Most of Evolution Point’s clients tend to be B2B manufacturers. Whenever we approach a potential client, we like to ask about their selling process and company’s differentiators. Unfortunately, many companies tend to win contracts by being the lowest price producer. The reality is, competing on price is not a sustainable strategy for most businesses; after all, it’s a cinch for the competition to lower their prices as soon as you change them.
So, instead of asking “how low can I go?” ask “how high can I set the bar to deliver an experience that connects with my customers?”
Today’s consumers want to buy from businesses that acknowledge their preferences and desires. They like to buy from brands that forge an emotional connection with them. The foundation of a successful strategy calls for nothing less than communicating your brand’s value and differentiators in a compelling way across all your customer touchpoints.
Here are five pointers for building engaging customer experiences.
1. Build your online brand with compelling online content
The reality of today’s business is that most potential customer’s first experience with you is through your marketing website. Your marketing website has become the first point of contact. Therefore, your brand online needs to be engaging and compelling.
Marketing today is much more than just customer acquisition. It’s also about nurturing relationships that create loyal customers who will buy from you over and over, in spite of cheap alternatives. The ability to continuously provide timely and relevant information is a must for sustained engagement. No wonder blogs and e-newsletters are so popular nowadays. However these content channels need to provide information which are relevant to the customer, not just be used as a channel to promote the services of the company. In turn, the company earns trust, credibility, and authority, with the big proof point being increased sales and engagement.
2. Immerse your customers in rich media
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then rich media is priceless for giving life to your brand and products. Enrich your storytelling via immersive narratives that connect with your customers. It’s not simply about hawking your services; it’s about making your brand larger than the sum of your products to spark interest and capture your customers’ imagination.
Enthrall them with the theatrics of videos, interactive catalogs, and online configurators, and provide them with interactive tools to enrich their understanding of what makes your services different from your competitors. Make a splash for your product/service launches in all their splendor and show new and bold ways of utilizing your products.
3. Be mobile
Today’s empowered consumers are blending online and offline experiences— mobile and social— to inform their decision making process. To drive sustained engagement, you need to be where they are and you need to provide the right experiences while ensuring brand consistency across every channel.
Mobile is possibly the most challenging channel. Your content has to adapt to the devices’ form factor, features, and capabilities, and that’s no cakewalk, considering the myriad devices out there. Also, providing the right experience as a B2B manufacturer has always been a challenge as well. However, it is not impossible but requires some creative thought.
4. Build social communities that keep them coming back
Social is a great way to get customers invested in your brand. Allow your communities to become an extension of your storytelling platform and enable rich connections among your fans. Let them talk freely about you and give them a venue to share their own content that features your products / services. You can open new avenues for product discovery by inviting them to participate in product reviews, forums, and polls. Use your imagination and build a community worthy of your customers’ participation.
5. Get up close and personal
Needless to say, the best way of engaging a brand is to get up close and personal, which means communicating with them in a meaningful way offline. In today’s technologies which put us ever closer to realizing marketing’s holy grail—that of delivering a personalized, one-to-one experience to every shopper, we sometimes forget that it is the personal touch that makes all the difference.
Try finding ways to engage your potential clients with other offline methods, including sending them a newsletter or postcard, calling them to congratulate them for a success event, sending them literature which may be pertinent to them.
Try using these 5 ways to engage your potential clients. After all, isn’t engagement what marketing is all about?