Did you check your social channels today? I’m guessing you did. How many advertisements for products and services did you see? Did any of them catch your eye? Did you click through to learn more? Did you go so far as to make a purchase?
Most of us don’t stop to think too hard about what inspires us to act on a call to action, however this is a fact: Your response to any ad is a result of your level of engagement with the brand and the content presented. The likelihood of you even noticing an ad as you scroll through your social feeds depends on:
- Whether the ad is relevant to you
- What interactions you’ve had with the brand before seeing the ad
- How intriguing the content offered seems to you
- Timing and placement
- Prior experiences with the brand and its products
- And many other factors
In short, your level of engagement with the brand – and their ability to nurture and support a consistent level of engagement over time – can help determine your next step. Do you keep scrolling or click through?
In this post, we’ll take a look at the definition of engagement marketing, why engagement marketing is important to a brand’s long-term success, and 5 tips for effective engagement marketing.
What is Engagement Marketing?
Engagement marketing consists of strategies and tactics that help to ensure your customers and prospects are engaged with your brand, and remain consistently engaged over time. It involves making meaningful connections by interacting with them at multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey. How? By distributing high value content across various channels and providing opportunities for them to interact with you.
The key to effective engagement marketing is to develop a deep understanding of your customer’s pain points, needs and preferences, and create content and experiences with a focus on personalization and two-way communication. As Colby Dix, Senior Solutions Architect at BDO Digital puts it, “Engagement isn’t just a positive, active word. It’s a transformative concept that flips the process from sales-driven (or even marketing-driven) to buyer-driven.”
Why is Engagement Marketing Important?
When done right, engagement marketing creates a strong feeling of connection and community, and encourages brand loyalty that drives business and revenue growth. According to a report from Mad Mobile, companies that prioritized omnichannel customer engagement saw 9.5% year over year average growth, compared to 3.4% for companies that did not.
Customers become loyal to their favorite brands when they feel a strong sense of community and feel like the brand understands them and their preferences. Twenty-two percent of loyal customers cite a strong sense of community as an important reason for their allegiance to a brand, and of those consumers, online groups, in-person events, brand content, and exclusive offers are key activities that keep them engaged.
Once a customer is loyal, lots of good stuff starts to happen. According to Yopto, 73.3% will sign up for loyalty programs, 63.1% will sign up to receive emails, and 53.5% will pay more for products, despite cheaper options. Importantly, nearly two-thirds will recommend the brand to others.
What are some examples of engaging content?
The concept of engagement marketing underscores the well-known truth that “content is king.” In order to inspire your audience to action, you have to provide engaging content that gets them excited about your products and services. Your content should help to influence not only their buying decision, but their thoughts and perceptions about your brand.
What does engaging content look like?
- Emails that are carefully crafted with key messages and links to relevant downloads, delivered to the right person at the right time.
- Social advertising that’s highly personalized, appearing in the feed of your target customer’s favorite channel.
- SEO-optimized blog posts that are informative and easy to find, and answer key questions your customers are likely to ask.
- Infographics with new and intriguing statistics that illuminate and validate key trends that impact your customer.
- Highly personalized offers and recommendations that make your products and services more appealing and easier to access.
- Quick-loading, easy-to-scan landing pages that provide the information and resources your customers and prospects are looking for.
- Live and on-demand webinars that cover key trends and relevant topics, and offer opportunities for attendees to ask questions, provide input via polls, and interact with speakers.
- In-person or virtual events and workshops packed with informative sessions, networking opportunities, hands-on experiences and content downloads.
- In-the-moment surveys and review requests that enable customers to share their feedback and opinions.
- Fast replies to social posts that contain additional information and answer customers’ questions or address their concerns.
The list goes on. In addition to engaging content, it’s important to provide opportunities for community building, as well, such as community forums and websites, where customers can interact with each other, share knowledge and experiences, and provide valuable input and feedback.
What are the advantages of engagement marketing?
Besides boosting customer loyalty and ultimately sales, engagement marketing provides other benefits:
- Boost your reach: With a larger number of loyal customers, you may raise brand awareness and, as a result, generate more business. Loyal customers become evangelists that help to create excitement about your brand and keep it top of mind among a wider audience.
- Build your personas: By enabling a two-way conversion via social channels, surveys and forums or community sites, you gain invaluable input and feedback from your target audience, which helps you refine your products and services, as well as your marketing and sales strategies. It’s a great way to build an even deeper understanding of your customer.
- Reduce churn and extend LTV: Keeping customers engaged and excited about your brand means they’re much less likely to go elsewhere, even if they have one or two less-than-perfect experiences. And, they’ll buy more over time.
5 Tips for Effective Engagement Marketing
Whether you’re just getting started with engagement marketing or refining your strategy, here are 5 tips to help you get it right:
- Understand your audience and the buyer’s journey. Maintaining engagement means providing opportunities to interact with your brand at every step along the customer journey – so it’s essential to first understand your customers’ buying behaviors and map out their journey. How do they research products and services? What channels do they use most? How long is the buying cycle? Who’s involved? Seeing the journey through the customer’s eyes is the first step to understanding how to engage them effectively.
- Create relevant, meaningful content for every stage of the buyers’ journey. Now that you know how they go about buying products and services, make sure you give them opportunities to interact with you at every touchpoint. Design content that supports their needs at every stage in the funnel, from their original expression of interest through their decision to purchase and after product implementation.
- Meet your customers where they are. Make sure you distribute content across all of the channels your customers use, to meet them where they are. For example, if you cater to a younger audience, try new channels like TikTok, even if you’ve never done it before. If you find more traditional channels are what your customers prefer, don’t be afraid to resurrect them. Direct mail is making a comeback, after all!
- Leverage marketing automation tools – and consider outsourcing implementation and setup. With the speed and velocity of business today – and the plethora of available data – automation is absolutely essential for executing marketing campaigns and programs effectively. But with so many tools and technologies available, selecting and implementing the right ones can be overwhelming. Consider outsourcing this task to a trusted team with experience in marketing automation platforms.
- Identify KPIs and goals to measure performance. Don’t leave your success with engagement marketing to chance. Set clear KPIs up front, and track them meticulously. Understanding the performance of your campaigns and programs can help you optimize and refine them. Some important engagement marketing KPIs to track include time on page and bounce rates, social comments and shares, open and clickthrough rates, and conversions.
Need help? Leverage the Power of BDO Digital
The professionals at BDO digital are dedicated to helping you implement and use best-in-breed tools and technologies that can optimize your engagement marketing efforts. We can help to ensure your data is in tip-top shape, and provide consulting services around essential marketing activities such as lead scoring and management, data management, and campaign design and execution. Learn more about all of the services we offer, or contact us today for a free consultation.
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