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Different Ways to Encourage Buyers to Interact with Brands

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Nitin Gupta is a technology leader with over two decades of experience in product development &
management, structuring engineering processes & aligning them with the business and marketing
requirements.He is involved in R&D and is constantly implementing new technologies. He also carries expertise in emerging technologies like AI, algorithms & blockchain.Nitin Gupta holds B.E. in Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology


Customer engagement is directly proportional to business growth. Brands that achieve high levels of customer engagement enjoy 23% higher revenue and profitability.

However, the way users interact with brands has changed, making it essential for businesses to revisit their customer engagement strategies.

But what exactly is customer interaction?

Any interaction between a customer and brand that pushes a customer down the funnel and creates tangible value for the brand qualifies as customer interaction.

How can marketers encourage buyers to engage in meaningful interactions with their brands? Let’s find out.

Leverage social media

The first step in increasing customer engagement is discovering where customers spend their time. Presently, it’s social media, with over 4.5 billion active users (two-thirds of the global population). So, whether your customers are men, women, teens, working professionals, or housewives, you’ll find them on some social platform.

There are two ways to increase customer interaction on social media. The first is by posting regularly and engaging with users by liking their comments and replying to their messages. The second way is by going live. Hosting live streams encourages real-time exchange between a brand and users, resulting in higher engagement.

Brands like Global Citizen, Barry’s Bootcamp, Chipotle, Bon Appetit, Chewy, and Origins readily go live on Instagram to interact with their users.

Encourage customers to give feedback

Asking customers to give feedback is one of the most effective ways to increase engagement. Leaving reviews allows users to express their feelings, giving you a fantastic opportunity to follow up with them and take the interaction further.

While collecting feedback is a powerful engagement strategy, brands must have a seamless feedback process. Here’s where QR codes come into the picture. You can use feedback QR codes to allow users to leave a review effortlessly. They can scan the code to reach the feedback page and give their feedback.

Another closely-related engagement strategy is to ask for ideas and suggestions. It works well for SaaS companies that need to upgrade their products and roll out new features. Asking users for advice and opinions makes them feel involved, encouraging them to interact with you even more.

Provide a mobile app

The mobile app economy is booming for all the right reasons. Mobile users spent a combined 3.8 trillion hours on mobile apps in 2021. Furthermore, nearly 90% of all mobile internet usage comes from apps. These numbers showcase the increasing use and popularity of apps among mobile users, especially millennials and Gen Z.

Providing a mobile app can help you skyrocket user engagement. People log into apps multiple times a day, enabling brands to increase the frequency of interactions with their users. A user-friendly app that offers a stellar user experience can also cultivate loyalty. Marketers can use app download QR codes to promote their apps across channels and increase downloads.

Send push notifications

Push notifications are no longer pushy. They’re an essential tool in every marketer’s arsenal, and sending push notifications increases app retention rates by 3 to 10 times. Brands that don’t offer a mobile app can still leverage push notifications by sending browser notifications on mobile and desktop.

Follow these best practices to increase engagement with push notifications:

● The push notifications should be timely and relevant.

● They should be personalized.

● They should be actionable, telling the user what they should do next.

Implement a loyalty program

What’s common between Starbucks, Moosejaw, DSW, Baskin-Robbins, and IKEA? They all have a rewarding loyalty program in place.

A loyalty program is a marketing and engagement strategy in which a brand offers rewards to customers on making a purchase. These rewards can be freebies, discount coupons, etc.

Customers love loyalty programs, and they can boost customer engagement. Over 70% of consumers recommend a brand with a good loyalty program. Therefore, you can implement a loyalty program to increase customer engagement and loyalty.

Conduct contests and giveaways

Hosting contests and giveaways can help brands increase customer engagement. Giveaway contests often take place on social media, enabling brands to increase their social media activity and following. That said, you can also host contests on websites and other channels.

The details of a contest can vary from brand to brand. However, every contest should consist of:
● A goal or objective for conducting the contest
● Contest rules
● A good reward
● Criteria for choosing a winner
● A strategy to follow up with participants after the contest

The participation rates in giveaway contests are high because consumers have something to obtain. For brands, it’s a great opportunity to collect leads and build relationships with their consumers.

Benefit Cosmetics, a popular cosmetics brand, organized an Instagram giveaway to reach a broader audience and increase awareness and engagement. To enter the contest, a user had to follow the two brand accounts, like the contest post, and tag three friends in the post’s comments. Prices worth $1,000 were up for grabs.

Final word

Encouraging customers to interact with a brand is inarguably the top priority for any marketing team. There are various ways to engage consumers, and how you do it will depend on your marketing and organizational objectives. Marketers looking for a stepping stone to increase customer engagement can use the strategies discussed above.

In conclusion, driving engagement is unique for every brand, and marketers must experiment with multiple methods to find a winning strategy.