Building a loyal customer base is one of the biggest challenges for small and midsize businesses. Not only do you have to focus on your product, but you also need to become a marketing expert as well!
Happy customers grow from repeated engagements, both with your business and your marketing messages. It is difficult to keep up with the marketing cycle to keep customers engaged.
Automated customer engagement is a great way to take a tedious task off your plate.
Are you looking for customer engagement tips to take your marketing to the next level? Read on for five great tips!
What is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement takes traditional ideas of marketing and flips them around. Traditional marketing focuses on getting a message in front of as many people as possible with the hope that some will be interested. Customer engagement uses technology and market research to connect with the most likely potential clients.
This kind of engagement focuses on ways and messages that will impact in a meaningful way. Successfully engaged customers feel like they have a personal relationship with your brand our company.
Customer engagement focuses on pulling customers in rather than sending out a message. It may use interactive campaigns that will inspire viewers to become customers. This kind of marketing creates valued experiences for its clients.
Okay, Then What is Automated Customer Engagement?
Marketing automation depends heavily on new technologies and software. It also relies on today's social media-saturated lifestyle.
Online automated customer engagement tools include email marketing, social media ads, and chatbots. (Chatbots are those pop-up chat boxes that many websites have now.)
Building marketing messages directly into your product is another example of automated engagement. Let's take a look at how to integrate these processes into your marketing plan!
Five Easy Customer Engagement Tips
These five tips and tools can help transform your firm's marketing without breaking the bank. If you're not doing these yet, 2020 is the time to start!
1. Use Email Marketing to Your Advantage
By 2022, half of the world's population will be using email. That's over 4 billion people - and potential recipients of your e-newsletter!
Email marketing consists of contact points sent to customers or people who have signed up for your mailing list. These emails might include news, coupons, or other promotions.
There are tons of good email marketing software on the market, and they have plenty of tools to customize and personalize your messages. You can reach people based on demographics and interests. The software is easy to use and very effective.
Finally, you can set automated emails and reminders to go out to people who have expressed interest. You can use people's first names and geographical regions to tailor content right to them. This is a great way to acknowledge your customers as people, not just as revenue sources.
2. Give as Good as You Get
People love to get stuff - whether it's free shipping or an extra gift with a purchase. Use automation tools on your website that will kick in at a certain order threshold or with a promo code.
Promotional deals can be very effective - but you need to plan them correctly. When you've analyzed just how to reach your customer - whether it's an event, a sale, or a coupon - you can set up regular outreach over email or mail. Promotions are an excellent way to set up regular contact with your clients.
3. Message Within Your Product
Whether you have online content or have delivered a physical product, including a marketing message within your product is an effective way to reach out.
Many companies will include marketing materials within the boxes they ship out. Yes, your customer is opening your product - but what better time to reach them about another product they might love?
Once you've created your flyer, insert, or content, set it up to deliver every time your customer clicks your link or opens your box.
4. Social Media is Your Friend - and Your Customer's
Again, billions of people use social media for hours each day. And over a third of them use it to research or buy new products!
Yes, it may seem daunting to enter into the world of social media influencers, but it is very lucrative. Also, it's easy to automate!
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube all show up on hundreds of millions of screens each day. Surely some ads have caught your eye on one of these platforms recently. They reach your clients as well.
All of these social media platforms offer automated ad services that can be targeted to reach your customers effectively. This helps keep your clients engaged with your brand. While the world of social media seems overwhelming, it's the best place to start some automated customer engagement in 2020.
5. Get Real
What kind of messages really work on social media, though? Research is starting to show that people respond to messages that seem like they've come from real human people, not marketing executives.
One big step in customer engagement is creating impactful content. This might be in the form of words and stories, pictures, or videos. There are many ways to do this.
Invest some time in creating content that tells the story of your business, or spends some time with your employees. Even interviewing customers and including their words is a great way to show you care. Today's advertising content can still be glossy, but it needs to seem real.
Use These Tips and Watch Your Marketing Grow!
These five simple customer engagement tips can help take the stress out of your marketing plan. Put these tips to work for your company today!
Comments