Spark Your Audience Engagement

Audience Engagement

All top companies have extensive customer engagement, and most notably, it’s largely customer-driven. Every company strives to have audience engagement. It helps build relationships, community, and loyalty, encourages conversation and participation, and makes your brand stand out among others.

Companies need a long-term engagement strategy as it is vital to their growth. Better customer experience means customers will not only choose your brand over any other they are also willing to pay more for your product or service. The better the experience the more loyal a customer will become and the more engaged they’ll get.

Humanize your brand

As a company you want to be able to play to people’s needs and be someone customers can relate to. Popular consumer brands such as Wendy’s and Under Armor have it easier while brands like banks and B2B companies have to try even harder. Utilizing people within your company that are passionate about your brand, you can work to create a humanized brand. Create content that is relatable, things consumers would interact with, and make your brand stand out as something they want to be a part of.

Consistent communication

Your engaged customers want to hear from you. They want to know they can count on you to inform them of updates to your product/service and company, especially in these unusual times. In gaining audience engagement, you also want them to count on you for supplying them with information within your industry. In gaining engagement, you must be consistent in your newsletters, social media posts, emails, and any other form of communication you use.

Get to know your community

The more you know the easier it is to interact with your audience. Do your research as to why your audience is drawn towards you. Take time to get to know them so you can engage accordingly. Know their interests, wants, needs, and lifestyles. Knowing your audience drives you in the right direction, making sure you don’t strike out when trying to engage. Asking for feedback will also help you get to know your community and gives you ideas of what your audience thinks currently and what they want to see in the future. Most customers are very willing to give their opinions and thus become engaged with your product and brand. You’ll also see engagement levels rise once you start implementing their ideas.

Surprise personalized outreach

Digital marketing allows companies to take personalized engagement even further. The most effective content strategy is to offer something that they wouldn’t expect. Real-time personalized deals are a sure way to get customers to engage with your brand. Making your deals relevant to customers right when they need it makes them feel as though the advertisements were made for them. Be sure to create marketing and advertising campaigns based on location, social platform, and specific products to boost your consumer engagement strategy. However, personalization should be about making the user feel welcomed and known without feeling like you’re digging into their personal data.

Schedule weekly activities

It can be effective to post activities or ask questions the same day each week on social media – promoting things like Sales Tip Tuesdays or Motivational Mondays. After posting your content, ask your followers to join in, sharing their tips and advice, or posting a photo of what motivated them. This encourages followers to not only engage with your post but others in the community as well. Being the source of community engagement ups your brand and encourages users to return to your page to interact each week, growing your engagement.

Understanding What Customers Want

Three Tips to Understand Your Customers

If we could understand what every customer is thinking, we’d be selling left and right. Of course, it’s very rare that a customer tells us how they’re feeling. With the constant bombardment of advertising and everyone wanting them to buy, customers are a lot less trusting and require more time and effort to convince to buy.

customer service image

Understanding what drives an individual to want to buy is a key factor in selling today. If you don’t get lucky with that customer who willingly tells you their wants, needs, and concerns for your product/service, it means you must figure it out on your own. Knowing how to figure out a client’s wants, needs, and concerns and use it to your advantage is something every good salesperson understands how to do.

Here are three ways to understand what potential customers are thinking.

Be the guinea pig

Go through the customer experience process. Follow the paths they would take on the route to buying from you. Act as though this is your first time coming across the product and note what value you receive. What key information do you take in, is there something not mentioned that you can note in your sales pitch or a key factor you can build off of? It’s important to understand the process and information the customer is taking in before they reach you. This way more value is being added to your product instead of just highlighting what the customer already knows. The more value you can add, the more likely a customer is to buy.

Learn as much as you can about your client’s job and life

It’s important to focus specifically on those who will be using your product/service. Learning about your customer’s job or life often helps bring to light key factors your customer wouldn’t think of if asked what they wanted from the product. The more you know about a customer, the better you can pick out key things the customer would enjoy. This tactic takes more time and empathy from the salesperson, but the more personal you can get, the more likely a customer is to buy from you specifically.

Understand what customers want

Personalized service, consistent answers, and optimized user experience.

Personalized service. Customers don’t want to be treated like a case number. As you want to learn as much as you can about your client, you also want to create an experience that’s personalized to them. Work with the client to figure out the best package for them, making sure to pay attention to their needs and wants. Giving them an experience different than the usual sales pitch will get them much closer to buying.

Consistent Answers. Seventy-six percent of customers receive conflicting answers from different support agents when asking the same questions. Make sure your sales team is on the same page. Consistent answers throughout the buying process will increase the likelihood of completing a purchase more so than receiving different answers to the same question. It shows you have your stuff together and that a customer can rely on each representative to give a good deal.

