6 WAYS TO ENGAGE CUSTOMERS WITH YOUR BRAND

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No business can survive without engaging its customers. These are not only customers but brand loyals. Brand loyals are willing to spend more and have more trust in you than other brands. They refer other customers like them to your business. Thus, you don’t have to make more efforts to find new customers.

Finding new customers is, of course, costlier when compared to retaining the existing ones. Customer engagement guarantees business growth and success.

In 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product quality as the key brand differentiator. Smart businesses are now turning their heads to customer engagement platforms. An effective customer engagement platform allows you to reward your brand loyals. Such rewards drive better revenues, ROI, and profits.

Here’s the guide that lends you an insight into engaging your customers in personalized, meaningful, and relevant ways.

What is customer engagement?

Well, there is nothing fancy about customer engagement. It is all about how businesses interact with their customers to form a meaningful connection. The ultimate goal of any business, here, is to nurture long-term affinity and loyalty for the brand.

Customer engagement depends on the relationship your customers have with your business. After all, it is the “relationship” that matters the most. As your business nurtures a personalized and fruitful relationship with customers, chances are they won’t switch brands.

In the words of Gallup, a management consulting company, customer engagement is a customer’s psychological or emotional attachment to a product, company, or brand. It is the definitive business growth predictor.

Why do I need to engage my customers?

A.     Encourages Repeat Business

By engaging existing customers, businesses aim to retain them. This is, indeed, a smart financial move. Acquiring a new customer is about five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25-95 percent. It makes business sense to value and retain the right customers.

  B. Boosts Revenue Generation

Chances of repeated sales increase, if a customer forms a connection with your business. And, that’s a powerful boost to your company’s revenue. According to Gallup research, a fully engaged customer is worth 23% more in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth when compared to an average customer. 

The customer of today ensures they get the best value for their hard-earned money. During the buying process, they research, compare, look for recommendations, ask questions, and consider various options carefully. They expect businesses to work hard and convince customers to buy quickly. So, it’s time businesses gear up to develop and retain a profitable customer base.

 C. Develops A Delightful Customer Experience

Focus on customer engagement implies a focus on customer interaction. There may be times when such interactions result in providing customers with personalized support and attention. After all, who doesn’t like attention? When businesses actively attend to their customers’ queries, they promise a delightful customer experience. 86% of consumers are ready to pay more for it.

Communicate with your customers, understand their pain points, capture and respond to their feedback, identify where your customer service lacks, and proactively resolve their problems.

Principles of Customer Engagement

Principle #1 Capture powerful customer data

You may have a hard time engaging your customers if you fail to understand them. Your customer base is composed of different types of people with varied tastes, preferences, and spending habits. It is critical to learning about them on an individual level, so is capturing their data.

To make their job easy, businesses opt for a customer engagement platform. It can capture customer data including average spend, visit frequency, lifetime value, itemized purchases, and competitive benchmarks.

Principle #2 Re-engage customers

Customer engagement never stops. It is an ongoing conversation between the customers and the business. Re-engage your customers at the right time by delivering the right message, and using the right communication channel. Here’s how:

• Identify Customer Segments
• Send personalized relevant messages
• Customer referral programs

Principle #3 Monetize Business Success

A business needs to see if its customer engagement strategies are actually working. Tracking web traffic and reviews don’t help to check if customer engagement strategies are driving business growth. Instead, monitor business growth through increased customer visits to your online/offline business, win back ROI, and ROI generated from customer feedback.

Customer Engagement: The Way Ahead

Repeat customers are an ideal source of reliable income, are lower on maintenance, and biggest champions for you. Never compromise on existing customers for new ones. Identify brand loyals and reward them to drive repeat business.

Lastly, engage customers better with a customer engagement platform and delight them with faster responses using customer support software.

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This post is also available in: Spanish