8 Ways to Engage Customers

Engage with your customers - successful brands understand that customers (B2B as much as B2C) want value, want to learn although they may not know it, and Having been involved in building and (inadvertently) crumbling start-ups, I know of the importance of engaging with clients. It's easy to say it's all about the CCPCCS ( where C=content, P=pitch, S=sale), however there is much more to it. You've heard of most of them and I know it always sounds like common sense, which is why you don't feel incentivised enough to finally do it - so check thes

e out: 1. Develop Emotional Connections Too often I have dealt with prospective suppliers who promised the world and eagerly shared their supposed wisdom. In businesses it's often like sitting on a bus that doesn't drive but the driver is telling anecdotes of how he spectacularly he could drive if only you'd let him and how the other drivers took a wrong turn and steered right off a cliff. Building strong emotional connections with your stakeholders, customers in particular, has proven vital in the ventures I've been involved with. Be it a customer or supplier, if I don't feel the love I gladly recommend them somebody else as and if appropriate. Very importantly, find a real problem to solve - and test your hypothesis - for by doing so you will learn more about your target audience. Always build, measure, learn, but don't forget the human aspect. In a world where data is officially more valuable than oil, the human component is often forgotten. When it comes to getting to know what your target audience connects with, you could use tools like Searchmetrics for extra insights - which might help you optimise your message, product or service. Adding the human component to your brand helps you show you're not a faceless corporation. Simple but effective good practices include personal introductions in e-mails and other content, social media interaction, and being genuine in what you do.  2. Build a Community  With the ability to connect people and increasingly mine data, communities and online forums have been around for a while and they're here to stay. They let you directly engage with your customers and help establish authority, trust, and a fan base.  Above all, they increasingly play a role in the feedback loop. At Xupo, we had a community feature built into our smart location system from the very beginning, and soon introduced unlockable community perks. Even a simple blog or social media site can have similar effects to those of a forum as members and newcomers can engage on an existing platform and comment on content and ultimately on your products or services. Mainly Amazon but also YouTube was valuable to us at Connect-In when we gained insights from comments. 3. Win-Win-Win Selling is difficult but selling a free product is the real challenge although everybody loves a freebie and oftentimes you need to get products or services out there to get reviews, or to test the market. I order to get unbiased user insight and run analytics on a new product, we ran a number of competitions where we gave away Xupo smart locators to influencers who then ran competitions on their channels. It's something very common these days and it's a total win-win-win. You'll grab attention, the influencer interacts with their crowd, and the community gets a chance to get things for free. Competitions may include caption contests, votes, or content sharing.  4. You Have the Technology For years, I've been involved with technology, namely the Internet of Things, which we at Xupo and Connect-In aimed to make accessible and understandable. There is virtually no industry that won't benefit from IoT in the future and progress is rapid with new facilitors such as NBIoT and 5G changing the game in terms of effectiveness and efficiency - think cloud backends for analytics, diangostics and debugging, through to customer support and building meshes. In terms of marketing and engaging your customer, social media are conventionally used to engage the masses, but any given organisation should use this technology to predict what customers want, to identify real problems worth solving (i.e. there is a business case).  5. Make All your Stakeholders a Part of the Team Through our cloud backend, an app UX that encourages feedback, and a small but engaging base of followers, we realised, we made the end user part of our team. This is a valuable lesson, and should be repeated in other scenarios, as it gives you access to real feedback which can be used together with data gathered through our console and then turned into information vital for a healthy build-measure-learn feedback loop. A positive side effect is that the end user feels that they're part of something and their input has actual impact, thus encouraging loyalty and co-creating content in the form of public feedback - in our case on Amazon.  6. Give Them a Tour of Your Product Whether you're pitching to an end user, an investor, or a supplier, product tours are one the best ways for the stakeholder to learn everything there is about your product or service. I mentioned the supplier here because it is crucial to have them on board with your vision - not just so you get a decent price but also to avoid confusion, delays, and quality issues, ultimately leading to a happy relationship. In my experience, the same applies for team members - and you should always encourage and analyse feedback.  7. Host to Get the Most One day we hosted a focus group inviting local end users of our smart tag, with the goal to learn personally about their experience with the system. Only one person showed up but over salmon on oatcakes (did I mentioned we're based in Scotland) we had one of the best lessons we ever had. Whether it's hosting a local meetup, industry event or a webinar, treat your stakeholder as peer and show them they are valuable and you can add synergetic value - you won't regret it. r further publicity 8. Share Exclusive Content or Offers Millenials like me are tough to market exclusive offers to: offer me 10% and we won't give you the time of the day, give us anything north of 45% and we know something's not right. However, many of us love some exclusive content, special access, additional features, and so forth. In a B2B scenario, case studies and market intelligence, reports and infographics are incredibly effective, giving newsletter campaigns a real boost and encouraging sign-ups on your website funnel.