The rise and rise of technology in recent years has brought an inherent need for brands to connect with their customers. Real connections lie at the epicenter of the marketing and customer service departments. Today, customer experience represents a lot more than the run-of-the-mill sales ride. There’s more focus on listening to customers’ needs, solving emergent problems and achieving organic sales.
Customer engagement is enhanced when brands motivate customers to get involved in the content creation process. A good customer engagement strategy is necessary to bring about impressive and unprecedented customer loyalty levels.
While the crux of the sales industry is making monetary gains, it should be done with some finesse. Brands who manage to strike a balance between revenue generation and value creation tend to perform favorably. This is because they strive for excellence beyond the sales pitch. Activities like real-time customer support and delivering fantastic content help strum the harmonious strings of customer loyalty.
In a bid to help you get the most out of your customers, we’ve highlighted 7 pointers to illuminate the path.
1. Customer Case Studies
Customer case studies provide the perfect avenue for you proudly to showcase your success. When customers learn about how you were able to assist others achieve their goals, they’re likely to be intrigued. As a result, many will follow up to learn more about your pitch and what your M.O. is all about.
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Storytelling is at the heart of the case study presentation. You, therefore, need to be adept at interweaving tales and providing insights. Providing real results about how your collaboration with your customers’ industry peers made a difference is a good place to start. When you highlight the difference made in terms of ROI and savings, you bound to make a positive impression.
For more relatable narratives, you should seek to employ visual aids. In doing so, you can get to toy with your customers’ imagination and show them how they’re likely to get from point A to B.
2. Humanize
Irrespective of what field your industry is based, you should always endeavor to make customers relate to your brand. To do this, you simply need to appeal by making them feel that you fully understand their needs.
Consumer brands like Nike and Coca-Cola find it easier to find the dots to connect when it comes to mass appeal. However, this doesn’t mean that the other conservative establishments like banks can’t form such connections. The most important thing is to try.
A good attempt consists of finding individuals in-house who are passionate about what the company represents. Once you provide proper training to such individuals, they can become brand ambassadors. The training should involve thought leadership and communication skills. Avenues like blogging and video production are excellent when it comes to boosting the profile of the brand. Putting a face to the brand helps customers feel a sense of connection. Through this, you can get the conversation started with ease since there’s a common ground.
3. Flex on Social Media
While social media was conceptualized to help people connect, the platforms also have a business edge waiting to be exploited. When you use social media as a tool for business, you can get better results. Having a social media presence can help you reach out to the 2.62 billion users on the various platforms.
The end game here is not to have a large number of followers. Rather, it’s all about coming to their help when they need speedy resolutions. Customer engagement focuses on responding to views aired through comments and messages.
You can leverage the power of social media by posing questions to followers and engaging with them. Once you pair this tactic with the provision of quality content, you’re in the box seat.
4. Webinars
This concept is somewhat akin to blogging. You can develop a customer webinar series to have guest appearances by customers. During the webinar sessions, the customers can share a couple of nuggets of wisdom that lead to success in their trades. Doing this allows them to share just how much they’ve been able to grow thanks to your efforts. In effect, they’ll be promoting you without really knowing it. You can also encourage customers to provide insights to fellow industry peers. These insights can go a long way to making the webinars popular.
Webinars are unique in that contributors can provide in-depth analysis and have live chat sessions. These features have made webinars become a sure-fire way for marketers to drive up their engagement levels.
5. Go Live!
Excitingly, live video has announced its arrival on the social media scene with a bang. Industry analysts believe that it’s going to be worth more than $70 billion by 2021. This amazing statistic rings true because many customers would rather watch live videos than read lengthy posts. Getting to watch a celebrity while they’re live on social media presents consumers with a special moment to connect. As a marketer, you should seek to work with influencers to promote your product or service. Doing so can give your business a good reputation and driver engagement levels up.
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6. Personalize Customer Communications
A recent study by Zebra technologies revealed that 70% of retailers were looking to make investments in the Internet of Things technology. The companies aim to enhance the personalization craze by 2021. Various sensors in product packaging are expected to provide retailers with a glimpse of how to better their inventories. Using this information, the retailers hope to be able to boost their customer experience offering.
At present, this data has aptly been given the “digital voice” moniker. This is because it represents what consumers’ needs. The fact that it can be stored and analyzed for future use means that retailers will be able to continually improve their services.
7. Crowdsource Concepts
Consumers know what they want, how they want it and when they want it. Once you tap into their mindset, you can realize innumerable benefits. Through your social media and advertising channels, you can invite them to share their ideas. Your job is to sit back and spot talents and great money-making ideas.
One company that has been able to successfully do this in recent times is Starbucks. The Frappuccino-makers conceptualized a microsite where users could share smart ideas. In doing so, the company was able to fill in a couple of market gaps without having to spend a penny.
