06 Dec
What is Customer Engagement and What Benefits Does it Bring
A simple definition of customer engagement is the depth of the relationship between a customer and your business. To give you a better idea of what this is, we’ll discuss four different types of customer engagement and show you the tools you can use to measure your results.
Active engagement
Customers that are actively engaged with your business are those that frequently communicate with you. Feedback, reviews, suggestions, and interactions with your social media pages are all signs of an actively engaged base of customers. This Starbucks ad drives active engagement by influencing followers to have a conversation in the comments section. This influences their customers to spend a moment of their day thinking of Starbucks and might even influence them to go purchase the drink they just commented about.
Emotional engagement
This type of engagement is mainly driven by your brand’s identity and is defined by the emotions you give customers that are interacting with you. Your business can drive emotional engagement through its values, its discourse with customers, and its trustworthiness. For example, this Target ad drives emotional engagement by invoking the warm, cozy feelings of cute pups and time spent with our loved ones. These emotions make us feel happy and make us more receptive and willing to shop at Target.
Rational engagement
Rational engagement is based on a customer’s decision-making process when purchasing a product. When a customer researches one of your products that they are considering to buy, they are rationally engaging with your business. You can drive rational engagement among your consumers by providing detailed information on your product and supporting communities that discuss your business. A great way to build rational engagement is to make your reviews stand-out. This makes you seem more credible and builds trust for your products. Here’s an example of tech-company SteelSeries driving rational engagement for one of its gaming headsets.
Ethical engagement
In recent years, ethical engagement has become more-and-more influential to the ways consumers make purchases. Customers that value the way a business treats its employees, its customers, its suppliers, and the environment are ethically engaging with a business. By making your infrastructure and supply chain transparent, you can drive ethical engagement among your customers. This essential oil company emphasizes its growers throughout its page to drive ethical engagement. This makes customers feel like they are supporting local communities and making positive changes in the world by shopping with them.
By understanding your customers, you can drive key points in your business that will build its customer engagement. Each type of engagement is important to different kinds of customers. Therefore, it’s crucial that you know your audience and what they react positively to. With a successful customer engagement campaign, your business can access countless benefits to help it grow. Here are some examples of what customer engagement can bring to your business.
Looking beyond the price tag
An important factor for many customers making a purchase is its price. Consumers usually buy the most cost-effective version of an item unless they feel dedicated to a specific brand. In these cases, price doesn’t matter as much and they’re willing to pay for the experience and values your business brings to them. For instance, if your business provides great customer service, a customer will be more willing to purchase an item from you even if it’s more expensive because they know you’ll support them through any issues they might encounter.
More time spent on your site
Everyone has those favorite websites they love to scroll through on a relaxing evening. With strong customer engagement, your business can become one of these sites. Businesses that successfully drive their engagement have been proven to be visited more often by customers who spend more time on their site and make larger purchases.
Engaged customers are
brand ambassadors
As consumers, one of our favorite ways to hear about new products is through our friends and family. In fact, research shows that we are much more willing to trust product reviews when they come from our social circles rather than outside advertising. By fostering customer engagement, your business can create brand ambassadors that constantly share your business and bring you new customers.
Increased customer retention
A business’s customer retention describes its ability to encourage customers to continue doing business with it. Our favorite business’s are those that have mastered customer retention. For many reasons, there are certain brands we love to go back to time and time again. By working towards your customer engagement you can drive repeatable purchases and become on of these brands.
Customer engagement is a vital part of any successful company’s marketing strategy. Making customers care about your brand and products can bring many advantages to your business to help it become more competitive. If you aren’t already making an active effort to drive customer engagement, you should start doing so.
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Recently graduated with a degree in political science, Robin is using his research and communication skills to pursue a career in content marketing. A talented copywriter for Ekoma, he also enjoys spending time with his dog, taking care of his home aquarium, and rock-climbing.
Robin Sawka