Do you have a focus on these engagement marketing secrets to building relationships? Especially the ones that are essential for a social commerce business?
The key is to be part of people’s lives. People will always prefer to do business with friends.
– Marty Kohr
What do you feel is the most important factor in establishing customer relationships? How you make customers feel is the most important factor …hands down in our opinion.
Like making new friends. It is becoming the most important element of social commerce.
Related: Deadly Mistakes that Destroy Employee Engagement
Business is a people activity; people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Ones with whom they have relationships are at the top of the desirable business option list.
The stronger the relationships with your customers, the greater will be their trust and loyalty in your business. So it is very logical for businesses in establishing customer relationships.
Studies show time and again, your best, most loyal customers are the aptest to tell their friends about your business, creating strong word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth marketing is the most important element of any marketing campaign.
So how do we propose to build a world-class social commerce business with consumer engagement?
Here are 14 tips for your customer engagement strategy. They apply for one on one in person or online engagement. Note that following these tips will yield a good customer experience.
In most cases, you will have to go beyond this level to yield a great customer experience.
People are real; they are not numbers or statistics. It is as simple as that. They are human and want to be treated as such.
They dislike being treated as a number. And they prefer relationships that work best for them.
Be friendly and socialize your business. People do business with people, so make it personal. Customers should want to do business with you because of you and your employees. Make your customers ‘feel at home’.
You may have a great location, cool displays, great value, etc. That’s all great, but if your people can’t make your customers feel welcome and appreciated, all of the other doesn’t matter so much.
Consider starting questions with this phrase: “I noticed that you …”. When you are forced to think about this, you start to consider what you know about someone.
You usually do this based on where you are, what they look like or what you know about them already. One of the best conversations I had at an event recently was because I noticed that someone was using two different phones at the same time.
Asking why led to an amazing conversation about time optimization and technology. Have you ever had a similar experience?
Relevance is vital
People have many priorities and rarely enough time. So pay attention and don’t use their time with irrelevant messages and conversation.
Engage them with only the messages and topics that are relevant to them. Strictly avoid broadcast messaging.
Engagement marketing examples … interrupt with questions
Many people think good listening means always letting someone finish every thought and nodding along. Instead, active listening requires that you ask questions while you are listening.
Sometimes this means interrupting – but this isn’t something to be afraid of. Often the interruptions will lead to tangents that create more intersections for both of the people in a conversation.
Build credibility and trust
The most important element that people rely on the most? It is trust, hands down in my opinion. Relationships breed trust so they are a good place to start.
People prefer to do business with people they know and have established relationships with. Those are the ones they trust the most.
Communication
People like to talk with and be around friendly people. In such situations, they share quite a bit about themselves.
And it obviously makes sense they expect the same in kind.
Engagement marketing strategy … customer care
Assume you are the company owner. Not all owners or executives make great leaders, but the ones that are should be emulated.
Watch how they take pride in how they deal with customers and employees, and then follow their lead.
All the time
Amazing companies don’t always deliver ‘Wow!’ type experiences, they are just a better than average all of the time.
Consistently all of the time is the secret sauce.
Experience trumps all
People are always looking for memorable experiences in their lives. They tend to remember both the very best and the very worse experiences. They prefer those they treasure and will share with friends.
Attention to details
Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest impact. Figure out the details that your customers enjoy and make them a routine part of doing business with you.
Be vigilant … always listening and learning. Try and remember things customers tell you and then show them you listened.
Trying new ideas. Put your social commerce business in motion by being adaptable.
Here is a story that helps me think about better customer engagement:
When my son was about two and a half, he developed a funny habit of walking around the house from time to time, chiming out, “I’m here.”
Although he was strongly connected to his family and his small class of school friends, he still had that need to express it.
I’m here. I exist. I want to be seen, and heard. I want to be recognized.
And as human beings, we never quite lose that. We might get a little more sophisticated about how we say it, but ultimately we all want to let the world know:
I’m here.
If you intend to market something — to ask for someone’s hard-earned money and irreplaceable time — you must begin by seeing (and honoring) who they are. And clearly acknowledging their presence.
Choose one customer service strategy to start with. Have a meeting around it. Discuss how to implement it. Then, do it and repeat the process, creating something good for your customers to talk about!
Soon you will have a much stronger social commerce business.
Please share a social commerce business experience with us. Any comments or questions to add below?
It’s up to you to keep improving your customer engagement and relationship-building performance and creativity.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of a business. Find him on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Communications Are Key to Building Customer Trust
Improve Customer Engagement to Win Business
Deadly Mistakes that Destroy Employee Engagement
Influence Consumer Behavior Through Personalization Strategies
