Thanks to the Internet, information has become easily accessible at our fingertips. However, the average attention span has been reduced to 8 seconds.
This has made it challenging for businesses to create strategies to keep the audience engaged and convey their message quickly to ensure maximum impact.
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But how does one achieve this without losing out on business intent or using clickbait?
This blog covers everything you need to know about keeping your target audience engaged, alongside some innovative ways to implement best practices for customer engagement in your strategy that can help you achieve your goals without pushing away your potential customers.
How Digital Marketing Can Help Engage Your Customers Better
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Digital marketing employs creative strategies backed by analytics to enhance customer engagement. It enables brands of all types and sizes to reach their potential customers regardless of where they are.
Furthermore, digital marketing tools also help develop a deeper understanding of what your customers want, their problem areas, and how you can devise a solution that triggers purchases.
7 Smart Ways To Engage Your Customers Using Digital Marketing
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Digital marketing can help brands use analytical insights from marketing campaigns to create pathways for improving customer engagement. Let’s understand how this happens:
1. Identifying customer persona
Customer persona refers to a semi-fictional character representation of your ideal customer. The profile is made by assessing your target audience's demographics, behaviors, and preferences.
This information is usually derived from market research, data analysis, and drawing insights from the feedback customers have shared.
The buyer persona helps in accurately pinning the pain points and identifying gaps your product can fill. The benefits of creating a buyer persona include:
- Enhanced targeted marketing: Creating a buyer persona gives you the opportunity to tailor your marketing efforts specifically for your target customers. After understanding their pain points, expectations, and wants, you can customize your content to resonate with them.
- Improved segment marketing: After identifying a buyer persona, you can curate marketing content that resonates with them and encourages them to explore more about your brand.
- Better product development: Once you understand what your buyers are looking for, you can prioritize customization and improvements based on your customers' needs.
2. Personalize every communication touchpoint
Sending personalized content gives the impression that it was created specifically with your target customer’s preferences, dislikes, and needs in mind. It naturally evokes a sense of excitement and curiosity about what’s in store for them.
Furthermore, personalizing communication effectively ensures your message is delivered clearly, making them less likely to unsubscribe or lose interest in your offer.
With nearly 50% of customers mentioning personalization as the reason they shop often from a store, personalization can help significantly reduce costs involved with customer acquisition.
Over time, as more customers expect brands to speak with them directly and offer exclusive experiences, personalization is the need of the hour and a sure-shot way to keep them engaged with your brand.
3. Request feedback frequently
Taking feedback from your customers is an effective way to show that you care about what they have to say. This fosters a strong relationship between brands and their target customers.
Aside from that, customer feedback will help you improve your range of products and service offerings. It also will help your business gauge customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Whenever someone expresses disappointment or lack of satisfaction with your business's products or services, you can immediately reach out and provide a solution to fix the issue.
This lowers the chances of them leaving and, in fact, builds trust among your customers. These aspects will help a business improve the overall brand experiences it offers to its customers.
4. Posting regularly on social media
Social media has become integral to reaching out to and keeping both your existing and potential customers engaged and updated about what is happening in your business.
These platforms allow a business to maintain consistent branding across its social media channels, reinforcing brand recognition and awareness.
Social media platforms offer better accessibility, foster connections, and encourage customers to stay in the loop about your business. The more your brand posts, the more value it can share and the higher the chance your customers will engage with it.
5. Responding to online interactions
While you constantly try to gain engagement from your target market, not responding when they expect a response from you can be off-putting.
So, it's crucial that you are always active and engaging with your customers. However, it can be challenging to stay available 24/7, especially if you are a small business wanting to be productive every minute of the day.
That’s where chatbots, CRM systems, and marketing automation software can handle minor inconveniences, data sharing, managing workflows, conducting follow-ups, booking appointments or meetings, and asking for feedback.
Engaged customers usually end up spending more money, are more likely to refer your products to their network, and are more likely to become lifelong customers as they feel acknowledged and heard (especially if they are distressed and need immediate assistance).
6. Leveraging customer engagement channels
Aside from social media, SMS and emails are other ways to keep your customers updated about the hype and happenings in your business, run promotional campaigns, do product launches, and even send emails about seasonal offers.
It is always good to use an email or SMS marketing tool to prepare, implement, launch, and track campaigns using tools.
Most of the analytical tools offer a plethora of features that enable tracking email open rates, bounce rates, and how many emails received a response.
7. Introducing loyalty programs
Loyalty programs are a hit because they help the human brain link an activity with a goal, driving instant motivation and a feeling of gratification.
The discounts, redeemable points, and VIP perks offered in a loyalty program promise savings on the final bill, something every shopper wants. A loyalty program also ensures that your customers have access to exclusive content before it is made available to the general public.
Furthermore, such programs create a sense of excitement and hype around the brand, making everyone eager about the next launch and the range of products or services they will get their hands on.
The sense of belonging that one experiences from these programs instills confidence and trust in the brand, driving consistent and dedicated engagement.
Conclusion
Sustainable growth and user engagement are interconnected, and it has become crucial for brands to develop strategies that ensure consistent engagement and, eventually, ROI.
Digital marketing can help businesses keep their audience engaged and entertained consistently.
However, it is crucial to focus on developing customized products or services and solving issues that are commonly faced by your target audience.
By implementing practical customer engagement strategies, you can ensure that your business drives consistent results and continues to stay in the minds of your customers.
Author Bio
Ruchita is a leading the outreach operations at CleverTap. CleverTap is an All-In-One customer engagement platform that unifies interactions between people, processes and technology. They're on a mission to be the ultimate growth partner, providing businesses with the insights they need to truly understand their customers and deliver.
