Engage With Customers and Grow Your eCommerce Business with These Strategies

 

Credit: Photo by Pixabay

 

Relationship Between Customer Engagement and Business Growth

Customer engagement and business growth generally have a direct relationship, meaning that as customer engagement increases so does the growth of a business. This is because customer engagement is one of the driving forces of business growth, regardless of the company’s size. Businesses that prioritize customer engagement will enjoy additional support from their customers because customers feel that the business cares for them and their opinions.

 

Tips to Engage with Your Customers

●     Host an Event

Hosting events and activities is a great way to generate excitement around your business and engage with potential customers. In-person events give customers an opportunity to view a business as more than a product and a logo. Instead, they’ll be speaking with actual people who represent the business which will encourage customers to view the business as they would another human with a personality. However, if digital events are more your business’s style, then consider hosting a giveaway. These events generally create a great deal of excitement due to the prizes customers can win.

 

●     Improve Your Customer Service

Unfortunately, it is inevitable that a customer will eventually have an issue with your product or service and call your customer service department. Instead of viewing this as a mistake or shortcoming, view it as an opportunity for growth. Providing memorable customer service is an underrated way of engaging with customers. In fact, if your customer service model provides a positive enough experience, there is a chance that customers will share this with their friends and grow your business recognition.

 

●     Start a Website Forum

A website forum allows customers to engage with each other and answer questions that other customers may have. Not only will this improve your business’s customer engagement, but it will also give the business an opportunity to solve a customer’s issues before they reach customer service. A website forum alongside a consistently updated blog is one of the best ways to organically engage with customers.

 

●     Social Media

Social media has become more than a digital marketing tool for businesses. It is also an incredible tool for improving customer engagement because of the two-way communication it facilitates. A business can ask its customers a question and the customers can publicly respond and engage with the business. Additionally, social media platforms provide one of the largest audiences available for businesses to tap into. Facebook alone has over a billion monthly users worldwide.

 

Credit: Photo by PhotoMIX Company

 

Tips to Grow Your Business

●     Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, but it is still incredibly prevalent because of how effective it is. The primary strength of email marketing is that it can market directly to a customer. Very few other digital marketing platforms allow you to send a message directly to a customer. The only caveat with email marketing is that potential customers must voluntarily give you some of their contact information for it to be effective.

 

Remember to keep your marketing emails short because most people likely won’t take the time to read a long advertisement. Most professionals recommend keeping marketing emails to between 50 and 200 words. Emails of this length have a 50% response rate.

 

●     Create Great Content

Content marketing is an organic method of digital marketing that improves how your business’s website ranks on search engine result pages. This is important because webpages that are ranked higher in Google’s index consistently outperform their competitors. Creating content that is entertaining, informative, or otherwise interesting to your customers will generate buzz around your business and increase traffic to your website. If the content is great enough it may even be shared around the internet, which will improve your brand’s recognition.

 

●     Optimize Your Website

Optimizing your website has two distinct advantages for your business. The first is that it will improve your website's ranking. Aligning the structure of your website with Google’s list of website best practices will help it outrank and outperform the competition. Secondly, it will streamline your business’s operations, meaning it can run more efficiently. Let’s take the hypothetical example of an eCommerce business that ships a large volume of packages. This business could install shipping APIs that integrate warehouse storage databases with shipping information to streamline the shipping process.

 

Affiliate/Influencer Marketing

Affiliate marketing, otherwise known as influencer marketing, is a powerful tool for businesses looking to find a new audience. With influencer marketing, your company would partner with an internet personality that is relevant to your business to show your product to their audience. The most recognizable example of this is the classic unboxing video. Influencers will receive a product from a company and make a video dedicated to that product that inspires their followers to engage with your business.