Customer experience goes far beyond the buying process and sales journey because customers expect that products and services should always meet their needs and wants. For marketers, online customer engagement is one way to bring customer satisfaction to the highest level, greatly benefiting the business.
Online customer engagement refers to all efforts and strategies applied through digital means or via the Internet to draw new, more customers and encourage customer loyalty to your business. Every online customer engagement strategy should have a primary objective to encourage customers to share their experiences and interact with you through your brand. But how will you do it?
In this post, you’ll learn some helpful ways to manage online customer engagement for the best benefit of your business.
1. Don’t Underestimate Google Reviews
One of the essential tools to grow your online presence is to set up your Google My Business page to get positive Google reviews. Setting up one will allow you to show your business in your local area. It’s a great way for customers to find your information with ease and confidence based on their product or service needs and preferences.
Having a Google My Business page doesn’t exempt you from also getting negative reviews, which is a normal thing in the business world. However, having too many negative reviews can have a significant impact on your business reputation. The question is, “Can you buy Google reviews?” and is it really worth it?
Here are some tips when it comes to managing Google reviews:
- Don’t Remove Negative Reviews: While there are ways to remove negative reviews on Google My Business, Google doesn’t appreciate such activity. Fake reviews can cause major problems for the business like getting blacklisted or removed from the site. Review websites are keen on checking suspicious reviews and take legal actions as necessary.
- Don’t Pay for Reviews: Don’t pay for Google reviews or any other types of reviews, like Yelp or Zillow.
- Get Real Reviews: It’s best to get real reviews from trusted online review management platform that strictly comply with Google and other site’s review guidelines.
2. Personalizing Customer Communications
Generic customer communications are usually untouched and sent to spam folders. If you want to boost your online customer engagement, personalizing customer communications is a great idea. It means that you connect with your customers in a positive, unique, and heartfelt manner, allowing them to feel that they are greatly appreciated for doing business with you.
Personalizing customer communications can take in different forms. You can always choose one that is best for your business, according to your niche and target audience. Once you master the art of personalizing customer communications, it’ll bring tons of benefits for your business, such as word-of-mouth campaigns, more referrals, more loyal customers, and higher sales.
Here are some tips and tricks to personalize customer communications:
- Create Personalized Auto-generated Message: You can send an auto-generated happy birthday or holiday greeting email to your customers. By remembering their special day or celebrating with their milestones, you provide them a greater sense of value. Eventually, as customers explore your brand, it’ll become a part of their life, thereby more motivated to regularly use your products and services.
- Using Recommendation Engines: Famous businesses online, like Amazon, use a recommendation engine to provide their customers with product recommendations based on their previous purchases and searches.
- Use Interesting Engagement Methods: Personalizing recommendations like using quizzes, surveys, or contests are brilliant ways to engage and communicate your message to your target audience.
3. Use Social Media Charm
It’s not surprising why more and more marketers are using the charm of social media to engage with customers. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even YouTube are the top social media platforms for customer engagement.
According to statistics, nearly three-fourths of adults in the United States use YouTube, with the majority of users are 18 to 24 years old. That’s why uploading relevant videos about your brand, such as ‘How-to’ tutorial videos can help you engage with your customers to benefit your business.
Here’s how you can use social media to manage online customer engagement:
- Encourage your followers to share their experiences and comment on your social media fan page.
- Answer customer queries and resolves concerns through Facebook Messenger.
- Hold surveys, contests, and games on Facebook to engage with your customers.
- Reward your customers by launching special promos and discount deals on Instagram.
- Use the comment section of Facebook to say ‘Thank You’ to your valued customers and followers, wherein such effort will surely be appreciated.
4. Always Bring the Best Value
Aside from quality products and excellent customer service, one way to manage online customer engagement is to bring the best value out of customer experience. How can you accomplish this goal?
Here’s how to bring the best value to your target audience and existing customers:
- Blog: Create a blog section on your e-commerce website to provide helpful solutions to your customers in terms of using your products and how your products can improve their lives.
- Google Analytics: Monitor customer behaviors using Google Analytics and understand how they enter and exit your website. Also, it’s one way to identify your asset web pages that bring more visitors to your site to boost them further and modify low-viewed content.
- Customer Experience Management (CEM): By investing in a customer experience management or CEM platform, you can build engagement with every customer one at a time using automation, allowing you to map customer journeys by monitoring and proactively managing customer experiences.
Conclusion
There are plenty of ways to manage online customer engagement to gain the best benefits for your business. By getting real reviews, you can draw more new customers to your business. Providing valuable content increase customer retention, preventing them from finding similar products and services elsewhere.
Using the charm of social media allows you to encourage customers to share their real-life experiences with your brand, increasing brand awareness. Finally, personalizing customer communications is a great way to capture the hearts and minds of your target audience, so your brand can take a part of their lives and meeting their needs. With all of the above-mentioned tips, your business will gain more customers, sales, and long-term success.