If you want your business to thrive in the modern, competitive marketplace, there is nothing more important than positive customer engagement. Customers can and will take their business to the companies that give them a better experience, and modern businesses are more focused than ever on creating strong relationships with the people who buy from them. Engagement is associated by many with how the company markets itself, but as we will see, there is a lot more to customer engagement; it’s about every touchpoint in the journey.
Building authentic connections
People don’t like being sold to. That may seem like an issue for a business whose core goal is to sell its products and/or services to people, but there’s a key point here. If people feel like your interest in them begins and ends with their card details being entered at checkout, they’ll feel like a number. If they feel that your business priorities align with their customer needs, that’s when they’ll feel an authentic connection has been made. Using social media, personalized marketing, and dynamic responses to customer feedback, you’ll build the trust and loyalty that drives engagement.
Optimizing User Experience
Sometimes, a customer experience is hard to summarize in words, it’s more about how an interaction feels. If your customer associates their experience with you with an easy, enjoyable sense, they’re likely to want to repeat that experience. If your website is easy to get around, displays easily on mobile devices, and is designed intuitively, there’s a much greater chance they will feel positive about you. Expert UX guidance from a User Experience consultant is worth seeking out. While you have to think about all points of your business, they’re focused on this one thing specifically and have insights you can benefit from.
Encouraging engagement through content
Content has become a key part of marketing as SEO has cascaded to all parts of online business, and for the cynical among us, it can seem like it is just a way to get the right keywords on a page so that traffic comes to you. But your on-page content can drive engagement beyond SEO; educational blog posts can keep people coming back and develop brand loyalty. Free resources such as conversion charts and how-to guides can stick in people’s minds and make you a one-stop shop for advice and products; the more touchpoints you create and the more positive they are, the better.
It is easy to be cynical about the relationship between customer and provider – on one level, it is certainly true that there are material things you each want from one another. But the reality of business in the 2020s is that customers do expect businesses to provide an experience that goes beyond the purely commercial. The businesses that prioritize positive engagement at every step of the way are the ones which will, time and again, retain customers and have the chance to grow. Even if your main goal is to make more sales, you can’t argue with the reality that it’s easier to do that with an engaged, loyal audience.
