Tips for building a customer engagement strategy

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Oxygen recently launched a survey for Tiverton Town Council, working with the town coordinator. The aim is to engage with the public around what THEY want to see in the town, so that the town itself and its traders can gain insight into improving the future. More about that below. But this inspired us to share some tips around creating a customer engagement strategy for your business.

A customer engagement strategy is your way of identifying how to ‘engage’ with customers. It’s not how you deliver a great customer experience, because that’s the end game. It’s about the channels, relationship building and nurturing necessary to grow a satisfied customer base.  If it’s SMART, then it will be measurable and responsive to customer needs, backed by an active plan. At the start of the funnel it will allow you to increase conversions and get prospects using your business. At the end they’ll be regular customers which means low-maintenance, high profit.

What is a customer engagement strategy?

Let’s start with defining what customer engagement is:

  • Knowing how a customer interacts with the experience and your brand.
  • Influencing their decisions about how to engage with you.
  • Deciding how they communicate and react to your products and services.
  • Boosting the quality of these customer relationships.

Think of it as discarding that tacky sales pitch full of empty promises and replacing it with messaging that customers trust and that provide value. Customers are 23% more likely to spend money with brands they trust. If this is true, then a good engagement strategy could seriously improve sales. More than this, it can improve engagement ‘through’ the customer – which means referrals or ‘word of mouth’ marketing. WOM is the holy grail; the cheapest, most effective marketing tool in our armoury. In a contemporary world, this is often eWOM – electronic word of mouth, or the power of social media.

Many, many years ago we worked for a video training company (remember those?) and they said that a satisfied customer will tell 4 people about their experience, while a dissatisfied customer would tell 10 people. That was pre-social days – so imagine how these figures have grown now from one social post!

To give you stats, 86% of people say they review a business online before a purchase. That’s a form of eWOM. On that same note, negative reviews can be detrimental to your business, and bad news spreads fast, threatening causing irreparable damage to your reputation.

Prepare yourself to engage with customers

Ensure your mindset is customer-centric – which means putting on a customer’s hat and approaching sales and marketing from your buyers’ perspective. Would you be satisfied with how you do things? This is where that survey we’re doing comes in. It highlights the importance of data collection (such as using CRM or sales engagement platform, or even rudimentary sales data and automation tools) – and getting customer feedback and forums. Did you know that every year Oxygen conducts a customer survey to see what customers think on a range of topics? (We’ve scored 100% for customer satisfaction for the past 8 years – but we wouldn’t know that without the survey!)

Don’t go overboard but try ‘social listening’, and gathering feedback from social channels and even doing research there by asking questions. The more you learn about customers, the better you can target your message and experience.

We’ve handled marketing for a comedy business, and recently looked at the profile of the TV channel Dave. We assumed that this was a blokey channel and watched mainly by people aged 16 to 34. We were surprised to learn that 62% of the Dave audience is female – and 40% of the audience is aged 35 to 54. This completely changed our strategy.

There’s also an aspect to customer engagement that is influenced by the market. We’re in the middle of a credit crunch in the UK – with post-Covid, post-Brexit uncertainty, high inflation, and squeeze created by the pitiful Russian war in Ukraine. Discounting and promotional strategies are statistically more effective in times like these than brand building. We saw this back in 2008 too. BUT even those seemingly fly-by-night customers who value a discount can become long-term, sustainable customers with the right engagement.

Make yourself more memorable. Remind them about quality and personalised services. Foster loyalty. Improve their experience and engagement and they’ll keep coming back which will prevent the expense of constantly have to look for new customers.

More stats make this a compelling argument. By improving customer engagement may see:

  • a 22% increase in cross-sell revenue
  • a 38% increase in upsell revenue
  • a 5%-85% jump in order size.

Customer engagement strategies to increase conversions

These are some useful tips to get your customer engagement strategy off to a good start.

1. Share your mission and vision

Here at Oxygen we call it our purpose. Whatever you call it – mission, vision or purpose –  it can give customers a reason to believe in your company and why you’re in business. Of course you need to believe in the mission for it to be credible, and so it needs to be realistic – and your customers should be part of it. Here’s a great vision for one of our clients. They truly believe in this statement, as do their staff and customers.

best deal for patient choice

2. Get personal

It’s really tough not to be generic about customer experiences, although case studies and testimonials are vital tools in your marketing toolbox. But you do need to listen, and provide customers with the unique touches that they can connect with. This is where data and customer surveys can be used to gain buyer insights and tailor customer interactions to what they want. Think about custom communications, online and virtual events – comms which may be generic in substance but significantly personal to the recipient.

3. Listen actively

If you listen you’ll hear what customers are saying (or not saying!) about your business. You need to know how you compare to your competitors, so make it easy for customers to provide feedback and share their experiences. And by a timely follow-up you’re telling your audience that you’re listening and committed to improving the customer experience.This applies to criticism and negative feedback, too.

4. Be helpful

Customers often need help before committing to a purchase, whatever its size. So look to content as a solution. Create helpful, authentic resources that address customer needs and position you as a solution not just a provider. When it comes to content think about videos, blogs and social posts. Product or service information, industry news, new features and updates… they’re all helpful to potential customers.

5. A mutual action plan

Customers are actually part of your extended ‘team’ – and your customer engagement strategy should be collaborative: a mutual action plan (MAP). You don’t need to engage with thousands of customers. Take an approach that removes guesswork customers you can trust. They will give you good information, and you can tailor your strategy to provide them with exactly what they need.

6. Buy loyalty

Be prepared to buy loyalty – in a nice way. It will be an expense (in terms of cost or time), but you can reward loyal customers by giving something away; things that your customers actually need. This could be free information on how to get more value from your products or services, or free resources such as downloads, webinars or samples. Of course, this could also be effective in winning new customers.

7. Be social

When it comes to ‘listening’ and ‘sharing’ the phenomenon of social media comes into its own. Pick the right channel – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Instagram – and gain direct access to your customers’ current and past thoughts and feelings. It’s an opportunity to respond to comments, repost content, show support, and provide helpful resources. It can humanise your brand and nurture deeper relationships with customers.

8. Use feedback

Feedback from customers can be a great way to gauge satisfaction. Whether it’s anecdotal or qualitative, gained via surveys or ad hoc input into your CRM, spend time analysing feedback to fully understand your customers’ experiences. Feedback is your chance to learn more about the customers and make positive adjustments.

9. Remove uncertainty

Never leave customers unsure. They have to make decisions quickly, and if they’re unsure they will waver and find an alternative. That’s why it’s vital to give customers access to resources and answers to their questions. Providing support, communication, systems, and information, you can enhance their experience. You can also divert them from costly queries by phone and email, which can be answered with stock responses in places they can find them – especially when they’re often the same questions.

We helped many of our clients engage with customers through better marketing communications.

Book a discovery call with our team to get started and see where we can help you.