The advent of social media and content marketing has meant a lot of things to marketers. Yet there’s one element that consistently stands out above the rest: customers are more a part of our marketing efforts than ever before and regularly engage in conversations with the brands they love – and hate!
So what does this mean for marketers? We have unparalleled access to the consumer, more than any focus group or customer survey could ever achieve. The intimacy of the relationship between brands (and those that market them) and the customer provides a number of opportunities for marketers. But like anything else, it also presents a number of challenges and risks we need to be cognizant of and thus manage accordingly.
Earning the right
The one thing marketers must understand is with this heightened level of engagement comes a tremendous amount of responsibility and accountability. Having such ready access to our customers on an almost instantaneous basis provides many benefits, but also requires we think and operate in ways we may never have considered before.
For example, being able to pose questions to your audience via social media to get a pulse on a new ad campaign, product launch, and so on is very impactful and powerful, but also leaves the marketer open to criticisms from this and a whole host of other completely unrelated topics.
Marketers need to be prepared to consistently and proactively deal with these matters, and have their PR and Communications groups at the ready in case their expertise is required to deal with a problem before it becomes a trending topic on social.
Don’t be late!
No, we’re not talking about being late for work or the party. Instead, we’re stating that with this greater level of engagement comes a responsibility to provide timely responses to consumers when they ask you questions or require your assistance with a customer service issue. This includes remembering to thank your customers when they provide positive feedback and even accolades; that’s important too.
You need to buy into this ‘two-way street’ mentality when it comes to consumer engagement – and realize the customer has as much if not more power than you - if you ever expect to earn and maintain your customers’ trust.
Operate in a self-serving manner and you can almost guarantee that you’ll quickly offend someone. You can then look forward to the retribution that will materialize from the rest of the internet too!
This give and take mentality requires a different mindset than ever before. But do it well and you’ll turn your brand into a consumer superhero, one who listens to its customers and their feedback, values their opinions and does whatever it can (within reason) to satisfy their needs.
Respecting the customer
In the end, effective customer engagement in this era of social media, smartphone proliferation and highly knowledgeable and vocal customers is treating them with the respect many have earned by being your loyal customers (or hoping to become one).
This may seem like a simple formula. However, in today’s business climate where many companies are hyper-focused on the bottom line, sometimes at the expense of customer care, the pitfalls from failure are ever-present.
If you’d like to learn more about how your company can employ a more customer-centric business model around customer engagement, we encourage you to contact us to learn more. Now reach out and make a point of connecting with your customers today!
