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Top 5 Errors to be avoided for your Engagement Strategy

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Engagement is an essential part of the customer relation. Years ago, the consumers were simply absorbing advertising but those days are gone.

As nowadays the credo is "customer comes first", his behavior has a huge impact on brand reputation. In today's world, a lot of commercial information are displayed, but the time dedicated to purchases is decreasing. Consumers can filter the information they receive, and choose the ones they really want to see. This process brings us to the following observation: if your communication is not attractive, it will not have any impact on your consumers, because they will not even see it.

To overcome that obstacle, and give your message a chance to be heard, there are only two words to say: Consumer Engagement.

 
 

We are talking about all the interactions between a client and a brand, that will allow the creation of a close “engaging relationship” between the two sides. It sounds obvious, but believe me, it is not for everybody.

 

Microsoft France recently issued a study regarding the digital trends of 2015 about French people’s engagement. To go more into details and to give you the means to build a strong engagement strategy, here are the Top 5 errors that have to be avoided.

#5 Thinking that a presence on the social networks is enough

We already talked about this point, a presence on the social networks is clearly mandatory for every brand. But you have to do more than just being there; as social networks are a really great tool to build a real relationship with consumers, providing a relevant, updated and original content; in short being the perfect community manager .

 

Don't forget the specialized social networks, which are very common nowadays, for the consumers looking for specific information related to their needs.

 

#4 Overselling and not enough communication

This one of the most frequent errors. When we talk about engagement strategy, we have to distinguish between sales and communication. If you want to stimulate the customer engagement, you will need willingness and patience. We are not talking about selling your products at all costs, but about catching the consumers and build a relationship based on an open company-customer interaction.

 

Be careful when you communicate and try not to bombard your clients with more and more selling points. They are not fooled, and the very essence of an engagement strategy is a trust-based relationship; and as you know, in any part of your life, it takes a lot of time to be built.

 

#3 Do not contextualize your communication

The context in which you communicate is very important. Storytelling is a good way to contextualize your communication. The goal is to bring emotions to your message, by making your brand more human, and therefore more reachable to the final clients. One time again, a lot of (too much) information are displayed, and this strategy can be a way to separate yourself from the crowd, by gaining on empathy, and staying in the consumers mind. Remember that people are more inclined to remember a story than only information and facts about a brand, displayed without any sense.

 

With a contextualized communication, you will speak with warm words, and so for sure encourage consumers to be engaged.

#2 Lack of coherence between all the channels

To gain a real engagement from consumers, they have to be completely immersed in your brand world. An online engagement strategy can be only effective if, and only if, it is relayed in the physical part of the business.

In the same way, a coherence between the different platforms is mandatory.

Don’t forget: you are telling a story; thus, you have to follow a logic stream, whichever the channel used.

 

#1 Copying from your neighbour

Bad student! Copying off the engagement strategy of your competitors is the worst error you can do. Consumers are nowadays aware regarding communication and advertising; the key is uniqueness.

Your content has to be only yours, and if you want to catch consumers' attention, don’t have to be seen over and over again. Create your own ideas, and position yourself as an innovator and no as a follower ;)



In fact, to create a good engagement strategy you don’t need a lot of things. Be aware that we are not talking about a sales strategy, but rather about a way to get consumers interested in you, and to encourage them to be loyal.
Be coherent, and above all honest, because at the time of purchase, the service you provide to consumers, is at least as important than the product or service your are selling ;)