By Laia Cardona, on 25 April 2018
Engagement is one of the most important terms in marketing.
So, what is customer engagement? It’s what you get in return for the work you invest in your campaigns. How does it relate to your online marketing strategy? Essentially, it's a measurement of how your campaigns are performing. The higher the score, the better!
What Is Customer Engagement?
Put simply, customer engagement is engaging with your audience and creating long-term commitment.
The main ways to measure engagement are likes, comments, and shares. The engagement metrics you choose should correlate directly with your marketing strategy. Because engagement levels are different for each marketing channel, your campaigns must be tailored to receive optimal engagement rates for each of them. If you need some content creation ideas to help you get started, check out our post "Content Creation: Ideas and Tools to Get You Started."
Difference Between Customer Relationship Management and Customer Engagement
While CRM involves current customers who already have a relationship with your brand, brand engagement is about reaching out to consumers to encourage them to become customers. It is one of the most important ways to gain ground with your consumers.
The Four Es of Engagement
Excellence: Aspire to do things as best as possible within your means and above all, practice continuous improvement. The market is already saturated with brands offering similar products and services, so this is a surefire way to stand out among the competition.
Empathy: To really connect with your consumers, you must show them that you hear them and truly understand their needs. Empathy goes a long way.
Exclusivity: Engage with your customers in a personalized way so that they feel special. Make sure you segment them well so that they feel they are on a unique customer journey.
Ecommerce: Don't lose sight of the ultimate goal of your strategy: to drive sales. In the words of Jamie Anderson, "the sum of the above three factors is what makes Apple consumers pay extra for their products and Lady Gaga’s fans buy her music instead of downloading it for free."
Why Engagement Is a Crucial Part of Your Strategy
Engagement not only improves sales but also reduces the cost of acquiring new customers. By leaving reviews and recommendations, existing customers can do the prospecting work for you.
Engagement also helps you measure interest in your company and moves users down the conversion funnel. In essence, it creates a more efficient customer journey and indicates the success of your campaigns.
7 Ways to Improve Your Brand's Engagement
Diversify your campaigns across channels: Engagement goes far beyond Facebook and Twitter. Think of how all your marketing channels can generate interaction and foster long-term relationships with customers.
Listen to your users: You have to be willing to listen to your users and adapt your strategy to their needs.
Ask questions: Don’t be afraid to go to your audience and let them know you’re interested in their opinion.
Always respond: To earn your users' trust, answer their questions quickly and always give the best possible solution.
Promote user-generated content: Encourage users to create their own content that you can later post to your channels. This increases the sense of community and belonging, and your audience will feel heard and relevant. You will be complementing your content strategy, as user-generated content will always sound more authentic than if it were to come from your organization itself.
Draw their attention: Users receive many ads from brands every single day. If you want to build lasting relationships with users, you need to draw their attention.
Measure the results. To really succeed in creating high engagement, you have to understand your goals and how they contribute to your overall marketing KPIs. Establish regular controls and use them to measure your progress.
