There are three groups of people that you cannot ignore in business; investors, customers, and employees. Without proper engagement with all three, your business could hit turbulence at some point in the future. Statistics show that meaningful customer engagement, both online and offline, breads more customer loyalty than any other strategy. It is the surest way of making customers share your content, review your services positively only, and bring you new business leads. What’s more, engaging prospective customers and investors at a personal level increase your chances of winning them over.
By engagement, in this case, we mean inquiring about people’s problems, showing a genuine effort of solving it, and asking them questions/listening to their views as you solve those problems. Sounds like an impossible job to do, right? Surprisingly, it is not. Please read on to understand some of the ways through which you can boost engagement for your business.
1. Know where you stand currently
Have you been engaging with your customers online? If yes, to which extent? How effective has that been for you in terms of new customer conversions, new online visitors, and overall return on investment? Answering these two questions will give you a head start as you plan for future engagements. It will help you know where you need to improve, where you need to overhaul entirely, and where you need help. You can always get the help of an SEO company in identifying which social media hashtag to use in order to engage with your audience more meaningfully.
2. Strengthen your customer service team
Research shows that 80 percent of customers value good customer service more than anything else, including the quality of your products. If you pay attention to the questions customers raise, and walk them through the entire purchasing, delivery, warranty, and return process, they will surely become loyal. In this case, you need to understand the nature of your ideal customer – Where they live, their gender and age, what time they ask questions, and which language they understand best. With that information, you will be able to hire just the right customer care agent for the job, and you will know which time of the day or season of the year you need to throw in more into the customer care unit. And while at it, ensure that the customer attendants are well trained, briefed, and compensated in order to increase their efficacy.
3. Make the customer feel special with personalized content
Every single customer you have on your radar sees him/herself as the only customer who matters. Nobody cares about how many other customers are waiting on the line for you to serve them; every man for himself. That’s the reality on the ground. For you to keep hold of a thousand or a million customers, therefore, you need as much as possible to see them not as a multitude of people but a collection of many individuals with distinct needs and preferences. With that, you can then go ahead and personalize content for each one and deliver it to them in a way that will make each person feel more special than all the rest. You can, for example, send them personalized newsletters, birthday messages, or label products with their name.
4. Leverage the power of social
Even with a brand image to protect, you cannot ignore the importance of humanizing your business and literally socializing with people on social platforms. Don’t shy away from tweeting or commenting on general topics on social media, provided that you don’t go overboard with the comments. People love to know that you too understand what they go through every day and that your business has a “cool” side.
Better still, show your online followers the pain that you go through before bringing forth the final product they see on their shelves. Give them a glimpse of what happens behind the cameras: employees having fun, the process of sourcing for raw materials, and even the philanthropic activities you could be involved in. An SEO company would help you plan all these in a way that would go viral online and at the same time attract new customers.
5. Make your content as educational as possible
If a customer must Google how to use your product, there is a chance that he or she will never purchase it again. Also, having a great customer support team doesn’t mean that your prospective customer must call for guidance on literally everything. You need to make your content as educational and self-explanatory as possible so that your customers can use your products out of the box without having to hassle for more information.