Businesses today, big or small, bank on online efforts to increase sales. Of course, an obvious way to go about it is to connect with your potential customers. Engagement may seem like it’s just as easy as talking to your customers online, but as a fledgling company, how exactly do you go about it?
There are many approaches a business can take when it comes to increasing engagement, but before we go into that, let’s first try to understand the factors that can affect your approach.
Who Exactly Is Your Audience?
Even if your business tackles general merchandise, you will still have to identify the people who are interested in your products. In addition, you should also be looking into who your target demographics are. After all, the interests of working women in their 40s would be so much different from the interests of teenage boys in their senior year in high school.
What Is Your Brand?
Your branding is highly important because it’s what will set you apart from your competition. In other words, how are you different? Take coca-cola as an example. Many of their advertisements focus on families and family gatherings. No family Christmas dinner is complete without coca-cola on the table. Think about how you want your customers to remember you, and you’ll be able to build your brand around that.
What Are Your Channels?
Going digital, you’ll need to decide how people can contact you, and you need to make sure you can be reached easily. Being available on multiple channels can be a huge game-changer. Consider how different food services are now available on multiple platforms, from Facebook messenger to Instagram, even directly on their own website or through a food delivery service app. You have to be virtually everywhere if you want to reach more people. Bear in mind that this means you’d have to hire more people to be available on your side of the line to answer and meet customers’ needs.
Automate what you can. You don’t have to monitor every task that you’ve set manually. Many online tools allow for automation in scheduled posting, automated email send-outs, feature engagements, or even AI chatbots. There’s no reason to limit yourself to manual operations; instead, make sure to utilize every tool that’s available to make your engagement campaign get better results.
Constantly analyze your data. The positive thing about working with online materials is that you have data to analyze. You can get the data for your performance and run them through a criterion to see whether your business is doing well or not. Make sure to check your website’s traffic and consult core web vitals experts. Doing so will help you prevent costly mistakes and also repeat successes.
Communicate through pictures. We all know pictures tell a story of a thousand words. Harness this to help you increase your engagement! Utilize thought-provoking or emotion-inducing images that make your audience resonate with your product. You don’t have to use a material that’s too shocking; you only need to connect with them on a personal level.
Show your customers’ positive feedback. The best way to convince potential customers is to show your current customers positive feedback. People are more likely to listen to other paying customers as their experience is a good indicator of what others can expect from your business.
Target emotions. The most successful marketing campaigns didn’t just involve a checklist of a products’ features. It also included what these products can mean to the people who use them and how they can make them feel. Include emotional marketing in your online content, as it will engage the people who see them and make them more likely to share or comment on it.
Transparency is in. Before, businesses had to put up a highly professional front. A professional apology must rectify any slip or professional error without acknowledging the issue. Instead of doing this, be honest with what happened. You’ll find that your audience is more likely to accept your establishment when it’s shown to be run by humans who make mistakes and do their best to correct them.
Organize pop quizzes, polls, and other games. A popular way to create engagement is by providing surveys, pop quizzes, and other consumer-centric interactive content. You can take cues from major establishments like Disney and Netflix: they ask their consumers what their favorite shows are, and as a result, they gain high engagement.
Keeping your customers’ attention is a challenging but rewarding goal. Just remember to be human and personable. People don’t like it when they feel like they’re interacting with corporate robots.
