How to engage your customers in 7steps

Converting new customers is 5 times more costly than retaining existing customers. We all know that, either we learned it at school or we experienced at work. No matter the business area you are in, you should always try to engage your customers and build a community around you. But do you know how to engage your customers?

Learning how to engage your customers is the focus of this new weekly rubric. 7 weeks for 7 steps to help you master customer engagement techniques.

Show who you really are

This week, our focus will be on helping yourself develop long lasting relationships with your customers. It isn?t easy to create a bond with an inanimate and virtual object. If you want to engage your customers, the f irst thing you should do is to make sure that they see you as a person. You probably have it easier to remember a person once you know their name. The reason is that by knowing their name, you actually know who the person is. Well this is the exact same principle for companies. Your customers will remember you better if they know who you are.

Part 1 - Show who you are

Forbes:

"increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases prof its by 25% to

95% " (Harvard Business School)

"80% of your company?s future revenue will come from just 20% of

your existing customers" (Gartner Group)

"Social customer will tell an average of 42 people about a good customer

experience and they will tell an average of 53 others about a bad

customer experience" (2012 American Express Global Customer

Service Barometer)

Engage - Amplify - ConvertPictawall

Publish nice content about your daily activity: the events you attend, the projects you are working on. You must show you are an active company. Seeing who is working hard to deliver exceptional level of services or to build the products that you claim are the best for your target will help your customers to personify you. Rather then pretending your products are unique, you should show your customers how unique your company is. They will not just use your service or product anymore, they will create a relationship with you by doing so.

The best way to do so is to hold a blog on your website and to post actively on social platforms.

The advantage of blogs is that they can help you increase traff ic to your website and increase your lead generation. The posts of your blog will be ranked and appear on search engines (C. Eridon). People can thus see your post and access your website through your blog even long after you have posted. To build a good blog it is important that you know your customers and what they want. For example, Nutella?s blog posts are mainly recipes in which Nutella fans can use their favorite spread and that works. We all want to experience new things and to be innovative sometimes. These recipes give us the opportunity to try something new and go with the DIY f low.

How?Virgin is doing a great job to be more than just a brand to people's eyes. Richard Branson has its own personal blog in which he publishes about the culture of its company, showing how disruptive and unique it is. Virgin isn't about Virgin Atlantic, Virgin media or Virgin Mobile. "Letting Virgin staff take as much holiday as they want" and blogging about it, that what makes Virgin so successful.

Engage - Amplify - Convert

Haven't got a customer engagement strategy yet? It is high time for you to start paying more attention to your existing customers and to make sure that these like you as a brand rather than just your products or services. There are plenty of ways you can do it. Today was only the f irst step towards your more effective customer acquisit ion and retention techniques. Net week I will discuss the importance that your employees have on the way that your customers see you as a brand. So if you care about your success, stay tuned.

See you next week