Building an engagement strategy sounds like a Herculean task and, often, it is.
However, if you break your business down into the simplest building blocks, it’s much easier to develop an engagement strategy, from the ground up.
Simplify your approach to consumer engagement using these six basic building blocks:
1. Who is your audience, and what do they want?
The first step in any business strategy is to answer this question. Now, use that information to get your marketing efforts completely aligned to your consumer.
- What is their pain point?
- What are their goals?
- Why would they choose your product?
- What kind of added value do they expect?
- What kind of service do they expect and require?
2. What is your product, and what does it need to be successful?
What you are selling is the key to being able to satisfy the audience’s need.
- What is it?
- What benefits does it provide?
- What problem does it help solve?
- What kind of sales pattern do you need to make it successful?
- What do you need to provide the consumer in order to make it a preferred choice?
3. What’s the connection between your product and your customer’s pain point?
Many businesses neglect to link their product to their target market. Your product should complement their need:
- Does the product itself solve a problem that is specific to your audience?
- Are the benefits clear and practical?
- Does your sales process give the required value to the consumer to close the deals in line with what you need for product success?
- Does your service and after-sales process cater to your audience to keep them in the buying cycle?
4. How do you communicate the connection to consumers?
Once you’ve made the connections, and you’ve streamlined your processes to satisfy both needs, communication becomes the key component: What are you trying to tell consumers? Remember:
- Simplify your messaging.
- Prioritise clarity – ensure your target consumer knows exactly what it is that your product does.
5. Plot this message along the consumer journey.
Once you have your messaging planned, you need to apply it across the consumer journey to ensure that you’re making positive contact throughout the cycle.
- Find the areas in which your customers interact, and understand their language.
- Make sure your messaging fits their environment.
- Simplify the research process so that your product is the easiest, most logical choice.
- Improve your face-to-face, phone-to-phone and online sales skills to ensure that further details are shared quickly and painlessly.
- If you can, make it fun, positive, inspirational, and pleasant for the consumer.
6. Measure your successes
Is your plan working? If not, rethink your strategy. If you’ve done all of the above, and your customers are still not having a good experience, consider that you may be speaking to the wrong people, focusing on the wrong product-benefits, or giving people the wrong information in the wrong spaces.
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