Optimized user experience. User experience is a huge factor in choosing to buy. Non-responsive and hard-to-use websites turn people away. Make sure your website is user-friendly through the navigation, homepage, and cart checkout. You want to make it a fun, easy experience. Aside from online experience, you also want to make sure customer support services are optimized. Using quality sales skills, salespeople can make for a troublesome user experience, one that will keep customers coming back.

Marketing Ideas for Your Holiday Sales

Image with holiday items and title

When it comes to the holidays, we are all looking for that special offer or bonus to go along with our shopping. As a business this is the best time to pull out all the stops. To reap the benefits of the holiday season, businesses have to pull out all their best offer saving discounts and go total marketing on them.

As a business you’re going to want to take advantage of the holidays. Here are several ways in which you can rock the holiday season and boost your company’s sales.

Once November 1st hits let the holiday marketing begin. We suggest not going full blown Christmas quite yet though. Start out with thanksgiving themed marketing, leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales before heading into Christmas.

  1. Offer and Discount Ideas

    • Offer Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and promotions. Black Friday is huge and for online only businesses and services so is Cyber Monday. Capitalize on this opportunity.
    • Give out holiday-specific discounts or coupon codes such as entering code TURKEY30 to receive 30% off the order.
    • Offer time-limited sales to convey a sense of urgency. Example: Save 40% on Cyber Monday.
    • Offer free or low-cost shipping. Many people are turned away with the added cost of shipping. Close more deals by shipping for free or giving a discounted shipping price.
    • Create holiday gift packages – packages you can’t get any other time. Put together a package that includes items customers usually buy together or different items you offer that customers could then try out.
    • Offer a free holiday themed gift with a purchase. This will give buyers an extra incentive to buy and entice hesitant buyers.
    • Offer 2-for-1 products. The buyer gets to keep one for her/himself and give the other one as a gift.
    • Send out discounts on future purchases for all items bought during the holidays. Set yourself up for post-holiday success.
    • Team up with another business to create Christmas gift bundles. Combine your product and their product into a gift package.
    • FSL + Infofree offer

    • Send small gifts to your loyal customers. An inexpensive gift like a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine can show you care and puts your business at the top of their minds.
    • Offer flash deals and expedited shipping for last-minute shoppers.
    • Run a 12 Days of Christmas holiday promotion. Offer a different sale or discount or promote a different product each day leading up to Christmas.
    • Hold an advent calendar campaign. Offer a discount on one product per day throughout the entire Christmas season.

  1. Promote your holiday offers repeatedly. Don’t be afraid to share your sales and deals more than once. You want to make sure your promotions reach your potential customers.
  1. Content Marketing

    • Provide holiday-themed information to your target market. Direct social media posts and blog posts to holiday-themed information.
    • Create a holiday landing page where you can display gift ideas or discounts.
    • Update your social media covers to show some holiday cheer.
    • Thanksgiving FSL Header

    • Capture the holiday related search engine traffic by publishing content optimized for the season on your website.
    • Make your email template holiday themed.
    • Send holiday promotion emails with all your discounts. Send one right before Christmas too with last-minute gift ideas.
    • Send emails with your holiday offers including one promotion per email. Space these out accordingly.
    • Find gift guides in your industry and ask for your products to be included.
    • Include a holiday countdown ticker on your site. This will let visitors know exactly what day they need to order by to receive their products in time for Christmas.
    • Send your customers Christmas or New Year cards via mail or email.

Start planning and implementing your holiday marketing now! With your extra holiday efforts you’ll be selling like crazy.

Need more inspiration on how you can stand out to customers during the holiday season? Check out Make your business stand out to consumers during the holiday season for ideas!

Thanks to Kim Garst for the holiday themed ideas!

Email Follow-Up Tactics

Graphic Computer with email

Email follow-ups are a great way for more information to be given in detail and to allow the prospect more time to think through the information displayed. When using email to follow up, you must give the client enough information to be considered helpful but not too much as to where you pull out all the stops in the first follow-up. You want to drive the conversation and get them to buy early.

Follow-up emails can be frustrating. Many people assume if a prospect doesn’t respond the first time that they aren’t interested, however, there are many reasons as to why, besides not wanting your service, a prospect hasn’t responded to your email.

These reasons include missing the email completely, failure of the subject line to catch the prospect’s attention, not a clear enough call to action, not set up to be viewed on mobile, and sent at a bad time/day. The good news is these are all things we can easily fix.

