Customer Engagement: How it Literally Drives Everything!

Finding the Switch to Light the Room

I was recently approached by a prospect who asked about how customer engagement and social media differed in approach. Some what stunned about the question, I wondered “has everybody considered social media as it’s own self exclusive bucket that operates in it’s own vacuum?” I immediately replied with a response that got my prospecting client and myself thinking along the same lines. We discussed at length of why confusion was easy to see and how it could impact the overall approach of a company’s presence in virtually any type of marketing channel. I was looking to find the switch to help this prospect light the way through their journey to finding a holistic answer. I searched several acclaimed blogs, research reports and much more and found that they all touched on the fringes of the concept, but fell short of actually laying the law of the land.

Flipping and Sparking the Fuse to the Light

I found the switch and sparked a surge of perspective and interest that lit the way into the abyss of uncertainty for my fellow prospect. Immediately, I thought “does it not make sense to light the way for several people so they too can find the way?”

After pondering some more, I thought it made perfect sense to lay out at a high level of what impacts what along the lines in customer engagement. Below is an image that shows how the bucketed groups of the marketing channels impact the customer sphere with in customer engagement.

The diagram is meant as more of a high level consideration that speaks to the varying ways a customer is engaged. The phases are meant as an indication of what each specific medium with in the high level buckets needs to go through and also the phases where customer engagement may also need to start. For instance, before a product or service is developed or marketed, a brand may want to see if the product or service really meets the expectations of a customer and might want to engage a customer at each step of development. Also, this may provide greater insight on how and what kinds of channels are best for that customer. Below is a further breakdown of what the most common types of mediums per each bucket.

With all these channels, the kinds of services and product than a brand offers and much more, customer engagement is becoming increasingly important. A customer of a particular brand, can virtually have every avenue along this cycle to hear all sorts of things about the offering. This, is just one small sliver of what factors into the “right combination” for engaging customers. Additionally, engaging the customer early on will provide better results for the offering that is presented to a selected customer.

Continues @ http://engage-this.com