Marketing professors, analysts, and experts are forever making predictions to decipher consumer behavior and what drives their actions. With digitization and e-commerce taking over, market watchers are paying more attention to brand engagements, changes in consumer behavior, and how innovations are driving buyers either online or to malls.
For instance, QR codes and loyalty program solutions are being used in a big way for enhanced customer engagements. Google Pay gifts a scratch card after every scan to random customers. If you are lucky, you may end up getting rewards in the form of cash, coupons, or ‘better luck next time’ tags. Paytm has captured the market with its immediate cashback and reward schemes – the results are for all to see!
Transformation Galore!
The competitive scenario has brought about paradigm shifts in various marketing mantras. Nowadays, brand activation and visibility call for high-level strategic planning, right from the time of their initiation. This is especially true in context to physical brands. If you are dealing with such brands, then it’s time to ask yourself some questions.
- Why should prospective customers care about your retail brands and products?
- What’s the best way of improving customer engagements, etc.
Even if you have the answers in hand, the challenge lies in understanding how to create satisfactory engagements for your physical brands. For the success of your retail branding and anti-counterfeiting strategies, you may want to pay more attention to all prior information about your customers. Connect, analyze, and interpret the data in your repository to create non-intrusive and clever means of engaging customers and delivering more value.
How Can Physical Brands Improve Customer Engagements?
It is very important to provide your customers with good experiences and consistently. As per a report published by Verint, 27 percent of people reportedly sign up for company loyalty schemes. Besides, 61 percent do not hesitate in talking about their purchase experiences to family and friends. The following top Consumer Engagement tips for your physical brands will guide you forward to generate a higher ROI.
1. The 4 ‘I’s of Customer Engagement
According to branding gurus and marketing experts, the objectives of higher customer connect lies in,
- Involvement
- Interaction
- Intimacy
- Influence
As the owner or marketer of physical brands, you can look forward to reinforcing customer loyalty and long-term engagements by advocating these 4 ‘I’s. This tip is invaluable for new marketers looking for a starting point for engaging their customers and making brands soar.
2. Know Purchase History – It’s Important
Retailers have to take care of a lot of raw and processed data while engaging with customers. However, too much data accumulation is likely to backfire if you’re not processing it for further use. The right strategy is to leverage data from the entire range of brand experiences attributed to specific customers or customer groups. Track and trace customer software solutions can help in developing an intuitive and simple journey. They can connect data through varied systems to provide a unified view of what to expect from future brand engagements.
Data views of purchase history aid in-house experts to work on more innovative ways of providing better customer experiences. Try being creative as you collate and analyze data. It’s a good idea to focus on purchase history to foretell purchase intent. Invest in creative and exciting engagements to provide more value through physical branding. Besides, knowing your customers better will play a smart role in improving customer engagements.
3. Engaged Customers – An Outcome of Engaged Employees
According to Julian Richer, CEO Richer Sounds, people are not employed in his team for their high-pressure skills in sales. Rather, team members are chosen based on their passion, enthusiasm, and friendliness. This is because it’s easy for such people to build an instant rapport with their customers.
Engagements with the customers of physical brands is a direct result of the behavior of engaged employees.
The right way forward lies in hiring, training, and increasing the loyalty quotient of those employees who’re likely to engage themselves with most brands on the racks.
Remember,
- A team of engaged workers is happier, more productive, and therefore brings in more profits for the company.
- Engaged employees serve to be the most dedicated and loudest ambassadors of physical brands.
- In today’s scenario, traditional benefits and salary packages are not enough to engage employees. A little extra is always welcome in terms of a healthy work atmosphere, innovative perks, positive feedbacks, and so forth.
Employee advocates are very helpful in promoting the organization and providing positive representations of any physical brand. Planned content marketing strategies and social media promotions are helpful, but they cannot match the impact created by genuinely engaged employees. If the employees are convinced about the products they’re working on, then their belief in the brand will pass on to customers without fail. In other words, treat your employees well, and they will sing praises about what you make or sell.
4. Branded App Experiences Have to be Contextual
Mobile technology is impacting physical and digital brands like no other. Therefore, branded apps are used for fostering helpful engagements with target audiences through mobiles. A good marketing strategy is to enable consumer connects in micro-moments. Rather than using this helpful medium as a sales channel, think of ways to engage with buyers in between two purchases. To gain good results, encourage such customer loyalty programs that make the target audience leave their mobiles and gravitate towards in-store engagements. The in-app experiences of buyers should keep changing contextually in line with unique behavioral signals.
Smart brands strive to meet the creative and technical challenges of digitization awhile, moving their customers through different physical locations. Resultantly, they manage to give a valuable spot to the brand in their mental space. Customer engagements of this kind are beneficial for increasing sales and brand visibility.
5. Personalization of Physical Brands and Products
In today’s world ridden with smart marketing ideas, customization of physical brands has become a need – it’s no longer an add-on. Personalization has unlimited opportunities in store for retailers looking for smart ways of engaging with brands and customers. Think of geo-located offers, better search filters, mobile exclusives, and other personalization means to get your brand into the limelight.
According to experts in marketing, personalized retail brands are strong influencing factors in driving up consumer engagements. Even though personalization is believed to increase sales by a small percentage, 18 to 19 percent, to be precise, it has a powerful impact on the purchase behavior of customers. It’s reported that 3/4th of customers worldwide appreciate personalized messages and deals that align with their interests!
NeuroTags For Smart Customer Engagement Strategies
It’s essential to connect with various touchpoints and channels that link your brands with your customers. NeuroTags has the right expertise to create loyal followers and more engaged customers for your retail brands. Leverage the benefits of increased customer loyalty and sales to enjoy satisfactory consumer engagements; get in touch with NeuroTags Team today!
