These days, it seems like consumer engagement is just another phrase on the internet. It’s so popular now that anyone and everyone who wants to teach you about marketing will tell you that you need to engage with your consumers. With all the information flying around, it can be difficult to sort through it all to identify what consumer engagement truly is and why you need to do it to grow your business.
However, in reality, the concept isn’t so difficult to understand, and once you understand it, it can work wonders for your business in ways you couldn’t have predicted. For that reason, in this article, we’ll be providing a detailed guide that will teach you what exactly consumer engagement is and why it’s so important that you need to do it more often.
What is Consumer Brand Engagement?
In the simplest terms possible, consumer engagement is the sum total of every interaction you have with your consumers. These interactions can be online or physical. They may involve two or more people meeting physically, and they may be completely virtual. However, once a consumer makes some form of contact with your business and interaction occurs, you have engaged them as a business.
For example, if you run a boutique and a consumer comes to your store or shop and buys a shirt from the sales boy/girl there, consumer engagement has happened. This is the meaning of the term in its simplest form. But, there are other forms of engagement that can add more value to your business. Another example you should be able to relate to is social media. When you constantly dish out content on your social media pages and reply to consumer comments, you’ve engaged your consumers. In the same vein, when you send out emails or simply make a successful attempt to reach out to consumers, consumer engagement has occurred.
One of the biggest displays of consumer engagement was when the Coca-Cola brand started the #ShareACoke campaign. Through this campaign, Coca-Cola was able to reach out to a lot of people within its consumer base target group and engage with them through social media content, product purchases, TV, etc.
5 Brand Benefits of Regular Consumer Engagement
By now, there’s no denying that you already have a fairly good idea of what consumer engagement is. However, why exactly is it so important that you need to do it so often? Well, we can think of a couple of reasons:
1. It keeps them coming back
Most of the companies that exist today simply want to sell their products. They make it seem like they care about the consumers and they’re genuinely concerned about their welfare. But, in reality, many of them really don’t care, and smart consumers nowadays can always figure it out. As soon as the consumers figure this out, they begin to patronize the brand less and less until they find a replacement.
By engaging with your consumers more often, you can set yourself apart from these unsympathetic brands that only want to collect money from consumers. It might be as simple as an email sent out weekly containing useful details or tips to help your consumers. It could be a bit more complex and require more planning and critical thinking like Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign.
However, as soon as you prove that you care about your consumers beyond their money by engaging them, they’ll become loyal to you. Once that happens, no matter how saturated the market is, they’ll keep coming back. This automatically translates to more money for you.
2. It enables you to generate critical consumer data to improve your business
Consumer data can be acquired in many different ways. You could have your consumers fill out a form online, giving you all the information you need. You could equally measure their response to your content and analyze the information gotten there to try to figure out what they prefer.
However, one of the best ways to truly get consumer data is by actually engaging with your consumers at the point of purchase. For example, when you send out weekly emails on different product categories, you can monitor the open rate to determine which type of content your consumers are more interested in reading.
Additionally, when you engage your consumers through social media, you could even directly ask them questions to help determine what they like or do not through polls. The possibilities are endless. But, once you can analyze and understand the consumer insights from sentiments, you can use them to make better decisions for your business.
3. It helps the consumers to know and trust you better
Consider a scenario where you’re constantly talking to a friend of yours. Every day or maybe every week, you share meaningful information with each other, or maybe you just joke around when you feel like it. This continues for several weeks and months. In about a year, you would’ve built a solid relationship with that friend, and it would become hard for them to believe any wrong thing said about you because they already know you properly.
This is how consumer engagement works. When you’re constantly engaging your consumers with a consistent brand voice and identity, it would be difficult for them to believe any false propaganda that could take them away from you as buyers. Even better, when you constantly engage them, they’ll be less likely to give your money to counterfeiters because they know you and can identify your products properly in the market.
4. It creates a true sense of community between you and your consumers
When your consumers are constantly reminded in the right way that they’re not just your money machines, you’ll find out that they’ll appreciate you more. Instead of just operating a relationship where they buy products from you, and that’s the end, you could build a community where you all share and exchange value. This could be beneficial in many ways, including long-term consumer retention, referrals, and so much more!
How Can Chekkit Can Help You Improve Your Consumer Engagement?
Visit our website to learn more about how brands like Nivea, Indomie, Golden Penny Pasta, and Amaizing Day Cereal have used chekkit’s consumer engagement & digital loyalty tool. Want to see how it works for yourself? Get a free demo straight away!