Looking for a quick solution to customer engagement?
Maybe you’ve bought into content marketing and social media for just that reason. But it’s important to realize that simply posting articles and tweets isn’t enough.
Content marketing needs more than great writing to yield results. As much as you focus on blogging, producing videos, and publishing e-books, you need to strengthen the path from pageviews to sales.
This path can span a period of days, weeks, or even months. That’s why you need a well-developed retention strategy to keep your prospects engaged.
Here’s where social media enters your marketing mix
To move users through your conversion funnel, you need to do more than tweet and share. You need to inspire action through contests, questions, custom apps, and multimedia.
The mobile and social app experts and ShortStack recently published an analysis of how these tactics measure up to one another. Check it out:
Source: ShortStack
Now let’s look at these strategies (and more) in conversion-optimizing action.
1. Make Engagement Personal (ModCloth)
If you’re a marketer, you need to think beyond the world of your computer screen. The world is more than just apps, status updates, and digital multimedia. That’s why ModCloth, an online storefront, is venturing out in the community by hosting a pop-up shop in the world’s fashion epicenter, New York City.
Is there anything more social than a live event?
When you host an event in person, your reach is likely smaller, but your ROI potential may have higher depth. You do the math. If 30 of 60 attendees make three $150 purchases next year, that’s approximately $13,500 in sales. Not bad, right?
2. Bring Out Your Team (Credit Karma & Onboardly)
Your customers are people, and there are people behind your brand. Connect the dots!
Engagement is something that happens on a highly personal level. You can host all the contests and post all the status updates in the world — but nothing will ever replace that human-to-human bond.
Looking for an invaluable way to drive conversions for your organization? Make your team highly visible, and don’t forget to smile.
Example #1 is Credit Karma, an online platform with free credit monitoring tools. Typically, engineering is something that happens behind the scenes.
In bringing their star developer, Alex, to the public eye, Credit Karma emphasizes the humanity and hard work that goes into building this product — by people and for people. Trust is crucial.
Example #2 is Onboardly — a startup marketing and PR agency. Their success depends on several core personality traits: energy, enthusiasm, creativity, and a strong team workflow. Through social media, the team conveys all of the above.
The people behind your brand are your company’s most powerful conversion tool. The key to sales? Relationship building.
3. Engage the Senses (Oreo)
The more senses you can engage in your customers, the more you can engage them. Multimedia is a great way to do this — but you need to do more than just post pictures and text.
Think outside the box. People love music, video, delicious tastes, yummy smells, etc. Here’s how everyone’s favorite cookie aims to engage the senses with a music download:
What’s better than a freebie from Oreo? A freebie music download from Owl City. While Oreo is a brand well-known for food, it isn’t a company that’s famous for its rockstar jams. Here’s where strategic partnerships come in.
In the social media world, you’re never alone, so don’t be afraid to partner with the community.
Why not partner with us right now? Add your favorite customer engagement strategies in the comments below.
Ritika Puri
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