Customer engagement is the foundation of any brand because it helps grow a loyal following and develop a long-term business model.
But getting customers to engage with your content is not always as easy as you might think.
In this article, I’ll teach you the foundations of building and growing an engaged following on any platform and why that engagement is so important for your brand in the long term. These are the exact steps I have used to grow several multi-million dollar businesses, and now you can use these frameworks to do the same.
Short on Time? Here Are the Key Customer Engagement Takeaways
- Customer engagement is crucial for long-term growth and profitability, as engaged customers act as brand advocates and loyal repeat purchasers.
- The three C’s of community (content, collaboration, and consistency) are all essential for increasing customer engagement.
- Customer engagement can help increase the organic reach of your brand, saving you thousands on paid advertising efforts.
Why Is Customer Engagement So Important?
It builds stronger relationships: When customers are engaged with a brand, they feel connected to it, which increases their loyalty and trust and also motivates them to share the brand with their friends.
It boosts customer retention: With a more engaged customer base, purchasers are more likely to make repeat purchases because they interact with the brand more frequently, reducing customer churn (the opposite of “out of sight, out of mind”).
It increases customer lifetime value (CLV): Statistics have shown that more engaged customers have a higher average CLV and spend more with your brand over time.
It provides opportunities for upselling or cross-selling: Much like increased CLV, engaged customers tend to be more susceptible and open to upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
It improves brand perception: Happy, engaged customers will openly promote your brand where possible, organically increasing your brand reach. Raise your hand if you’ve checked out the review or comment section before clicking.
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My Three C’s of Community
To grow your following, you need to focus on what I call the Three C’s of Community: content, collaboration, and consistency.
When you master each of these elements, you will see your following grow, increasing in more organic customer engagement and the perks that follow.
1. Content
Let’s start with content. Your content needs to do three things: add value, build trust, and inspire action
Adding value
By adding value to your content, you make viewers more likely to come back and view the content you create in the future. On social media, creating engaging content that shows up on users’ “for you” page will make them more likely to click through and follow your account, keen to see more. For a ecommerce business, this could look like creating videos of your product solving a common problem, user-generated content, remixing a trend to fit your brand, or showing behind-the-scenes content of your entrepreneurial journey.
For blog content, it’s about creating content that doesn’t just replicate what is already published online but instead provides a unique and expert opinion on the subject. This is the type of content that will get people to revisit your site.
Building trust
Aside from adding value, another result of the content you create is building trust. Trust is one of the biggest hurdles that brands experience when trying to entice new customers to purchase from them.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. They likely know nothing about your brand, so it’s tough for them to have the confidence to part with their hard-earned cash, and they are unsure if you can be trusted to provide the goods or services on offer.
By creating content that instills trust in your brand, you break down that barrier to entry, making it more likely that you will acquire new customers.
Inspiring action
Finally, your content needs to inspire action. After all, we want to create content that converts. Whenever you’re creating content, you want to ask yourself what action you want people to take after consuming this content.
Do you want your content to start a conversation, be shared, clicked, or convert into a new social follower, email subscriber, or even a sale?
The best way to do this is to use relevant calls to action in your content.
2. Collaboration
When done correctly, collaboration is your secret weapon to engagement and growth. By collaborating with other brands, influencers, or accounts with a large following in your niche, you can leverage their preexisting following to grow your own.
Collaboration can come in many forms, such as agreeing to repost each other’s content, coming together on giveaways or prize bundles, or conducting partnered studies.
3. Consistency
How often have you heard the phrase “consistency is key”?
Probably on a pretty consistent basis!
However, the same can be said when it comes to customer engagement. Consistently posting doesn’t only help establish front-of-mind positioning for your brand through repetition; it also helps get you seen by more people.
Social media accounts that post consistently will receive more overall engagement, which means their accounts are considerably more active than others.
Think of it like this: if you post once a week and get 300 likes, then 300 people have interacted with your content. If you post every day, you multiply this by seven, so by the end of the week, 2,100 people, as opposed to those 300, have engaged with your content.
Keep Learning: Customer Retention Is More Important Than Leads. Here’s Why.
Engage, Convert, and Profit
Customer engagement is just one important element of a growing brand that is well set up for long-term growth. Now it’s time to learn everything else you need to know about launching a successful ecommerce startup
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