So you already know it’s the most crucial and initial stage to drive a successful customer success journey ahead for your clients. Don’t take a chance to risk losing them while you have to be impressive. Let’s see how an onboarding specialist can help and why isn’t a customer success manager always the right fit for this role!
Who is an onboarding specialist?
An onboarding specialist is the one who knows how to get the early value in the least possible time. Starting from the signup till the first value, they are specialized to do it just the right way! Although a customer success manager can do this as well, it’s hard for them to micro-manage hundreds of accounts. And hence you need a dedicated onboarding specialist to get a smooth onboarding experience!
When does onboarding drop-off happen?
Let’s assume, you are so interested to move your growing database from Google sheets to CRM and you purchase one. After a week, you find it overwhelming and are lost in the sea of features. You decide to go back to good old google sheets. That’s exactly called an onboarding drop-off. It just takes one week to lose your customers from your platform.
But as a business, you don’t want your clients to drop off but rather continue using your platform for the benefit you offer. Even though clients get busy, you can’t be easy at it and it’s you who should retain them back! So, the question lies as to, what can an onboarding specialist do? How do you prevent onboarding drop-off?
What does an onboarding specialist do?
Aid clients in the implementation
Every platform is new to a first-time user and they need help in understanding the working of a specific use case correctly, that is why onboarding specialists help them in getting acquainted with the platform.
Solve the queries
Where there is an innovation, there is curiosity and there as well lies queries or doubts. There must be one expert to answer all their questions, and that’s why an onboarding specialist!
Remove the blockages coming their way
Apart from self queries, there can be blockages, blocking our way. It can be a technical issue on the platform or stuck at some error that needs a quick fix and there must be someone to help them move ahead of it.
Improve product adoption rate!
Since an onboarding specialist is responsible for Onboarding. s/he strictly monitors the product adoption. In case of any milestone missed, s/he helps the client to come back on track and thus driving product adoption on the way.
Strengthen the relationship with the stakeholders
The Onboarding specialist communicates with all the stakeholders to ensure all on track to achieving the business outcome thereby strengthening the relationship with stakeholders.
Prevent onboarding drop-off!
For the complexity of the problem a product is solving, the solution may be complex too! Sometimes, a client may drop off in the middle because they got busy with their normal work. Although it is still an onboarding specialist’s responsibility to get them back to the platform!
Act on the feedback
There is improvisation only when we reflect on the feedback! Because there isn’t any perfect system, there is continuous learning and that keeps the process going efficiently over time. This is important for an onboarding specialist. You can learn more about Onboarding from this curated guide- The essential guide to Onboarding
Steps to prevent onboarding drop-off
Setting the right expectations
Of course, it takes some effort from the clients to achieve something that your product promises. It doesn’t happen on its own because they have your product. So the foremost thing is to set the expectations, your clients must work on to achieve the result!
Putting it on the plan!
It isn’t clear unless it’s on the paper. So the set expectations must be put forth on the paper, such that your client comprehends the amount of effort they need to put into the process.
Get the sign-off
With expectations set and put on the paper, if clients agree and they know what it is all about, now they are ready to sign off from that step. So get the sign-off from the clients at this stage.
Set the timelines
The important thing while making a timetable is to write down the timeline to accomplish the given task. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be motivated to finish something. It’s the same here! Explicitly mention the set timelines to achieve the key milestones. It shouldn’t be general but rather with specific dates!
For illustration, there’s a lot of difference to make in the impact of the working of a process, in two scenarios.
Mentioning two weeks
Here, you may generally hear the client saying, can we do it a week later?
Mentioning specific dates
In this scenario, they just know they have to do it and will make time to put effort into initiating or cooperating with the process on time.
Whom to reach out to?
The clients must have a point of contact to reach out to. It can be a Data ops SPOC, technical SPOC, or admin SPOC who are meant to turn out as essential champions over time, who would take care to not let the clients drop off!
Getting an agreement!
All this discussed above is put in the agreement and the clients agree to it! These things should be taken care of before to never lose the clients at any point in time during the onboarding. So getting this agreement right before the onboarding kickoff just sets everything right!
Summing it up
An onboarding specialist plays a significant role during the onboarding process and now you know about the responsibilities they take and how an onboarding specialist prevents the onboarding drop off! So what do you choose, onboarding specialist or customer success manager?
Every online store wants to attract customers daily by driving traffic to make sales. It’s challenging when you’ve tried out many different strategies to drive sales, but they don’t seem to strike the chord.
We have put together a few simple and basic ecommerce marketing strategies to walk you through successful online marketing campaigns. Implement these strategies into your ecommerce business and watch your online store drive engagement and sales.
What is E-commerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing promotes a business using e-commerce marketing tactics and tools to drive traffic to your website, convert visitors to buyers, and retain them after purchase.
Every step of converting visitors to buyers and making them continuous patronizers need strategies and logic. Attracting and retaining customers involves critical procedures.
Therefore, let’s delve into E-commerce marketing strategies that boost businesses’ visibility, patronage, and retention.
E-commerce Marketing strategies
E-commerce email marketing strategy
For your e-commerce site or e-commerce business to constantly drive traffic or online sales, you need to always be in your customers’ faces. It would help if you knew of at least one progressive e-commerce marketing strategy. Email marketing is an e-commerce marketing strategy. Email marketing is the ideal means to connect with your customers seamlessly. Successful e-commerce businesses can attest to this fact.
It provides you with the opportunity to update your customers on new products and offers.
It is the best way to retain customers. It provides a more personalized message to customers.
And with one click, you can send multitudes of emails to many different customers simultaneously.
However, for successful email marketing, you need to follow a few basic steps:
In email marketing, competent ecommerce marketers know cost-effectiveness is vital; a dollar goes for a dollar. It is an E-commerce strategy looking to maximize profit and generate a lucrative ROI.
Another trick in your email marketing strategy is how well you attract email subscribers. Two popular means to attract them include:
Signup forms
Pop-Ups
Signup forms provide the conventional way of collecting email subscribers. Here, you list out the pieces of information you will send to your email subscribers.
For instance, the big folks at H&M use signup forms to collect customers’ details with the customer’s permission. As you can see in the image below, they list what the newsletters will contain.
On the other hand, you make web visitors and potential customers subscribe to your emails through pop-ups asking their permission to receive promotional emails. It’s a pretty “catchy” way to make customers subscribe.
Now, you have assembled a lump sum of email subscribers. The next step is engaging them with your content, newsletters, promo ads, etc.
But you just don’t begin by spamming them with new products, links, images, etc.
It kills their interest. Therefore, it recommends starting by sending welcome emails.
Welcome emails comprise personalized messages to your subscribers. In this context, you have to let them know how amazing it is to have them join the “family.”
The promise is always to update them on the important events of discounts and always give them the option to unsubscribe to your emails.
Some customers abandon carts while shopping or don’t complete the CTAs on your webpage. It might be because of a poorly structured website or an unclear CTA.
How can you fix this?
Email marketing saves the day when you send an email recovery campaign that subtly reminds and convinces your visitors to revisit and complete their purchase (could be newly added discounted products to include in their carts).
As your client base multiplies, Sender provides automated email tools to help handle your Email marketing campaigns to your target market. It’s a user-friendly platform with many templates to help you create powerful personalized emails for your customers.
Ecommerce SEO strategy
Companies use SEO to drive traffic to their web pages. Search engines crawl your website, focusing on keywords to rank your page high.
Be careful to create meaningful content because they are bright and can differentiate between well-executed web content and spammed ones.
Therefore, consistently stringing together target keywords in your web content will put your pages on top searches and welcome a flood of visitors.
If you find it challenging to build keywords around your content, one easy trick that can aid you is carrying out your keyword research on Google suggest.
Google-suggest helps you research popularly searched keywords around your products or services.
However, creating a good-to-go page with a carefully infused key isn’t enough. Off-page SEO activities help build a credible search engine optimization SEO presence for your company.
Here’s how it is:
your marketing team would have to let other websites “blow your trumpet.” If a hundred reputable websites have backlinks to different topics on your blog, it shows how good your content is. It attracts trust from visitors and search engines.
Asides from creating value for your customers through informative blog posts, optimizing your product pages has to be done to put your products out there.
By strategically writing product descriptions with precise keywords, you can build credibility and rank top on search engines.
Here are a few other knacks to help you optimize your product page:
Optimize title and meta descriptions
The title tag and meta descriptions are the first two things your site visitors see. Hence, the crucial details that your visitors should gather include:
The product’s name
The product models
The name of your brand
The product description and its uniqueness
Always include a FAQ section
Your product description doesn’t automatically persuade visitors to go ahead and purchase. There will be questions that will require answers. Hence, it is ideal to have a section where you can answer all these questions, or else your visitors will be left confused about your products.
Leave a comment section for reviews:
Letting customers who have previously used your product leave reviews on your product page is often the last push some visitors need to become buyers. Customers give genuine reviews. So, what’s not to believe?
Make sure to fasten the loading speed of your landing page:
Internet users and website visitors aren’t fans of time-wasting. They expect a quick page load when they click on your link.
Use high-quality videos and images.
You have to compensate visitors for the lack of a physical store with clear images of your products on your product pages.
Uniqlo provides adept product images incorporating slides of different views of their products.
Fitting all these e-commerce marketing tactics into a box might be overwhelming, but essential tools like the Google search console can help you figure out SEO. It’s free, easy to navigate, and will let you monitor and report your website’s presence on SERPs.
E-commerce PPC
Pay-per-click advertising is a form of e-commerce marketing in which you pay when users click on your ad. It doesn’t solely apply to search engines but to other social media platforms.
Now look at this;
75% of search engine visitors never scroll past the top Page of search engine results pages. If your website doesn’t appear at the top, there’s little/no tendency for visitors to notice your brand. This way, you lose essential leads and sales.
But if you want to succeed in PPC marketing, it is ideal that you follow these few basic steps;
Create a unique ad:
Creating ads for PPC campaigns is pretty straightforward. The ads are smaller, and most are headlines. Images use seldom. Moreover, the Google ads platform makes it more accessible. You need a landing page link, a captivating headline, and two lines of descriptions.
Keyword selection
Choosing a keyword determines what keywords will trigger your ads when searched for on, for example, the Google search platform.
For instance, the successful e-commerce store Asos clothing line pops up on the first Page where “cheap clothes” are searched.
Bidding
it is the phase where you have to “bid” to display your ad. Bidding involves, first, the more competitive a keyword is, the higher the bid price.
It implies that if it’s a high-volume profitable keyword that many other companies desire, you have to pay more than you would pay for a lower volume keyword.
You need to measure your paid advertising e-commerce success rate at the end of the day. One great tool to help you do this is SEMrush. It offers comprehensive insights into your keyword searches and website interaction.
E-commerce social media marketing
Over 4.62 billion people worldwide use social media, welcoming about 424 million new users yearly. A good percentage of these users come from Facebook, which boasts about a 2.9billion users.
The efficiency of the Facebook community on online advertising has prompted Ecommerce marketers and experts to recommend that brands target more audiences on Facebook.
Instore, an online clothing store, took up the initiative and had a strong presence on Facebook.
Therefore, as a brand trying to win at Facebook marketing, here are simple tips to follow:
Know your target audience:
Identify the users you intend to sell to. Knowing their age, location, occupation, etc., will determine the concept of the banner ads, their content, and the message you want to convey.
Create a Facebook page
You will need to create your presence on Facebook. A face. An identity. https://business.facebook.com/ is a user-friendly tool for you to create and manage a business page conveniently.
Create quality visual posts
You must churn out quality photos, videos, and content to stay competitive. Moreover, Facebook live sessions exist. Jump on it and instantly engage with your customers.
Schedule your post
What time will people see your post? How often do you intend to post: multiple times a day? Once a day? Your choice.
You know your target audience. You know how schedules look; you know when they can engage with your post. Scheduling your post on social media isn’t a herculean task because Hootsuite is the perfect tool to help you do so. It enables you to plan future posts at an allotted time.
Monitor your Ads
Paid Facebook ad campaigns are available. You have to ascertain that they are doing their jobs in customer conversion. You gain insight into their success or failure by monitoring your ad campaigns and retargeting to retain clients.
E-commerce Content Strategy
Every inch of these e-commerce websites contains content; blog posts, photos, and videos. Providing quality content on your website is a catalyst for influencing visitors’ buying decisions.
But providing quality content isn’t enough. You need to do extra to earn a successful content marketing campaign:
What is your buyer persona?
Your content won’t attract the correct audience without pinpointing your buyer persona.
With the help of behavioral data and marketing insights, you can create user-generated content refined for them.
However, If you find it difficult to know your buyer’s persona, simply figure out or gather the following information:
Demographic: This reveals your intended buyer’s age, location, and gender.
Occupation: Figuring out how busy your clients help you define your content for them.
Trouble: what is your customer’s pain point? So you can help them solve their problems.
Preferred Social Media platform: You can’t have many of your customers on Instagram and go-ahead to create content on Facebook. Realizing their favorite channel ensures that they see your ad campaigns.
Identify how your target audience consumes content: Know what kind of content your visitors love: It could be a clear shot video or a catchy headline with a descriptive photo.
Take your time, research, and create content: It’s no news that content creation is challenging, so you need to brainstorm to generate adept content with other minds.
There is also no crime in observing what other top brands do, how they create their content, how they make trends for their products, etc.
Let your content guide your visitor’s journey: A bounce occurs if your visitor feels lost or confused on your web page.
Therefore, carefully craft your user-generated content to walk your visitor through your website, create an understandable landing page, carefully segment your product into categories, and create precise, catchy, and concise descriptions.
Tesco exemplifies product segmentation. Because they are multi-grocery online stores, they segment their products into product pages, making it easier to direct customers and website visitors to the right products.
Instore uses product segmentation in directing their customers too.
Results show your progress:
Is your content attracting visitors? Is it converting them to buyers? How much retargeting does it need? Results help you decide whether to go ahead or revisit a strategy.
While trying to measure your results for a successful business, look out for the following;
Conversion rate;
ROI;
Social shares;
Organic traffic;
Time spent on your website;
Engagement.
Customer feedback is always the ultimate response.
The truth about your products or services lies with previous customers.
Always try to reach out to clients and ask for reviews. Or better still, leave a comment section on your website where they can vent about your products.
In content marketing, you can consistently dish out content through automation. And Shopify offers rich content management services for consistency.
E-commerce SMS marketing
SMS marketing simply refers to sending promotional details through text messages.
With this, you are “up-close and personal” with your customers because they have permitted you to send promotional texts.
Why use SMS marketing?
Mobile device designation:
Mobile devices are part of your customer’s time. Hence, through this marketing tactic, e-commerce businesses can reach customers on their mobile devices.
It guarantees an increased open rate and engagement.
Best SMS marketing practices
Keep your messages short, enticing, and straight to the point:
Try to be concise. Each letter should carry different meaningful information.
Connect with your customers in a personalized manner:
Be sure to win customers’ attention through personalized message offers.
On a large scale, handling SMS marketing campaigns gets tedious because your clients begin to multiply.
At this point, it recommends outsourcing SMS campaign managers. An example is the Sender SMS managers, who are great at letting you compose texts and schedule a delivery time for the readers.
Inbound marketing for E-commerce
Inbound marketing for E-commerce is a strategy where brands try to attract customers through valuable and informative content like; blogging, social media, webinars, podcasts, and downloadable content.
Inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing because inbound marketing looks to attract customers by gradually creating brand awareness through reliable information.
It’s always a gradual process, but it produces a higher ROI if done correctly.
In contrast, outbound marketing uses “push advertising” to make sales (TV, email, radio, print advertising). Outbound marketing aims to make sales quickly but generates lower ROIs.
Sephora’s social media accounts show how they make their customers’ lives easier through live chats and engagement.
How do you build effective inbound marketing for E-commerce?
The only way this can yield excellent results is when done correctly. So, you have to take your time to strategize and use the right tools to captivate your audience.
You have to;
Position your brand as an expert in your industry or niche.
Instead of trying to be forward and directly sell to customers, it is ideal you create content for customers to always look up to you as an expert. For example, if you sell skincare products, creating content on “daily skincare routines” for your customers positions you as an expert at your job.
Strive to provide valuable information.
If you help customers solve their problems, they may decide whether to purchase your product based on your information.
Your customers have questions that need answers. Why don’t you engage them on a social media platform like Quora? Cost of use? Free.
E-commerce Marketing Management
We could go on and on about E-commerce marketing strategies, but it all turns sour and unsuccessful without proper management.
Managing all the aforementioned e-commerce marketing strategies comes with techniques. If adequately adhered to will result in a high ROI.
Create an online presence through your E-commerce website and social media platforms.
Pay attention to your SEO strategies to rank high on Search Engines. Choose simple and precise keywords.
Stay in your customer’s faces through Emails and SMS
Consistently create value for your customers through your content.
Always try to know your customers’ reviews.
Measure your ROI.
E-commerce Service Summary
Businesses run the economy of the world. The business world is a competitive one. And with the advent of E-commerce, it’s a race to the finish. One brand is trying to outdo the other.
As a business new to the E-commerce world, collaborating with great E-commerce platforms like Sender, Shopify, woo commerce, Magento, and Amazon will walk you through the diverse world of E-commerce marketing and make your journey easier.
Moreover, it is essential to keep an open mind and try new strategies because the internet is ever-evolving.
Influencer marketing is now more relevant than ever. In fact, the industry grew to an astounding $13.8 billion in 2021.
Businesses of all types, sizes, and niches leverage influencer marketing in their promotional strategy to boost brand awareness, facilitate customer loyalty, and increase sales.
Given that an influencer is now a career of its own, more and more influencers are entering the scene, striving to collaborate with brands and monetize their online presence and audience loyalty. Businesses, in their turn, are looking for the best people for the job – and it can get tricky. Not every influencer is a good fit for your brand since lots of factors are involved in the choosing process.
And that’s where online influencer marketing tools come in handy. Within seconds, they allow you to find influencers of all audience sizes from various niches to become an ideal fit for your influencer marketing campaign.
Since the influencer marketing industry is booming, influencer marketing platforms, companies, and agencies have flooded the market. Statistics show that more than 1300 platforms providing influencer marketing services have sprung up in the past 5 years. How do you choose the best ones?
We got you covered! In this article, we will tell you about 5 influencer marketing tools to help you find the excellent influencer for your marketing campaign.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is both innovative and familiar in its approach and strategy. In a nutshell, it is a collaboration between a brand and an influencer – usually in the form of an online marketing campaign.
Influencer marketing borrows the idea of endorsement from public personas and celebrities from traditional marketing and takes it to the next level by making it more content-focused.
Why choose influencers rather than celebrities?
Influencers have essentially replaced traditional celebrities – they are modern-day trend-setters whose online fame is way more important (and beneficial) than offline popularity. Influencers have devoted follower communities who take many cues from their beloved influencer – including buying decisions.
That’s why an influencer marketing campaign is a great way to promote your brand to new audiences, foster brand trust, and increase conversion and sales. The best part is – the influencer will often do most of the “field-work”. They will create content around your product and present it in a way guaranteed to appeal to their followers.
Why Use Influencer Marketing Tools?
As we’ve already said, picking a random influencer and offering them collaboration is no way to go.
You need to find the right influencer who:
Creates content related to your business niche;
Has a solid follower base that fits your audience reach goals;
Has high engagement rate and other influencer marketing KPIs;
Works on the social media platforms relevant to you;
Fits your campaign budget, etc.
All these factors make a difference when it comes to your search for the perfect influencer. And manual search across multiple social media is simply exhausting. Besides, you don’t always know if the influencer you’re considering is real and vetted.
Influencer marketing tools eliminate these problems – and more:
Influencer marketing tools are cost-effective;
They provide instant search results;
Top influencer marketing tools regularly update their influencer databases;
They exhibit relevant influencer performance statistics and reports;
They provide the online communication space for you to connect to influencers more easily.
5 Best Influencer Marketing Tools for Your Business
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top 5 influencer marketing tools for finding influencers.
InBeat is a TikTok & Instagram influencer search engine as well as a TikTok advertising agency with a database of more than 16,000 influencers you can choose from for your influencer marketing campaign. The agency’s top clients include New Balance, Nissan, and Moose Bicycle.
One of the most interesting features of InBeat is the agency’s focus on nano- and micro-influencers. They are easier to get in contact with, have higher engagement rates, and work in a variety of niches – you’ll be sure to find what you look for. Besides, nano- and micro-influencers are not as expensive to collaborate with as macro-influencers and celebrities. That means higher ROI for your business.
Best Features
The inBeat influencer search tool is intuitive and easy to use:
You can conduct both quick and deep influencer search;
You can filter your influencer search based on the influencers’ follower numbers, engagement rates, audience preferences, location, etc.;
You can track major influencer data and KPIs from the social media of your choice;
The inBeat database is spam-checked;
You can quickly export the contact information of the chosen influencers for easier outreach.
The agency also has a variety of extra features, including Instagram fake follower checker – it will come in handy if you want to further vet your influencer and their audience quality.
Upfluence is a popular influencer marketing tool that finds influencers across multiple social media platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Twitch, and Tiktok. Upfluence has worked with such brands as Amazon, FarFetch, and Asics.
Users say that the Upfluence influencer search engine is very similar to Google – the success of your search depends on the combination of keywords you use. You can narrow down your search by using as many keywords as you want, ranking them according to their importance.
For instance, if you’re looking for a lifestyle influencer to promote your streetwear brand, you can use the following keywords: lifestyle influencer, sports, streetwear, street fashion, street model, etc. Your campaign goals and focus will determine the keywords you opt for.
Best Features
A large database of vetted influencers – you can search and choose among 3 million influencers;
Efficient keyword search makes the results more precise;
You can filter your search by the influencer audience data;
You can manage your influencer lists – this is especially useful if you get too many relevant search results that need to be organized;
You can import your previous influencers and their data to the platform.
Upfluence has several membership plans you can explore here.
Heepsy is an influencer search tool that connects brands with influencers on major social media – Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. They are trusted by both small businessexs and big companies such as Huawei and Walmart.
With a database of around 11 million influencers, Heepsy offers a large variety of niche content creators to collaborate with. The search includes a large number of relevant filters: location, industry, key influencer performance metrics, etc. On top of that, Heepsy also calculates the influencers’ cost per post – you can plan your influencer marketing campaign budget in line with these estimates.
Keep in mind that all influencers on Heepsy’s database have more than 5k followers – so your search will exclude nano-influencers.
Best Features
Heepsy has different search algorithms for different social media platforms to make your influencer search effort more efficient and precise;
You can also look for influencers for offline events with the help of a convenient location-based search;
The platform provides detailed influencer reports with relevant stats and infographics;
You can access up-to-date influencer audience analysis data;
Users say Heepsy has a great customer service team.
Choose the best Heepsy plan for your influencer marketing campaign here.
Influence.co is more than an influencer marketing tool – it is a true community of creators and businesses that seek effective collaboration. It also has an actively expanding database of influencers. The service’s top clients include NordVPN, Dyson, and Forever 21.
Influence.co resembles a social media platform in many ways – you can reach out to influencers, communicate with them, and build stronger, more long-lasting business relations. The software focuses on engaging its users and encouraging them to interact in a less formal setting. Influencers on Influence.co are very responsive and enthusiastic – it is yet another factor that simplifies your search effort.
As with other influencer search tools, you can use various filters to narrow down your result pool. You can customize the search by industry, content type, expected budget, location, and other preferences.
Best Features
The platform is very user-friendly and easy to navigate;
It has multiple social media functions for effective communication and networking;
Users note that Influence.co account managers are very helpful and will assist you every round the clock;
The service provides detailed influencer campaign ROI reports for your collaborations.
Learn more about Influence.co free and paid plans here.
Klear is an influencer marketing tool that claims to have created “the smartest way to discover influencers”. And it might be close to the truth. The software allows you to find influencers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok using an algorithm based on a variety of topic categories you can apply to narrow down your pool. Klear has scored a number of large brands as clients – Persil and Microsoft to name a few.
Klear helps you conduct a very targeted search by using such variables as location, language, niche, past collaborations, budget, available contact details, influence level, etc. Hashtag search is also available.
Another great characteristic of Klear is its AI learning algorithms. The more you use the software, the more relevant and precise influencer account and content recommendations it offers.
Best Features
Klear divides the influencers on their database into over 60k topic categories;
The platform has a sophisticated influencer messenger with a user-friendly interface;
You can access swift and helpful customer/user support;
Klear has a FakeSpot function: it detects fake followers or engagements for every influencer you’re considering for your campaign.
The platform is also a great tool for researching competitors.
Info on Klear pricing and plans is available here.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing tools are there to help you find the best influencers for any type of promotional campaign your brand has in mind. The right influencer search tool will provide relevant influencer profiles, useful influencer performance analysis data, and up-to-date contact details.
Choose the tools that reflect your influencer marketing needs, including the target social media platform, budget expectations, and influencer audience size for the best results.
In order to have a successful business, you need to have customers. And to have customers, you need to engage them. This is where customer engagement comes into play.
A customer engagement strategy is a plan of action that you put into place in order to keep your customers interested and invested in what you are doing. It’s important to have a solid customer engagement strategy if you want your business to succeed.
In this article, we will discuss customer engagement, why it’s important, and six tips on building a strong customer engagement strategy for your business. So, let’s start with a quick understanding of a customer engagement strategy.
What is a Customer Engagement Strategy?
A customer engagement strategy is a plan for how a business interacts and connects with its customers. This plan may include tactics such as providing excellent customer service, developing relationships with customers, and creating loyalty programs. Customer engagement aims to encourage customers to remain loyal to the brand, make purchases, and recommend the company to others.
A well-crafted customer engagement strategy will consider the needs and wants of the target customer base. It will aim to create a positive, lasting relationship between the customer and the company.
In today’s competitive marketplace, a strong customer engagement strategy can be the difference between a successful business and one that quickly fades into obscurity. Therefore, businesses need to put thought and effort into developing an effective customer engagement strategy.
Why is Customer Engagement Important?
Customer engagement is important because it helps to create a lifelong relationship between a customer and a business. According to a report by Huify, it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. Therefore, it is essential to focus on customer retention and loyalty in order to create a successful and sustainable business.
A strong customer engagement strategy will help keep your customers coming back for more, which is good for both them and your bottom line. Customers feel heard and valued when they are engaged, and they are more likely to continue doing business with a company or brand.
Additionally, customer engagement can lead to increased sales and profits for a company. When customers feel engaged, they are more likely to make repeat purchases and to spend more money on each purchase.
Finally, engaged customers are more loyal and more likely to recommend a brand to their friends and family. For all these reasons, it’s clear that customer engagement should be a top priority for any business that wants to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.
Tips to Build a Solid Customer Engagement Strategy
Building a solid customer engagement strategy doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. By following these simple tips, you can create a strategy that will help you connect with your customers and encourage them to remain loyal to your brand.
Here are six tips for building a solid customer engagement strategy:
1. Know Your Target Customer Base
The first step in any customer engagement strategy is to know your target audience. You need to understand who your customers are, what they want, and what they need. Only then can you develop a strategy that will appeal to them.
Make sure to segment your customer base so that you can tailor your engagement strategy to each group. This will help you create a more personalized and effective strategy. You also need to remember the different stages of the customer journey. Each stage will require a different approach.
For example, customers who are just starting to learn about your brand will need to be educated about what you offer. On the other hand, customers who have already purchased from you need to be encouraged to return and buy again.
By understanding your target customer base, you can develop an engagement strategy that will speak to them directly and encourage them to remain loyal to your brand.
2. Provide Real-Time Engagement With Live Chat
One of the best ways to engage with your customers is to provide real-time engagement through live chat. This allows you to connect with your customers at the moment and address their needs immediately.
Live chat is also a great way to build rapport with your customers. By engaging in friendly conversation, you can create a positive relationship with your customers that will encourage them to do business with you again in the future.
Make sure to staff your live chat team with friendly, knowledgeable employees who are ready and willing to help your customers. This will ensure that your live chat experience is positive for both you and your customers.
By providing real-time engagement through live chat, you can create a positive relationship with your customers, encouraging them to do business with you again in the future.
3. Connect With Customers On A Personal Level
In today’s digital world, it’s easy to forget that there are real people behind computer screens. However, it’s important to remember that customers are real people with real needs and wants.
One of the best ways to connect with your customers on a personal level is to create customer personas. Customer personas are fictional characters that represent your ideal customer. By creating customer personas, you can better understand who your customers are and what they want from your brand.
Once you have created customer personas, make sure to keep them in mind when developing your engagement strategy. Every decision you make should be based on what is best for your customer personas. This will help you create a strategy that is tailored to your target customer base and more likely to resonate with them.
By connecting with customers on a personal level, you can create a customer engagement strategy that is tailored to your target audience and more likely to be successful.
4. Be Authentic And Genuine
Customers can tell when you’re being fake, so it’s important to be authentic and genuine when engaging with them. This means being yourself and speaking to your customers in a natural and relatable way.
It’s also important to be transparent with your customers. Let them know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This will help build trust between you and your customers.
Make sure to avoid using “marketing speak” when engaging with your customers. This is jargon that is designed to sell products or services but doesn’t actually provide any value to the customer. Instead, focus on speaking to your customers in a genuine and authentic way.
You can build trust with your customers and create a more positive relationship by being authentic and genuine.
5. Create Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are a great way to encourage customers to keep coming back to your brand. By offering rewards for their continued business, you can create a sense of loyalty among your customer base.
You can create many different types of loyalty programs, so make sure to choose one that makes sense for your business. For example, you could offer a discount for customers who make a certain number of purchases or give points for every dollar spent.
No matter what type of loyalty program you create, make sure to promote it to your customers. The more they know about it, the more likely they will take advantage of it.
By creating loyalty programs, you can encourage customers to keep coming back to your brand.
6. Use Social Media To Engage Customers
Social media is a great way to engage customers and create a connection with your brand. By being active on social media, you can show your customers that you’re interested in hearing from them.
Make sure to respond to any comments or questions that your customers post on social media. This will show them that you’re listening and that you care about their feedback.
You can also use social media to run promotions and giveaways. This is a great way to increase brand awareness and get more people interested in your products or services.
By using social media to engage customers, you can create a connection with your brand and increase brand awareness.
6 Additional Customer Engagement Strategies That Matter
Want to know more about customer engagement strategies? Check out the infographic below by GetVoIP that includes six additional customer engagement strategies that can help you connect with your customers.
Customer engagement is essential to the success of any business. By following the tips above, you can create a solid customer engagement strategy that will help you connect with your customers and build a profitable and successful business.
What other customer engagement strategies have worked well for your business? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Are you looking to locate social media influencers for your marketing campaigns? You’re not the only one! Influencer marketing is a growing industry whose market value has more than doubled over the past two years.
But fake influencers are still an issue for marketers. How can you tell if the people who follow an influencer are genuine people and not bots? How do you know if an influencer is buying the likes or comments that you see on their posts?
The process of determining influencer authenticity isn’t easy if you’re only taking a look at social media. However, thanks to the power of AI, you will be able to identify fake influencers and steer clear of them easier.
How can you make use of AI to identify fake influencers
If you’re looking for aid from AI in your search for influencers, you must sign up to an influencer marketing platform. This is a form of subscription-based software that permits you to find influencers with filters like category, location, engagement rate, audience demographics, authenticity and much more.
The platform also gives you an instant analysis of the influencer’s profile and performance metrics. This means that you don’t need to inquire about influencers’ media kits or their internal insights data prior to starting your analysis. Moreover, with AI it’s possible to get a more detailed analysis than you would by manually looking over the profile of an influencer through social networks.
What can AI tell you about the authenticity of influencers
There are some important metrics to consider in order to determine if the influencer’s followers are genuine or fake. Let’s take a look at each.
Follower growth evolution
Many people concentrate on the number of followers an influencer has. However, you must also be aware of the method they used to acquire followers over the years.
AI will track the growth of an influencer over time and present a graph of the data. With this information, you can check whether the growth of an influencer is natural or not.
A growth rate analysis by an influencer marketing platform. The growth is slow, but steady, which suggests that it’s organic.
Organic growth is supposed to look like an upwards-inclined hill. The influencer may gain followers at a slow rate, however, it is steady.However If you observe rapid growth in followers, you must investigate further.
Check first whether the influencer held a giveaway or went viral around the time of the spike in growth. Perhaps they were featured on TV or debuted their first album. If you find something like this, it’s a logical reason why an influencer would see massive growth spurts in short amounts of time.
However, in the absence of any rational explanation for a sudden increase in followers, you should consider that the influencer might have purchased a batch of fake followers. In this situation, you must examine the other metrics listed here and determine if the followers are fake.
Engagement rate compared to averages for their peers
Engagement rate measures the amount of interaction between an influencer and their followers. Influencers with high engagement rates have trusting and interested audiences, and that’s beneficial for the brands that the influencer promotes.
However, engagement rates can be too high. If you see an engagement rate that is much higher than the average for that segment, it could be that the influencer bought fake engagements, like fake likes or comments.
Similarly, very low engagement could show that the influencer has fake followers. These bots follow an account but don’t usually like or comment on comment, and therefore end up driving engagement rates down. At best, low engagement says that the influencer’s audience isn’t interested in their content.
But how do you know the average engagement rates for influencer segments? Well, you can research them. But it’s much easier to let AI calculate them for you. On an influencer marketing platform, the AI will calculate an individual influencer’s engagement rate, and then compare it against the data for all the other similar influencers in the database.
The program then tells you if the engagement looks low, average, high, or suspiciously high. Keep in mind that engagement benchmarks vary depending on social network, category, and follower count.
So don’t compare the metrics of TikTok influencers against the engagement rates for Twitch streamers or youtubers. Those networks have different ways to engage with content, so the benchmark rates differ.
Audience demographics
Next up, check out the demographics of an influencer’s audience. Consider things such as gender, age, interests as well as language and geographical location. This is beneficial due to two reasons. The first is that it allows you to ensure that the target audience of the influencer matches your own target audience.
An analysis of audience location. In this instance the influencer is German and so it would make sense that her fans are mainly from Germany and other countries around it.
It also helps you identify discrepancies that could identify fake followers. For instance, if you discover that the majority of the followers originate from a nation that the influencer has no connection to or has never visited, it is possible some of those followers are fake.
Audience authenticity
In the end, AI can give you an estimate of how much of the influencer’s following could be fake. AI examines the followers and accounts that interact with an influencer’s posts to determine if they are performing actions that are typical of bots.
An AI-powered analysis of the authenticity of an influencer’s audience. In this instance we can see that almost 20 percent of the followers are suspicious and could be bots.
It’s common for influencers to have a tiny percentage of followers that are not trustworthy. However, when you are looking for influencers to use in your marketing campaigns, prioritize influencers who have around 80% or more authentic audience members. And the higher the number, the better.
Influencer marketing platforms that can help you with your campaign
Now you know the benefits of using an influencer marketing platform to choose the right influencer for your brand, so you will probably be wondering where I can find an influencer marketing platform? Here you will find three different options for you to decide which platform will work better for you.
Heepsy
Heepsy has one of the best influencer marketing platform search engines, they have a lot of filters that allow you to find the right influencers for you in seconds.Plus their platform is super easy to use, so it is perfect for beginners.
Aspire IQ
Aspire IQ, is a platform that will help you with the automation process, moreover, you will be able to integrate shopify to your account, so will see the sales coming from your campaign. But you must know that you will have to send your influencers the aspireiq login if they are not already inside the platform.
Ninja Outreach
With this platform you will be able to contact the influencers inside their platform, but their search engine and metrics are worse than other platforms. I would recommend this tool if you already have the information regarding the profiles of the influencers and you just want to contact them.
Conclusion
Influencer fraud continues to be an issue for marketers. Everything on social media can be bought nowadays. Fortunately, artificial intelligence can assist you in identifying this fraud so you find authentic influencers to promote your brand in an influencer marketing campaign.
