Creative Times

Stage 1 – The First Encounter

Picture the scene: you meet someone for the first time; in fact, it’s a first date. You’re understandably nervous. There are awkward silences. You ask questions with trepidation and are uncertain about how to approach them.

It’s the same when a customer encounters a brand for the first time. This is why customer engagement is so important. The future success of your brand marketing is dependent on you getting as close as you can to your customers.

But engagement doesn’t happen overnight: you need to act on what you hear, be brave, and be prepared to modify, perhaps even completely change, your marketing strategy to accommodate what your customers want.

Stage 2 – Getting Together

Once you’ve made that initial contact it’s about courting them and learning new information about them gradually. Finding out what you have in common and developing a growing understanding of them is crucial. Do you phone straight away or will that make you seem too eager?

To begin with take things slowly. Your customers are individuals and different audiences lend themselves to different channels. Asking them for too much information (after limited or no previous contact) will scare them off. A good start is to aim to find out their name and email address along with an agreement that it’s OK to contact them again.

The good thing is that in terms of brand communication you have an embarrassment of riches from which to choose. The proliferation of online advertising has opened up many new opportunities for you to communicate with your audience: social networking sites, microsites, blogs. These can work alongside the more traditional avenues such as direct marketing campaigns and other promotional offline tools.

Stage 3 – The ‘Rough Patch’

As the relationship progresses it can become a little stale. They’re tired of the same old jokes you tell. You feel like they’re looking at other people. You may take each other for granted. They might not be who you thought they were. It’s common. It takes an open and honest relationship to get through it.

In terms of customer engagement this is called a perception gap. How do you rectify this? What attracts a first time buyer is often quite different from what it takes to turn that prospect into a fully engaged customer. You have to remember that each of your customers is at a different stage of their relationship with you. To successfully acquire and retain customers you must understand their desire to engage with your brand and capture it through the information you have gathered about them.

But don’t alienate your existing customers by concentrating on the new ones. Many brands make this mistake despite the fact that it’s a lot more cost effective to retain an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. It is a much better idea to engage more deeply with these existing customers and turn them into brand ambassadors. Reinforcing the original brand promise by continuing to ask them what they want and tailoring this promise will result in loyal and long-lasting relationships.

Stage 4 – An Enduring Relationship

To create an enduring relationship you have to listen to each other. Relationships aren’t static, they continue to change everyday. But by talking to each other and listening to each others’ needs then you will have more chance of making it succeed.

The fundamental change in modern marketing is that you now need to provide personalised conversations that engage your audience and provide them with real value.

By creating a call to action that will help acquire customer information your advertising will become more client focussed. The goal is then to translate these insights into something tangible, tailoring your advertising towards something which is relevant to them.

And you never know: the better a consumer feels toward a brand, the more loyal they will be, and you might get them to make the ultimate commitment: committing to your brand for the rest of their lives.

Lindsey Moore, Client Services Manager and Couples’ Counsellor

www.liquidsolution.co.uk