  1. Lost email

    Sometimes emails get buried in our inboxes. Dismissing it the first time doesn’t mean we don’t think they’re important it just means we forgot about them. Sending multiple emails when you haven’t received a response yet is okay. The rule we follow is if we haven’t heard anything within two days, we send another follow-up email. Two days is enough time to where if they did happen to see the email, another follow-up won’t frustrate them. Two days is also a good time for the prospect to contemplate the email and then receive another follow-up with even more valuable information. After the first two-day period, you should extend the waiting period by a few days for each subsequent email.

  2. Subject line

    People are bombarded with thousands of emails from everything imaginable. What would make them recognize you and open your email? You must grab their attention and keep it long enough for them to click-through. From our Follow-Up Success Tips article, ask the client if there is something you can put in the subject line, such as using the word important or marking an email as urgent. These special cues can help you reach the client.

    The number of words in a subject line also matters, especially for mobile users. Subject lines with 6 to 10 words deliver the highest open rate [Retention Science], making 8 words ideal. So, create that catchy, noticeable email in 8 words.

  3. Email on mobile

    As of now, 61.9% of all emails are opened and read on mobile devices [Constant Contact]. That means your email needs to be programmed correctly for mobile; failure to optimize your email for mobile results in an 80% deletion rate [Constant Contact]. Emails that aren’t formatted correctly for mobile viewing often cut off information completely or appear very zoomed in. These kinds of emails frustrate the receiver often enough to cause them to delete the email without even fully viewing it.

    Have you checked if your email is optimized for mobile devices? It could be one of the reasons you’re getting a low response rate.

  4. Time and day to send

    There is no exact time or day we can tell you to send your email that will get you one hundred percent results. The first thing we do suggest is asking the prospect when the best time to follow-up with them is. Getting their insights will prove more helpful than anything in getting a prospect to respond to your follow-up.

    With the help of research though, we can give you a general idea of when most people open their emails. Research shows that the very best times to send emails is on Tuesdays [Get Response], with weekends having the lowest open rates among the days of the week and Mondays following in second.

    For the time frame, it appears it’s best to send emails a little after people get to work, and when they are catching up on emails after lunch. It shows to be around 9-10 a.m. and 1-3 p.m.

    So, when you do send a follow-up email, it’s best to do it on Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. or 1:30 p.m.

  5. Call to action

    You need to have a loud and clear call to action. Most times, in a follow-up, this will be for the prospect to follow back up with you, whether it’s via email or phone. Let the client know what you want them to do with the information you gave them. Always leave them more curious than before on a sales pitch. Give them the information they need to know to draw closer to a decision but always be able to add more value after they follow through with the call to action.

The subject line of your emails and the sender name and are the most important factors in getting emails opened and read. Be sure to check who the email is coming from. Making the from more personal increases the chances of getting noticed by a prospect. Open rates go up by as much as 35% by just using an email with your name in it [Pinpointe Markeing].

In 2019, the average open rate dropped to 22.1%. This average means that your company is doing well within its email follow-up and email campaigns if it has an open rate of around 22%.

The most important thing you can do in a follow-up is to continue to add more value every time you come in contact with the prospect. Email allows you to explain clearly and in more detail. It also allows for a more creative aspect. Adding in a creative aspect draws the reader in more. A creative follow-up email catches the attention of your prospects. Remember though this isn’t an email campaign so, don’t go overboard. You want a little flare but not too much to draw away from the information you are relaying and the call to action you want them to take in following up.

Branding Strategy Options

Companies can succeed or fail based on brand awareness. A company can’t sell its product/service without first getting its name to circulate among consumers. Among awareness is its ability to help companies differentiate their product offerings from those of its competitors. Setting up an effective brand strategy isn’t always easy. Society is constantly evolving, and consumers’ attitudes are always changing. Many brands have been able to stand the test of time through implementing various strategies including, branching out through various branding methods.

To create and manage key brand assets, firms launch a variety of brand-related strategies. Knowing the options you have available is the first step in creating a winning brand strategy.

  1. Brand Ownership

    Brands can be owned by manufacturers, wholesalers, or retailers. Who owns the brand is a deciding factor in how to go about creating a branding strategy.

    Manufacturer brands, which are the majority of brands marketed in America, own their brands and therefore have more control over their marketing strategy. Manufacturers can choose the appropriate market segments and position for the brands and can build the brand themselves, thereby creating their own brand equity.

    Retail/Store brands develop the design and specifications for their brand and use to have to contract with manufacturers to produce the product. More so today though, retail firms are developing private-label merchandise and using this merchandise to establish a distinctive identity. Manufacturers are now more willing to accommodate the needs of retailers and develop co-brands for them.

