Marketing customer engagement is a building block in your journey toward an unbreakable customer base. Customer engagement is simple—when your customer actively interacts with your business. This could be buying a product, liking an Instagram post, or leaving a review.
How the customer engages is entirely flexible.
When marketing, this interaction is the perfect opportunity to curate and strengthen customer relationships. So investing in a customer engagement strategy is just customer loyalty and a positive relationship.
A customer engagement marketing strategy is a fantastic thing to implement. It boosts customer loyalty, drives positive purchase behaviors, and increases customer satisfaction. These are game-changing benefits for your business, and there are many different strategies. And in this guide, we’ll review all the essentials for you. Let’s establish all the exciting details and harness the full potential of your customer journey.
What Is Customer Engagement Marketing?
So, what is customer engagement marketing? Marketing customer engagement is a conscious approach to shaping how customers interact with and experience your business. Customer engagement is just when customers act in a way that impacts and interacts with your business.
For instance, purchasing a product, leaving a review, or sharing one of your social media posts. All of these engagement options vary - you can carry some out in person and some online. With this in mind, it is clear how wide you need to spread your engagement marketing net. There are so many different engagement types that you’ll need to consider how to utilize and encourage it.
You boost your business by utilizing customer engagement as a marketing strategy rather than passively approaching these interactions. A customer engagement strategy aims to shape these inevitable customer interactions to benefit your business more.
For instance, you could prompt higher levels of engagement through competitions so that your social media gains more traction. You could tell customers to like and share your post for a chance to win a free dinner. By sharing and liking your photo or video, they’re increasing yoru reach and audience.
You could also make it easier for customers to engage. You can, for example, present clear links, have social media profiles with engaging content, and have quick response times. The whole point of a customer engagement marketing strategy is that it’s proactive. You’ll be proactively anticipating how customers interact with your business. And then you’ll be responding and encouraging repeat actions.
The benefits of this tactic are tenfold. You’ll see an increase in customer loyalty and positive purchase behaviors when you use this strategy correctly. Whether you have a new restaurant to market or an established one, engagement marketing is vital.
Customer Engagement Marketing Examples
If you are still struggling with ideas, why not take inspiration from other successful strategies? There are tons of restaurant advertisement examples, but customer engagement marketing is a little more specific. In this section, we’ll look over some top customer engagement marketing examples. Here are our top 5 suggestions for your customer engagement strategy.
- Create hilarious, personal, or very interesting social media content.
Nobody wants to interact with boring content, and that’s a fact. If you want to draw in the masses, you’ve got to be ready to entertain them. Attack your social media with vigor. You want lively, colorful posts and stories that resonate with your brand.
- Evaluate your service style.
The best customer engagement will happen on-site. Ensure to train every staff member to be highly personable and chatty. Friendly conversation is like networking for businesses wanting loyal customers.
Loyalty programs are one of the best ways to boost customer engagement. Through the power of positive reinforcement (through gifts like free coffee and discounts), you can encourage more interactions.
- Have an online presence and service.
The world is online. Be visible online - be it through a website or Google Business. And offer an online service, like ordering food online, so more customers can find you organically.
- Utilize general marketing strategies.
Focusing on customer engagement doesn’t mean forgetting about general marketing. Invest in email, SMS, and social media marketing as well. These marketing strategies benefit your customer engagement efforts.
Marketing Customer Engagement: Should You Use a Customer Engagement Agency?
Choosing to invest in marketing customer engagement is a fabulous idea. You can ‘invest’ in many ways. You could invest your time by putting some of these strategies into place yourself. But what about paying a customer engagement agency to improve your engagement? What are the benefits of outsourcing your customer engagement marketing to professionals?
A customer engagement agency is a brilliant way to effectively invest in your business. An agency takes over all the hassle for you and creates a tailor-made engagement plan to drive more business success. Choose a reputable agency with plenty of good reviews, and you’ll soon see a fantastic return on investment. It is minimal effort and maximum reward, and there are tons of options out there.
In short, it massively depends on you, your business, and your budget. If you are short on budget and have plenty of time, we recommend marketing customer engagement yourself. We suggest outsourcing if you have a modest to large budget and are short on time. Knowing when to outsource is one of the best qualities a business owner can have.
So take time to evaluate your position and what is best for you. No decision is set in stone either; you could outsource for 6 months and then take over yourself. Or try yourself for 3 months and then outsource if you get stuck or don’t see progress.
