Every relationship needs to be nurtured and managed in order for it to grow. This applies to customer relationship as well. Customer engagement is the process that helps you strengthen the bond between you and your customer.
You can say customer relationship is that emotional connection that exists between business and customer. It is born out of constant communication where both parties have their needs understood and met.
Customers who are constantly being engaged by a brand grow fond of the brand. Ultimately, this leads to increased brand loyalty and awareness.
Restaurants should do all they can to keep their customers engaged. Because engaged customers spend more and are more loyal than unengaged ones.
If it’s all the same, here are some reasons why customer engagement is important:
It Improves Customer Loyalty
Humans are addicted to good experiences. Give them a great experience on a consistent basis and you will have their attention every time. When you make your engagement with your customer enjoyable, they will eagerly spend more time and money. And I don’t need to tell what that would do to your profits.
It Creates Brand Evangelists
I have always held the belief that one form of marketing that will never get old is word-of-mouth. Pound for pound, word of mouth is more effective than a TV ad. Customer engagement increases your customers’ beliefs in your brand and they will root for you anywhere.
This makes for free marketing. It is said that a dissatisfied customer can turn away twenty. What do you think one customer who is crazy about your brand will do?
It Improves Business Results
Customers that are willing to spend more time and money buying from you are good for business. They make is easy for you to market to them. While your business grows with new customers, loyal customers sustain it. The more engaged customers you have, the more loyal customers you have. And the more loyal customers you have, the more stable your business will be.
Seeing the reason outlined above as to why customer engagement is important, I bet you want to know how to foster engagement. Here are two major way to do it:
- Personalization
There is no better way to engage with your customer than personalization. Many businesses relate with their customers as if they are robots. Their marketing communications lack that human touch. This makes their customers feel alienated. Basically, personalization is the use of individualized content to pass information to customers. This is done using data collected with analytics tools and is delivered through automated channels.
Personalized marketing aims to communicate with customers on an individual level. Business collect real-time customer data that enables them get to know their customers better. Using this information, they develop content that is tailored to suit the customers’ individual need.
Read our article about 3 ways to use personalization to create loyal customers to learn more.
Personalization creates a sense of identity in the customer. They feel like they belong somewhere where their needs are met. Customers who are engaged on a personal level are willing to spend more and spread good news about the brand.
A few benefits of personalized marketing include:
- Improved customer experience.
- Increased brand loyalty.
- Increase sales (and profits).
These three benefits make up the bottom line of nearly every business on the planet.
- Social Media
If you are not on social media as a business, you are missing out. Social media is a great platform to reach out to your customers on a personal level. Your customers go on social media to hang out and have fun with friends and family. You as a business can join in and let them know that your brand is sociable.
Social media is an excellent channel for product announcements, notifying your customers about upcoming events, new deals, and more. Make sure your content on social platforms is friendly and welcoming. People generally do not being sold to on those platforms, so keep the selling to a minimum.
As you engage with your customers on social media through valuable (and fun) content, they start to trust your brand more. This trust will grow over time and will lead to repeat business and even brand evangelism.
Customer engagement is better with data. The more data you have, the more personalized your engagement will be. Do you offer free Wi-Fi but think you don’t have enough customer data to run a really effective personalized marketing?
If your answer is yes, you need a Wi-Fi analytics and marketing tool.
A Wi-Fi analytics and marketing tool will help you collect, store, and analyse customer data in real-time. It is inexpensive and easy to deploy – a better alternative to traditional marketing. SpotOn Wi-Fi is designed to gather valuable data that will help you run more effective marketing that leads to increased sales.
To find out more, contact us right away and we’d help you with whatever information you need.
POSTED ON September 20, 2019Share:
