The most successful brands usually maintain a high level of customer engagement. When customers are engaged with a brand, they’re more likely to continue to buy from that brand and recommend that others do too.
With the increasing use of social media among businesses, companies now have the ability to engage with customers with the click of a button. However, they need to know how to do this in the most effective way.
From being incredibly transparent to using conversational marketing, here are nine effective strategies for keeping brand engagement high, as recommended by Young Entrepreneur Council members.
1. Be As Transparent As Possible
A tip for keeping brand engagement high is to give away everything. Keep giving away the secrets to your products or your business. Be transparent, and don’t be afraid to give everything away. The vast majority of people aren’t going to take your secrets, but they will be learning from them. They’re going to think about and engage with what you are putting out there. – Chad Keller, Motivated Leads
2. Deeply Understand Your Audience’s Needs
Think about how you engage with people. Understand your audience, understand what they’re doing and connect within the culture. Meet them where they are; don’t just make them come to you. Deliver value. Listen to them and respond. In so many ways, strong brands are like people: They understand human dynamics and use them to create strong relationships and engagement of their own. – Britt Fero, PB&
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3. Start A Conversation
It’s obvious, but it’s what so many businesses are missing these days: engagement with customers. How are you engaging your customers? If the only communication they get from you is a confirmation of purchase email and a request for a positive review, your brand engagement is going to be all but nonexistent. Social media is your best friend—competitions, updates, giveaways. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the best way to maintain brand interest is by endlessly promoting products, but customers appreciate the human side of the business too. Introduce some of your team to your client base via online profiles. Ask for thoughts on your latest releases via comment sections or emails. Essentially, start a conversation and keep it going. – Nick Venditti, StitchGolf
4. Publish High-Quality Content
One of the best ways to keep brand engagement high is by continually publishing high-quality content that’s relevant to customers. Showing your customers you understand their most pressing concerns in the areas relevant to your product or service helps build brand loyalty and trust. Doing SEO research is a great way to uncover what content to add to your marketing mix that ensures you’re producing the best content for your audience. – Richard Fong, PageKits.com
5. Diversify The Influencers You Work With
Of course, you’ll develop excellent relationships with influencers over time, but it’s important to meet new, exciting partners who can help you grow your reach and diversify your customer portfolio. Good brand engagement works best when your brand’s story resonates with customers, and what better way to achieve that than by working with influencers who resonate with your brand’s story? By striking a healthy balance of working with old and new influencers, you’re maximizing the reach that you have tenfold, introducing more and more people to your business and stoking the fire of your brand’s overall involvement with its audience. – Emily Stallings, Casely, Inc.
6. Make Brand Engagement Meaningful
The most effective way to boost brand engagement and keep it high is to make it meaningful. Every brand wants customer interaction, and almost every brand attempts to open up some avenues of contact with their customers through social media or a web forum; however, very few brands take the necessary steps to make these engagements meaningful or worthwhile for their target market. You need to invest the proper time and money into making interacting with your brand something people seek out and desire. Start conversations, give out prizes and awards, actually answer questions and offer opinions as a brand. The more you put into the community around your brand, the more you will get back. You want customers to begin to see your brand as a contributing part of their larger community. – Salvador Ordorica, The Spanish Group LLC
7. Create Personalized Experiences
The internet has changed the way businesses and customers interact. Businesses are much more dependent on personality, influencers and personal stories to sell their brand. To keep brand engagement high, I suggest companies use conversational marketing. Basically, this is when you engage prospects and customers in real time and in a very personal way. Using chatbots is one way to provide immediate, personalized and contextualized experiences. Chatbots also help move customers through the various sales cycles quickly and personalize it in a way that makes engagement with your brand enjoyable and intimate. – Shu Saito, Godai Soaps
8. Make Your Values A Priority
People care about values and they want to be a part of a community. If you build your brand around values that people care about and you communicate that, people will want to be a part of that community. When people come together in a community they willingly want to be a part of, you’ve got baked-in brand engagement. Most brands try to sell people. Stop selling. Make it about the people your business is supposed to be serving. Any good company has a mission, and that mission is built on values. If you build it, they will come, but only if your values align with them and you truly demonstrate that you care. – Andy Karuza, Base64.ai
9. Give Customers Direct Calls To Action
For successful brand engagement, encourage your customers and visitors to actively interact with your brand. Insert optimized calls to action and create relevant landing pages that lead them to the campaigns you want them to participate in. You need to spell things out for your visitors if you want them to take action. So don’t be afraid to push them in the right direction. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms