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3 DIGITAL MARKETING TIPS TO ENGAGE CUSTOMERS

In the world of digital marketing, user engagement is a topic that is frequently discussed — but why is it so important?

Most brands typically measure their success online by examining their conversion rate, or in simpler terms, the percentage of users that are taking a certain action on a site that will help accomplish brand goals. Whether that step is making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or requesting a quote, before a user will complete that conversion, there needs to be some engagement with your brand.

You need to build a relationship with your customers to show them that your brand offers a certain value that can fulfil their respective needs. To effectively foster the user interaction that you’re looking for and encourage them to move further down the buyer funnel, it’s important to take the right initiatives and employ the best tactics that will help achieve this:

 

REFER USERS TO LANDING PAGES

When it comes to PPC advertising or social media marketing, it’s important that you focus on referring the user to a landing page that is closely associated with the content in the ad. Whatever a certain ad or post may be promoting, when you send those users back to your website, you shouldn’t send them to your homepage. Instead, send them to a specific product page or services page that is relevant to what the ad initially discussed, and is directly related to what type of offering sparked a particular user’s interest. If you send customers to a generic page, such as a homepage, you miss out on the opportunity to show them that you have exactly what they’re looking for.

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Failing to focus on dedicated landing pages can adversely impact conversion rates (and quality scores for PPC ads). In general, marketing campaigns shouldn’t be for everyone — they should be for a specific niche audience. So, if you’re advertising women’s shoes in a PPC campaign, you shouldn’t be sending users to a homepage that offers general information about your company. You’re focusing on reaching an audience that is looking for women’s shoes, so take them as close to the point of conversion as you can, making the user journey as pleasant an experience as possible.

To further increase the effectiveness of your ads, take advantages of elements such as sitelinks where you can offer up more information about your company to the viewer. Whether it’s including your address or phone number, more opportunities for the user to actually engage with the ad and receive more value from it will influence the amount of traffic you drive back to your site.

 

COMPELLING CONTENT

In order to engage, you need to convey your brand’s ability to fulfil their needs. Content tailored to the needs of your audience is essential for showcasing your value and building trust with your customers. Core messaging should be concise enough to efficiently get your point across to users, while still offering enough details to answer any common questions they may have. Compelling language that keeps the reader in mind and offers an enjoyable user-experience will result in more time spent on a given page, and higher levels of engagement. Content is an opportunity to show users your brand’s expertise and talent, as well as the chance to highlight exactly what it is that makes your products or services stand out amongst your competition.

To highlight this, consider a business like a coffee shop. Whether it’s a large national chain, or a smaller company with just a few stores, both likely have campaigns targeting morning customers looking to grab a quick cup of coffee on their way to work. Onsite content needs to reflect this sort of initiative and contain messaging that is tailored to the users being targeted.

For this particular example, creating content that showcases a competitive study about average wait time and fast checkout, or highlighting a variety of “grab-and-go” options would be relevant and fitting. By appealing to the needs of a certain segment of your audience, you are far more likely to capture the interest (and wallet) of a customer because you have just what they’re looking for.

 

RETARGETING

It’s been statistically proven that most first time visitors don’t convert right away. Most conversions occur after a user has visited your website once or twice, allowing them to gain a sense of trust in your brand. For this reason alone, what better way to reinforce your value and increase user engagement than by helping to generate repeat traffic to your site?

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Once a user has visited your site to look for a service or product, you can reach them with retargeting ads. By serving users an ad when they’re on a different site, you can stay top of mind with the prospective customer, and act as a subtle reminder that your brand has the products or services they’re interested in. This opportunity to bring users back to your site after they’ve already visited is another chance to help prove your value and facilitate a conversion.

 

THE ROLE OF VALUE IN USER ENGAGEMENT

When you think about how to prove your brand’s importance, if you consider it logically, it’s quite simple. You have to prove that you’re offerings are relevant to what they need, and in order to achieve that it’s crucial to engage the user.