What would it mean for your business if your customers had a stronger emotional connection with your brand?
What if this emotional connection compelled them to be more loyal, buy more, and spread the word about your services and products to more of their friends and family?
This, of course, would be a boon to your sales, staff morale, and your overall bottom line. Keeping your customers engaged strengthens your brand so it can be more resilient. In an era where 50% of small businesses fail within their first five years, staying power should be at the top of your priorities.
With all that in mind, let’s examine three powerful ways to further engage your customers:
#1 – Goal-Driven Communication
From a business standpoint, effective communication is the ability to say something to your target audience and have them respond positively, i.e., purchase a product, become a client, or subscribe to a service. How you communicate ranges from in-person interactions to online advertisements to your print marketing materials and everything in between.
What we call “effective communication” is perhaps better understood as goal-driven communication; you say something in the hope of a positive outcome. Once we understand our goals, we can communicate in a way that helps achieve them.
For example, do you want to sell a product? Get someone to call in so they can qualify themselves as a potential customer? You probably already know what you want, so the real work begins when you think of how to communicate to your target audience in such a way that they’ll understand why they should choose to become your customer.
A helpful exercise can be to imagine yourself in a stadium filled with your target audience. If you were going to make everyone in the crowd a new customer, what would you tell them? Why should they work with you and not your competition? What’s the one special thing that you do that nobody else does?
The answers to those questions are probably exactly what your audience needs to hear to become engaged, loyal customers.
#2 – Give Your Customers Something Real
If you haven’t already, start to ramp up your print marketing efforts. There are proven psychological benefits to providing your potential customers with hard copy. We live in a world dominated by screens, so it makes sense that something real we can hold would somehow feel more noteworthy.
In fact, every study we’ve seen indicates that hard copy is better than digital for emotional impact, memory retention, and perceived value. In a nutshell, people engage more with the real stuff—if you’ve been meaning to put together a brochure, outdoor print banner or a direct mailing campaign, now is the time to do it.
#3 – Create Useful Support Systems, Content, or Giveaways
One of the main points in our post, How to Engage Your Customers With Holiday Printing was to give the recipients of a holiday-themed print advertising campaign something fun and useful, like a calendar for the new year or a short seasonal recipe.
But you don’t have to wait until the holidays to give your customers something useful. Carefully consider the support systems available to your customers. Do you have documentation or videos available that provides how-to information or unique ways for buyers to use your product?
Consider the case of Home Depot’s successful YouTube channel. After realizing that many of their customers would go to YouTube to look up how-to and DIY guides, the company began to produce their own videos. At the time of this writing, they have over 75 million views and 170,000 subscribers.
Other ideas to explore are additional content, free giveaways (loss leaders), or community based activities.
How Will You Increase Customer Engagement This Summer?
For the best in-house production of your promotional materials, consider our line of high end Xerox office equipment. Our trained staff is here to help you discover which devices would best help you meet your goals. Contact us via email or at (719) 634-1134 or request a no-obligation quote to get started.
