You would think customer engagement wouldn’t be that difficult.
After all, they are customers. They’ve already sold enough under their brand to make a purchase. Now just hold them, send the right message at the right time and the rest will come naturally, right?
1. They sell when they have to give
Now you open your inbox and much of what you open is designed to convince you to buy more products.
It’s time to sell, but positive engagement is built to add value. Most companies involved generally provide information that improves or simplifies customers’ lives, such as tutorials, best practices, other useful content, and even contests.
2. They assume their product is enough
Follow each purchase with the next step, with the following question in mind: What is the most important thing anyone can do to get the best experience from your product, service, or brand?
For example, if you join Twitter, the service suggests that people follow you. Twitter knows you’re more likely to use it if you can read tweets from your favorite athletes or celebrities.
3. They don’t really try
When we look at the big picture, most brand interactions are completely normal. Some are great. And some are terrible. Overall, we are happy with the things we buy and the brand interactions we have.
Why do only 22% of people consider themselves loyal to a brand?
Because many brands don’t even bother to get involved.
Why didn’t they ask customers to sign up for the newsletter, follow them on Instagram, or rate them on Yelp? Why didn’t they have a loyalty program or at least a little “Buy Ten Get One Free” ticket?
4. They abuse their privileges
Many brands associate customer engagement with sending out emails every day or constantly tweeting about the latest offerings or services. But the most important thing is to be on time, not always.
Time is indeed an art. You can tweet regularly because the duration of a tweet is very short. However, Facebook emails and messages should be much less frequent.
5. They keep all their secrets
KFC doesn’t share your secret recipe. Would it hurt the business?
Probably not. As it would still be a better and cheaper product, 99.9% of the population would do it at home.
The truth is, most companies’ secret sauce isn’t a big secret. Why mechanics are still paid when you can find just about any auto repair tutorial on YouTube for free?
Engagement is about relationships. Most good relationships are not based on secrecy or mutual selling of things. Relationships are about the tribal association of your customers and adding value that makes their lives better and easier.
All brands can do this by offering computer software online or by selling beaded jewelry at the manufacturer’s local market.
The benefit for you is that most companies are not well involved. They are more interested in new business, product change and think a sale is an ultimate goal.
They are wrong. Shopping is the beginning of the relationship, not the end. Think of it as an opportunity to keep the conversation going and you’ll be way ahead of what everyone else is doing.