Unfortunately many brands racing ahead with the digital revolution
are stumbling across a big obstacle along the way to their goal: a
limited knowledge of how their customers are connecting to them, their
services and one another through these mobile devices.
This post highlights four considerations that you must address if
you are to create real customer engagement in today’s digital arena.
1. Be relevant
Whether it’s community-based platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn,
social gaming, location-based communication, social commerce or
virtual currencies, the digital world offers plenty of compelling
reasons for users to keep coming back. The challenge for brands is to
ensure they create and retain their relevancy with customers in this
multi-channel environment. Brands need to consider how the content,
features and functionality they have created for their website and the
off-line world, translates to the digital world. Online fashion store,
ASOS, is a great example of a company that has done this brilliantly.
It recently extended its digital presence from a website to a fully
featured Facebook commerce application – and in doing so has created an
additional channel to interact with its 450,000 fans.
2. Collaboration and co-creation
The days of brands living in a world where their identities,
personalities and behaviour are defined purely from one source (usually
their advertising) are well and truly over. Thanks to
community-based platforms, brands are now shaped as much by what their
customers say as by what they say about themselves. One of the
world’s best-known brands, Pepsi, proactively seeks ideas from the
public on how they should deliver their CSR initiatives. And leading
coffee chain, Starbucks, recently changed its bricks and mortar café
experience as a direct result of feedback they actively sought via its
digital channels. These are both great examples of brands proactively
engaging with their customers in the digital space, and the net result
is of benefit to both parties.
3. Connect the dots between the physical and digital worlds
Advances in technology have enabled digital channels to replicate the
physical relationships that are so important to us as human beings.
Communicating with friends and family using Skype
is a great example. Chatting on Facebook is another. In fact, we can
now communicate with each other at a speed and with an ease of use
that has never been possible before. In the digital world it’s vital to
ensure that your brand has a relevant presence at all the digital
touch points visited by your customers. But it’s also important to
recognise that your customers are in the physical world too. Ensuring
your brand is available in the right place at the right time is a key
consideration and that’s where connecting the dots becomes important.
Starbucks does this particularly well and its 20 million Facebook fans
are regularly invited to participate in café-based promotions and
events.
4. Touch-based interaction
Connecting with your consumers in the digital space is as much about
using the most appropriate mobile technology whether that is a tablet,
Smartphone, mobile gaming console or laptop as it is about having
appropriate content. Once you have the right content, mobile devices
are fantastic tool for drawing customers in and encouraging them to
engage with your brand in a way that feels totally natural. As an
example, ebookers
recently launched an iPad app called ebookers Explorer. It pulls
together socially-generated content from across the internet, tailored
to the destination and activity the user is looking to explore. As
well as being easy to use, it delivers personalised content in an
easily digestible travel magazine format.
In conclusion
At the end of the day, we know that know digital marketing is worth
doing – so it makes sense to do it right. As with all successful
marketing initiatives, whether in the online or off-line world, your
customers should have pride of place the centre. Understand who they
are, where they go and how they get there, and the chances of your
winning consumers’ hearts and minds will be high.
http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/01/05/what-all-brands-must-do-to-win-consumers%E2%80%99-digital-hearts-and-minds/ By Maggie Lonergan, client development director, Fortune Cookie.
No comments:
Post a Comment