What is Engagement Marketing? And Should You Care?

For many brands and marketers out there, the conversion rate is the one true metric. But unlike traditional marketing, you have to consistently engage with your customers to keep them interested in your brand. This led to the introduction of a new marketing tactic called engagement marketing. 

In the modern days of marketing, there are a ton of alternatives for consumers with surprisingly similar features. Therefore it is difficult to truly differentiate your brand from the rest, so it stands out and grabs consumers’ attention. Instead of differentiating their product, they have to focus on directly engaging with their customers to build long-lasting relations. This is what’s called engagement marketing.

The internet is a massive pool of content that is getting bigger and bigger each day. Today’s consumers use this information to stay informed about everything that interests them. Consumers no longer need to see ads to discover relevant products and services. In this modern age of marketing, you don’t just have to deliver an excellent product. You also have to excel in each stage of the customer life-cycle. And engaging with your customers is the first and most essential part.

Engagement marketing is a digital marketing tactic that revolves around increasing user-participation. It also helps brands find new leads and increase the lifetime value of existing customers. 

Digital marketing is becoming really competitive. And marketers are having a difficult time locating ways to make their brand stand-out. Leverage content to encourage customers to engage with your brand so that your audience stays interested.

Best Engagement marketing campaign examples

Now that you know what engagement marketing is, let’s look at some brand’s effective engagement marketing campaigns.

  1. Canon #liveforthestory

Discover @ZoeKravitz’s Summer story. Share yours on Instagram for a chance to win a huge prize… #liveforthestory https://t.co/FkPxO3UsDt pic.twitter.com/IwM3JQRdBK

— Canon UK and Ireland (@CanonUKandIE) May 18, 2017

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Canon launched its ‘live for the story’ engagement campaign as an effort to change the brand perception among the younger audience. The campaign was influential and encouraged other users to share their stories for a chance to travel the world for a year.
It encouraged many users to participate in the campaign. And it helped Canon grab the attention of the young generation and find new potential customers.

  2. Coca Cola #ShareACoke

When the Dodgers #ShareaCoke, they’re already hitting it out of the park. ⚾️

— Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) October 27, 2018

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The Coca-Cola #ShareACoke campaign is one of the best examples of increasing user-participation. The way they executed the campaign was simply amazing. They selected some of the most common names of people in the US and printed them on their 8-ounce bottles. They then encouraged users to find bottles with their names and post pictures on social media with the campaign hashtag.

  3. Starbucks #WhiteCupContest

Mark up your Macchiato, doodle on your doppio, craft your cappuccino. #WhiteCupContest http://t.co/IRoNiMKMXU pic.twitter.com/pgw0Wbu3ZN

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) April 28, 2014

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The Starbucks #WhiteCupContest encouraged users to decorate their iconic white coffee cups. Users had to customized art on the cups, click a photo, and share it on social media platforms. The winning design will get printed on a limited-edition reusable plastic Starbucks cup.

People soon started experimenting with different designs and unleashed their creative potential. The result was a tremendous response from the community and a significant increase in brand awareness and reputation.

Now that you know what engagement marketing is, let’s look at some great benefits that it offers.

Increase brand authority and awareness

Engagement is the most important metric for brands and marketers. It helps them identify their target audience’s size. As these are customers actually interested in your brand and willing to pay for it. Engagement campaigns can also help you increase your brand awareness by increasing brand interactions. Increasing your engagement further helps you increase your brand’s social media authority.

Increase reach and exposure

Engagement campaigns focus on increasing brand interactions with the customers. The more people engage, the better the reach and exposure of your brand. Interacting with your customers can also help you figure out your brand voice. This can further increase your brand reach and image which helps in improving relations with your customers.

Understand buyer persona

Engagement marketing campaigns attract a heck lot of user-participation. And as a result it provides you a ton of user-generated content. You can analyze this data to understand the buyer persona. This can help you personalize your content and marketing strategy to the likes of your audience.

