If you don’t want to encounter poor sales and a lack of growth as a business or organization, use strategies to increase brand engagement. In simple terms, a brand is a name given to a product, service, or concept that is the visible component of your business or organization to the public. As such, it’s critical that you think about how your audience will perceive it.
Running a business is not all about bringing in new customers. Yes! This is crucial but another priority is holding onto the customers you already have. And that’s where customer engagement comes in.
In this article, we’ll not only introduce brand engagement, but we will also provide you with 10 customer engagement strategies to connect with your audience appropriately and end up acquiring, converting, and keeping customers. Let’s dive in!
What is customer engagement?
Before we get into the “how” of customer engagement, let’s define what customer engagement is. Customer engagement is the act of engaging and communicating with customers. Building such a relationship with the people buying what you’re selling can be done through various offline or online channels such as phone calls, emails, conversations on social media, etc.
It should be noted that brand engagement also defines the process of establishing an emotional or rational connection between a customer and a brand.
How to increase customer engagement?
Now that you know what customer engagement is, you need marketing strategies to increase brand engagement and loyalty. Consider these 10 creative customer engagement practices that will help you increase brand engagement.
#1 Humanize your brand
One of the best ways to engage your audience with your brand is to personify it. Your brand would just be an inhuman and unknowable brand that is only thinking of making a profit from its customers if you don’t consider humanizing it.
Here’s how you can connect with your customers and make them believe they are understood and valued as unique individuals rather than being treated just like a bunch of robots to bring you money.
- Have a good “About Us” page (Include a story of how you got started, pictures, and videos to show the human side of your business.)
- Take your customers behind the scenes (It helps you put a face behind your company’s logo when showing pictures of your office, employees, etc.)
- Have fun (Humor is human. Sharing funny pictures/videos is a perfect way to lighten up the mood of your viewers and get them to talk about you.)
- Engage with your audience (Be available on popular social media platforms to answer questions, resolve problems, or engage in conversations.)
- Tell stories (Tell stories about the human side of your business, you can simply give it personality)
- Talk to Your Audience Like They Are Your Friend (Have the mindset that you are talking to someone close to you.)
#2 Sharpen your social media branding
Here’s a truth bomb! Popular social media platforms like Instagram have a huge impact on converting your followers into paying customers. So, by boosting your social media branding strategies, you can increase brand engagement, sales, revenue, etc.
Influencer marketing is a form of the social media marketing that can engage your audience, improve brand awareness, increase your traffic, and drive your brand message to your target audience.
Don’t know how to make the most of influencer marketing campaigns and where to start? Don’t worry! There are countless influencer marketing hubs out there ready for help. One of these top-quality agencies is Ainfluencer. Let’s dive deeper to figure out how this platform can assist both brands and influencers:
Ainfluencer- The best influencer marketing platform
Ainfluencer gives both brands and influencers the possibility to find, connect, and collaborate with each other. Also, it makes Instagram influencer marketing and creating campaigns on the marketplace easy and fast. What makes this influencer marketplace stand out is that all features are 100% free to use with no hidden fees.
As a brand, you can sign up for free on Ainfluencer’s web platform on your desktop using your email address. Then it’s time to enter your brand info and create your marketplace campaign. You’d better include a clear and engaging title, description, sample image/video, and campaign details since this ad will be posted to a marketplace where thousands of qualified influencers are looking for a brand to collaborate with.
Once you are done with your ad, explore and invite influencers. Ainfluencer’s AI engine finds influencers for you based on your location, language, gender, hashtag, and more.
With Ainfluencer, you have the opportunity to manage the offers you have made or received and chat with influencers using a smart workflow, and finally, get real-time analytics to track your campaign performance from start to finish.
Note: As an influencer, you can download Ainfluencer app available for both Android and iOS users to explore and make offers for the brands you’d like to work with.
#3 Run a “Tag a friend” contest on social media
If you don’t want to miss out on some accessible opportunities to increase brand engagement, be more active on social media. Nowadays, businesses’ social pages are more current and helpful than their actual websites because people are more connected to social media platforms these days and it’s easier for customers to follow and get notified of their favorite business sales, urgent changes, new products, and services, etc.
You can simply post a photo on Instagram or Facebook and offer a prize for those followers who tag a friend in the comments to enter the contest and win the prize. This way, there are more chances to spread the word to your existing customers and your potential future customers.
#4 Encourage user-generated-content (UGC)
User-generated content is any form of content, such as images, videos, texts, reviews, etc. that has been created and posted on online platforms by the audience of your brand. It’s highly effective since it helps you increase brand engagement, boost brand awareness, and reach new potential clients.
People trust people more than they trust companies. So, use appropriate hashtags on your audience’s most promising channels to help your UGCs go viral.
#5 Organize events
Event marketing is a sure way to engage your audience. Both offline and online events, including seminars, webinars, conferences, workshops, etc., help brands acquire more engagement in marketing, new leads, brand awareness, and revenue.
#6 Shoutout your reviews
One of the core aspects of a winning customer engagement strategy is encouraging your customers to provide testimonials. Getting fantastic reviews from your customers and sharing them on your social platforms-thanking your audience for their kind words- lets your brand’s reputation spread in an organic, person-to-person manner and increases brand engagement in general.
#7 Increase brand engagement across different channels
A key to success in the engagement game is to concentrate your resources strategically on platforms(Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) that are more favorable to your audience and they are active on. Be available and respond to your customers across such platforms. It improves your customer engagement strategy by helping you build a reputation of valuing your audience, being friendly, and being ready to assist at any time and anywhere.
#8 Hold giveaways
These kinds of content formats allow companies to skyrocket their customer engagement strategy. Everyone loves freebies. Giveaways motivate users to join you and share your brand with others for an incentive. It can be anything valuable, such as free products/services, free trials, and discounts.
#9 Utilize employee advocacy
Employee advocacy strategy is one of the best customer engagement strategies to increase brand engagement across all social media platforms. Employee advocacy is used when people who work for your company take steps to promote it. And who better than your own employees to help you. When working on this strategy, use project cost tracking tools to determine how effective it was in terms of your financial resources.
Your employees also have followers on social media. Ask them to share their experiences of your products, their journey in your company, their recommendations of the products, etc.
They are more likely to grab your audience’s interest since they are relevant to your company more than any other celebrities or influencers. They are also more easily approachable and trusted.
#10 Make the most of live videos
Did you know that most audiences prefer to watch live videos from a brand? Communicating with your audiences through live videos is a surefire way to engage your audience. To increase the brand engagement ratio, you can live stream interviews, brand events, and behind-the-scenes.
Conclusion
By being able to build a strong relationship with customers, your revenue is likely to grow. Building a brand and being able to increase brand engagement may not be easy, but at least you can use tools and strategies like the ones we discussed in this article to improve your company.
The process of forming an emotional and rational attachment between a consumer and a brand is called brand engagement. It has a positive impact on customer purchase intentions.
You can use the following techniques that are crucial to your overall success to build brand engagement and increase your profit over time.
1. Target specific audiences
2. Use search engine optimization (SEO) to improve your brand’s ranking
3. Sharpen your social media marketing
4. Use influencer marketing to target your audience on a large scale
5. Create high-quality guest content
6. Start partnership with other brands
7. Create great customer experiences