Marketing Customer Engagement Through Emails: How Email Marketing Improves Customer Engagement
Speaking of using different marketing techniques to boost marketing customer engagement results, email marketing is a top strategy. So, let’s look at how email marketing improves customer engagement.
Email marketing is a fundamental aspect of building customer loyalty. There are many ways to utilize email marketing in your business, the number one being by creating an email list. With an email list, you send the same email to hundreds - perhaps thousands - of people. Of course, you can use tools to personalize these emails, like putting the recipient’s name on them.
However, the primary draw is that you can send it out in bulk. This means that you can target more customers, prompting more engagement. It is a fantastic way to widen your net and effectively heighten customer engagement.
Another benefit of email marketing is that it feels less intrusive than SMS marketing. Getting a text can feel over personal and even invasive to some customers. Email marketing has excellent open rates yet is at more of a respectful distance. Yet you can still personalize things through birthday emails and using names. It is the perfect balance to strike.
Email marketing is also perfect for things like loyalty programs. You can email out updates, rewards, competitions, and more. Once you have confirmed a list of email subscribers, utilizing these contacts is a breeze. You have free rein to target these customers with enticing offers that prompt them to continue engaging with your business. And you can email them with rewards every time they hit milestone engagement points - like 10 coffees.
5 Essential Steps For Starting Marketing Customer Engagement
Are you ready to start putting marketing customer engagement into action? Brilliant. You are confident with customer engagement and fully prepared to dive into a customer engagement strategy. So, what are the following essential steps? We’ll break things down even further so that you can take action easily. There are five super necessary steps to take in your customer engagement marketing journey. Check them out below.
1. Conduct Customer Research Before Beginning Marketing Customer Engagement
Customer research is essential. Without it, you are tackling customer engagement totally blind. You should know precisely who your customers are, their social media and technology habits, and your overall demographic. You could complete this research by observing your customers over time. Or you could create a more action-orientated approach by sending out surveys to collect this information.
2. Brainstorm Marketing Customer Engagement Ideas
Next, you need to brainstorm all your ideas freely. As we mentioned earlier, it is vital to brainstorm without judging the ideas initially. In this stage, write everything down—whether it seems bad or good. Creativity is essential when brainstorming marketing ideas. And if you focus too hard on creating ‘good’ ideas, you can paralyze your thinking process, thus blocking new ideas. Just let all the ideas flow. Bonus points if you use something like a mind map.
3. Crunch Your Budget
The budget shouldn’t matter in an ideal world. But when you are planning to start marketing customer engagement, it does matter. Your budget will dictate which of your ideas you can use. And if you know your budget inside out, you may also be able to pick a few ideas. You can split your budget into chunks to fund each marketing strategy.
4. Pick 2-3 Marketing Ideas To Concentrate On
With your budget and customer research under your belt, it is now time to pick your ideas. Choose 2-3 to allow you enough time to dedicate to each. Pick ideas that resonate with your brand image and make sense regarding your customers and budget. This should be an informed choice.
5. Draft An Actionable Plan For Marketing Customer Engagement
Finally, draft an actionable plan. You could concentrate an hour a week for the next 6 months on these 2-3 ideas. Plan how you will measure success and the steps you will take to “action” these ideas. It is a good idea to plan a re-evaluation point as well. For instance, setting aside a date to evaluate your success 3 months after starting these new strategies.
Is Investing in Marketing Customer Engagement Worth It?
Yes, it’s worth investing in marketing customer engagement. In fact, it is a bold but essential move. It is worth dedicating time and resources to, as it provides a brilliant ROI. Using a customer engagement strategy improves customer loyalty, which boosts repeat customers and, therefore, your profit. Additionally, it strengthens customer relationships, increasing profit and curating a more authentic brand image. You can’t lose by investing in customer engagement.
A strong brand image and building customer loyalty are essential to success. We’d suggest starting to market customer engagement as soon as possible to start reaping the rewards.
Do you want some extra help with marketing your customer engagement? At Beambox, we are always happy to assist you with marketing your business. As experts in WiFi marketing and small business improvement, we can help you in your journey to success.
Beambox offers the best all-in-one WiFi marketing platform. We utilize a dynamic approach to connect, attract, and retain customers. Start your Beambox free trial today, and let us help you maximize your engagement potential.
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