brand all the way to purchase and use.
- Share your company’s story and mission. Customers today want to know more about the brands they purchase from. They want to hear memorable and relatable stories that give them a great reason to believe in your company. Help your customers understand you’re ‘why’ for the business and share its vision. Whenever possible, incorporate your customers into your story and show them how they play a starring role.
- Create personalized interactions. When you use generic customer experiences, they fade into the background. They become watered down and lost in the large pool of social shares and email newsletters. The goal is to make sure each and every customer feels that they matter and that they aren’t just one of many. The key is to listen first, find out what makes your customers feel special, and then provide unique touches that really connect with them.
- Provide Lots of Valuable Content. It’s important to always remember your customers aren’t buying a product or service; they are buying solutions. They’re seeking an answer to their biggest question, need or challenge. Providing valuable content and authentic resources further positions your brand as a solution and a leader in your industry. Regularly distribute valuable content like videos, blogs, and social posts that your customers will find helpful and entertaining.
- Implement an AI-Powered Chatbot. There’s nothing worse than having a problem and not being able to get answers. In today’s digital world, those answers are also expected to be fast. Implementing a chatbot ensures you can quickly provide recommendations to site visitors. It also allows you to offer smooth service options even after hours. The information you collect from each interaction can also help you gauge customer satisfaction, make adjustments where they are needed and increase your success.
Benefits of Engaging Your Customers Strategically
All in all, customer engagement boils down to leveraging interactions to create a rewarding, one-of-a-kind experience for your audience. Combining different strategies can boost your chances of increasing the productivity of your team, successfully optimizing interactions and better serving customers and prospects along their journey.