    Choosing whether to partner with a manufacturer or manufacture your own brand is a tough decision. Both sides have their perks. All we can say is do extensive research into different manufacturing companies to figure out which brand ownership strategy would be best for you.

  2. Naming Brands and Product lines

    Naming a brand and product lines is one of the most crucial parts of the branding strategy. The name you chose should be readable and writable, unique, short, punchy, and memorable, and should evoke an emotion, feeling, or idea. That’s a lot to ask of a name, but they’re all essential factors.

    Organizations must decide whether it wants its business name, brand name, and product name to all be the same or different. The rule we go by for brand and product names is, the more products vary in their usage or performance, the more likely it is that the firm should use individual brands. Organizations choose between family brands and individual brands.

    Family Brands: Using a firm’s corporate name to brand all its product lines and products. When brands are sold under one family brand, the individual brands benefit from the overall brand awareness associated with the family name.

    • Example: Kellogg’s uses its family brand name prominently on its breakfast brands (Kellogg’s Special K bars, Kellogg’s Froot Loops, Kellogg’s Pop Tarts, Kellogg’s Eggo Waffles).

  3. Individual Brands: Using individual brand names for each of its products. This gives products individual identities that are not easily seen as being under one umbrella.

    • Example: Kellogg’s also uses individual branding. Kellogg’s owns and markets Keebler, Cheese-It, Morningstar, and Famous Amos under separate names.

    Tough decisions have to be made. You will never know exactly how a product will perform without first releasing it to the world. There are, once again, advantages to both sides. Through company, competitor, and consumer research, you can get a better idea of which strategy would be best for you.

    Brand Extension

    Companies often use the same brand name in a different product line. This strategy has several advantages.

    Graphic: three brand extension advantages

    Successful Examples:

    • Colgate and Crest started out selling toothpaste but have since started selling toothpaste, toothbrushes, and other dental hygiene products.
    • Kellogg’s has branched out from the cereal company. Its strategy of branding the corporate name into the product name has allowed it to introduce new products quicker and more easily.
    • Trying Neutrogena’s brand extension, Neutrogena Wave power cleanser might encourage consumers to try Neutrogena’s core product lines of cleansers and moisturizing lotions, especially if their first experience with Neutrogena was positive.

    Sometimes companies try too hard to stretch the limits of brand extension and end up creating a major fail. Fortunate for us, those companies fails are valuable lessons for us. Here are some examples of companies that were unsuccessful in their brand extension strategy:

    • Cheetos Lip Balm was based on the idea that if you like Cheetos, you would want to wipe it all over your lips.
    • Colgate Kitchen Entrees were microwavable frozen dinner entrees that shared the name with the famous toothpaste.

    Companies must consider several factors when planning a brand extension strategy.

  4. Graphic: brand extension factors
  5. Co-Branding

    A firm can choose to market two or more brands together on the same package, promotion, or store. Co-branding can enhance consumers’ perceptions of product quality through links between the firm’s brand and a well-known quality brand.

    • Example: Yum! Brands combines two or more of its restaurant chains – A&W and Long John Silvers, Taco Bell and KFC, etc.

    The co-branding strategy is designed to appeal to diverse market segments. Two companies’ markets can, however, be too different. Example: Burger King and Haagen-Dazs found their customers to be vastly different.

  6. Brand Licensing

    Creating a contractual arrangement between firms whereby one firm allows another to use its brand name, logo, symbols, and/or characters in exchange for an agreed upon fee. This practice is common for toys, apparel, accessories, and entertainment products, such as video games. Licensing is an effective form of attracting visibility for the brand and thereby building brand equity while also generating additional revenue. One risk, however, is the dilution of a firm’s brand equity through overexposure of the brand.

  7. Rebranding

    To rebrand, companies will change their brand’s focus to target new markets or realign the brand’s core emphasis with changing market preferences. Companies often have to spend tremendous amounts of money to make tangible changes to the product and packages as well as intangible changes to the brand’s image through various forms of promotion. This strategy has high costs and risks, some of which can remake or break a brand.

Brands add value for both consumers and sellers to use to their advantage. Having a brand helps facilitate purchases, establish loyalty, protect from competition and price competition, and affect market value. Having a strong branding strategy, one that consumers will love gives a company a huge boost.

Information gathered from Grewal, Dhruv, and Michael Levy. Marketing. 5th ed., McGraw Hill Education, 2017.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Sales Campaigns

Need more information on whether or not to create a sales campaign? We’ve put together a quick list of insights into the advantages and disadvantages of sales campaigns.

Graphic: Advantages and Disadvantages to Sales Campaigns

Think a sales campaign would be great for your business? Learn how to get started in Create a Winning Sales Campaign