Generate more leads 

Engagement marketing campaigns are a great way of generating leads for your brand. All the users that engage with your campaign are interested in your brand. You can use a Twitter analytics tool to make a list of users that engage with your brand. It will help you identify potential customers to target. 

Enhance your marketing approach 

Engagement campaigns draw in a ton of engagement from users. This results in a collection of vast user-generated data. You can use this data to understand the interests and preferences of your target audience. And it can help you personalize content and enhance your marketing approach.

Make a few changes to your content and marketing strategies to easily increase user-participation. The engagement rate shows that the audience has found something interesting in your post/tweet. And by taking this into consideration, brands can drive more audiences into liking their products. Let us dive right into the list of strategies for increasing engagement.

• Focus on providing a personalized experience

By providing a personalized experience, brands can make user’s buying decisions easier. Provide your customer with links to similar products, blogs, or informational content that they were looking for. But don’t make it too creepy like you are stalking them. You can also use Twitter polls to directly know their interest and look forward to the most. You can also use these insights to create interactive emails with relevant product suggestions or content. Monitor their activities closely and then further customize emails accordingly. 

• Analyze customer feedback

Customer feedback and complaints should not be left unattended. A poor customer service experience can hurt the reputation of your brand. Showing genuine concern while engaging with customers and increasing response times to their queries will result in loyal customers. If there is positive customer feedback, then use it to enhance your brand reputation. Therefore, you should keep analyzing customer feedback in order to increase engagement on your website.

• Leverage content (interactive content)

Interactive content urges customers to perform some action. As a result, engagement is gained by including such content in the copy. Interactive content consists of interesting infographics, photo-essays, videos, polls, surveys, and contests. Leverage these formats into your copy so that your overall content is interactive.

• Host Twitter contests and user-generated content campaigns 

User-generated content can help you go a long way. An ordinary person, with an average follower count, promoting your brand will be more believable than any celebrity. Twitter contests will encourage users to engage with your content. Firstly, plan your strategy about hosting Twitter contests, like time and winning prizes. Most importantly don’t make hasty decisions about anything or you will end up seriously damaging your rapport.

• Monitor performance metrics to measure results

Lastly, monitor all your metrics before and after doing all these activities. And you will straight away know if these tactics were helpful in any way or not. Increased engagement means that you have triggered your audience’s mind. And they will engage with more of your content in the future.

To monitor your engagement, you will need to use a special tool. A tool that can track your engagement metrics in real-time and present them to you in an intuitive way that is easy to navigate. One such tool that can perform hashtag, @mention, and keyword tracking is TrackMyHashtag. Moreover, it provides comprehensive and detailed analytical insights that can help you overcome your competitors and establish your authority in the industry. 

Some key features of TrackMyHashtag, 

• Access real-time and historical Twitter data
• Real-time hashtag tracking and analytics
• Find resonating content, media, and URLs
• Identify social media influencers
• Track, monitor, and analyze performance metrics of competitors

To start using real-time Twitter analytics insights, click here. TrackMyHashtag has various pricing plans, you can select a plan that suits your requirements. The basic premium plan starts at $49 per month or $299 per year. 

Customers can also opt for the ‘Historical Twitter Data’ option. With this option, users can extract archived tweets with other related details. However, if you are not sure about using this analytical report then you can also opt for a 5-day free trial.

Engagement is the most important metric for brands and marketers, but it has become much more difficult to reach new customers. Engagement marketing campaigns can help you increase social media interactions and build conversations related to your brand. These campaigns are also a great help in instilling brand loyalty among your follower.

Today, major brands and marketers try to engage with the customers even after their initial purchase. This helps them improve customer relations and increase the lifetime value of customers. Although to host successful engagement marketing campaigns, you need to track, monitor, and analyze your engagement metrics in real-time. TrackMyHashtag is an amazing Twitter analytics tool that can provide performance metrics in real-time. Do give it a try!

See you next time!