When you engage your customers online, you can build lasting relationships that keep people coming back to your brand. Building authentic relationships involves all forms of communication that you use both pre- and post-purchase. It’s important to understand, though, that the messages you send these respective sets of buyers need to be specific to where they are in their customer journeys. If you send information that doesn’t pertain to their interests or pain points, you’re more likely to disengage them and send them running to a competitor.
What is a Customer Engagement Strategy?
A great customer engagement strategy showcases the way your company can bolster satisfaction amongst your customer base by addressing their needs. In the end, when this is done correctly, you’ll increase conversions. You have to choose your messages right in order to make the most of your marketing efforts and communicate what you have to say to the people who are most likely to pay attention to your words.
This is why you have to strategize.
A customer engagement strategy helps you increase customer satisfaction by engaging with your consumers and delivering the information they need to solve their problems. It’s best to be proactive (rather than reactive) when it comes to customer engagement, so you can not only keep the people you have on board with your brand but also attract new ones as well. Once you have a strategy in place, you’ll be able to easily monitor the progress of your efforts and pivot your strategies when necessary.
How to Engage Your Customers Online
When it comes down to it, most of your customers will look online these days. They’ll look for information, compare competitors, and gain insights into brands that have great reviews or valuable products and services that can satisfy their needs. If you’re not using your online real estate to engage with your customers, you’re losing out on vital opportunities to connect people to your brand. Don’t worry, though! Our Surefire Local team has come up with a few ways you can optimize your online engagement, helping you make the most of your marketing efforts while building your brand in the greater online space.
1. Integrate Website Chats
For a lot of people, online chat software is less stressful and easier to use than other options, such as talking to a random stranger on a phone call after 40 minutes of hold music. People can more easily multi-task when they’re using chat because they’re not actually speaking to a human being. Plus, there’s the added note of privacy; for individuals who work in close-quarters with other colleagues, making phone calls can leave them feeling very violated because of the lack of privacy. With chat, however, they can handle their business and get things done without everybody needing to hear what’s going on in their lives. Web chat also helps people ensure they can be understood and provides documentation or references, in case they need them later.
2. Utilize Chatbots
Chatbots are a simple investment that can mean big things in terms of customer engagement. For starters, they reduce the amount of time your staff needs to spend talking to customers because they can often handle many frequently asked questions all by themselves. You can train your chatbots to handle simple inquiries or teach them how to field questions so that when the customer is handed off to a real human, that person already knows the ins and outs of the problems the customer is dealing with. While humans tend to interact with other humans based on their moods and emotions, chatbots simply answer questions and provide guidance, which means they never have a bad day and won’t give any off-putting advice to your customers.
3. Power Up Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger can provide people with the in-store experience they would receive if they were talking to one of your sales representatives in real life. As a business, it offers you the ability to respond to inquiries and comment on relevant products and services in ways that build brand awareness and help your consumers see you as a leader in your industry.
Facebook Messenger is beneficial because you can easily send and receive messages from people who want to know more about your organization. Think of it like texting a friend, except in this instance, you’re talking to people who could ultimately become loyal, paying customers. Besides the obvious benefits of person-to-person interaction, Facebook Messenger gives you the ability to deliver speedy messages that can still be delivered on your own time. If someone inquires about something when you’re not at work, you can either respond to them directly from your phone or set up an auto-response message, either way you’re engaging in conversations and could possibly answer all of your potential customers’ questions before getting on a phone call.
4. Embrace Google My Business Posts
With Google My Business (GMB), you can create effective posts that help people get to know more about your brand. You can freely post updates about your business, the projects you’re working on, the people who make things happen, and promos that you’re offering your customers directly onto your GMB page. The more active you are on GMB, the more likely Google is to pay attention to your activity. This, in the end, can result in higher rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs), which will ultimately lead more customers to your door.
5. Partake in Google My Business Questions and Answers
GMB Q&As can be a great way to not only talk about what your business is and who you are as a company but also what you can provide to people who might be seeking the help you can provide. If your company is being asked questions over and over again, it’s likely that there are people who have the same questions who just aren’t reaching out to you. This is why it’s important to utilize the channels that can enable you to answer as many frequently asked questions as possible in a public way. If you have unanswered questions, it could signify to your customers that you don’t really care about your business or building brand equity. However, if you utilize the Q&A section of GMB, people will see that you’re actively engaged with your community and want to respond in ways that solve their problems and alleviate their pain points.
6. Incorporate Live Videos
Running live videos on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube can help give your brand an extra touch of personality. When you want to showcase your brand’s image and really help people understand what your products and services do, one of the best channels of communication is video. Video is one of the most engaging channels of communication you can offer your audience, and with consumers’ expectations as high as they are these days, it only makes sense to cater to their needs as much as possible.
Besides being incredibly informative, videos can help you engage with your audience, unlike any other channel. They help build, nurture, and engage audiences in ways that invite them to stay, learn more, and buy from your brand. Consumers like videos because they’re easy to digest while still being entertaining in small bits. Marketers like videos because they can provide a huge return on investment with very little cost necessitated upfront. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and other social platforms offer a great way for you to talk about your brand and talk with your audience at the same time.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
At Surefire Local, our job is making sure local businesses stay relevant. Whether you’re trying to attract new customers (which is something you should always have on your radar!), or you’re looking for ways to keep your existing customers coming back for more, we can help. We invite you to schedule a demo with our Surefire Local team today so you can see firsthand how our local marketing platform is changing the way companies all over the country are doing business.