Customer engagement is the foundation of any brand, as it helps grow a loyal following and develop a long-term business model.
But getting customers to engage with your content isn’t always as easy as you think.
In this article, I’ll teach you the basics of building and growing an engaged following on any platform, and why engagement is so important to your brand in the long run. These are the exact steps I used to grow a multi-million dollar business, and now you can use these frameworks to do the same.
Is Time Short? Here are the Key Takeaways of Customer Engagement
- Customer engagement is critical to long-term growth and profitability, as engaged customers act as brand advocates and loyal repeat buyers.
- The three Cs of community (content, collaboration, and consistency) are critical to increasing customer engagement.
- Customer engagement can help increase your brand’s organic reach and save you thousands in paid advertising efforts.
Why Is Customer Engagement So Important?
Builds stronger relationships: When customers engage 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.
Increases customer retention: With a more engaged customer base, shoppers are more likely to make repeat purchases because they interact with the brand more often, reducing customer confusion (the opposite of “out of sight, out of mind”).
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: Like increased CLV, engaged customers are more responsive and open to upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Improves brand perception: Happy, engaged customers will openly promote your brand wherever possible, organically increasing your brand’s reach. Raise your hand if you looked at the review or comment section before clicking.
Don’t skip: 11 eCommerce Tips to Grow Your Brand in 2024
My Three C Community
To grow your followers you need to focus on what I call The three C’s of community: content, cooperationand consistency.
When you master each of these elements, you’ll see your audience grow, more organic customer engagement, and the benefits that come from it.
1. Content
Let’s start with the content. Your content should do three things: add value, build trust, and inspire action
Added value
By adding value to your content, you increase the likelihood that viewers will return to the content you create in the future. On social media, creating engaging content that appears on users’ ‘for you’ page will make them more likely to click and follow your account, wanting to see more. For an ecommerce business, this could look like creating videos of your product that solves a common problem, user-generated content, remixing a trend that fits your brand, or showing behind-the-scenes content from your entrepreneurial journey.
For blog content, it’s no longer just about creating content that replicates what’s already posted online, but instead provides a unique and expert opinion on a topic. This is the type of content that will keep people coming back to your site.
Build trust
Aside from adding value, another consequence of the content you create is building trust. Trust is one of the biggest hurdles brands face when trying to get new customers to buy from them.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Chances are, they don’t know anything about your brand, so it’s hard for them to have the confidence to part with their hard-earned cash, and they’re not sure if you can be trusted with the goods or services offered.
By creating content that instills trust in your brand, you break down the barrier to entry and increase the likelihood of acquiring new customers.
Inspiring action
Finally, your content should inspire action. After all, we want to create content that converts. Whenever you create content, you want to ask yourself what action you want people to take after consuming that 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. Cooperation
When done right, collaboration is your secret weapon for engagement and growth. By partnering with other brands, influencers, or accounts that have a large following in your niche, you can leverage their pre-existing following to grow your own.
Collaboration can take many forms, such as agreeing to rebroadcast each other’s content, teaming up on giveaways or prize packages, or conducting joint research.
3. Consistency
How often have you heard the phrase “consistency is key”?
Probably on a fairly consistent basis!
However, the same can be said when it comes to customer engagement. Consistent placement doesn’t just help create front-of-mind positioning for your brand through repetition; it also helps you get seen by more people.
Social media accounts that post consistently will receive more total engagements, indicating that their accounts are more active than others.
Think of it this way: if you post once a week and get 300 likes, 300 people have engaged with your content. If you post every day, you multiply that by seven, so by the end of the week, 2,100 people are engaging with your content, as opposed to those 300 people.
Continue learning: Customer retention is more important than leads. Here’s Why.
Engage, convert and earn
Customer engagement is just one of the essential elements of a growing brand that is well-positioned for long-term growth. Now is the time to learn everything you need to know about launching a successful e-commerce startup
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