Re-engaging customers with content
Content marketing techniques can be used to reinvigorate a waning customer relationship, encourage customer re-engagement and improve customer retention. Effective CRM requires that customer relationships be customer-centric and refined over time based on behavior. Fostering an atmosphere of repeated interaction and constant engagement can help companies and their brands increase their authority and become a go-to source for customers.
Building authority through trustworthy content
A company or brand can establish itself as an authority within its industry by publishing consistent, valuable content. Users will find themselves repeatedly exposed to the information that the company provides and each subsequent interaction will bolster the user’s opinion of the business. According to Marketo, engagement can greatly increase the value of customers over their life cycle.1 Therefore, each engagement touch point has the potential of increasing a company’s revenue.
Producing valuable, trustworthy content involves creating content that answers users’ questions and leveraging keywords that help keep your brand top of mind. Being in the right place at the right time can help drive engagement. As customers find online content useful, they’ll continue to revisit to read and absorb more. And the more targeted your content is, the more likely it is to be effective for the purposes of engagement. Generic content often falls flat from both a search and user standpoint.
The goal of establishing authority and building a brand through content can be achieved by creating relationships in customers’ mind between your business, your industry and their mindset. Using content for re-engagement can ensure that when customers think about your industry, they will directly associate it with your brand. Additionally, when customers seek information about a product or a service related to your business, they will visit your website first to find out more. Engaging content must avoid being overly promotional or company-centric; customer-centricity is vital to creating content authority.2
Bolstering content engagement through multichannel techniques
Email marketing strategies are often used to reconnect customers to a brand’s content and to deepen a customer’s relationship. A digital marketing campaign does not always need to rely on discounts or other monetary benefits; instead, a digital marketing campaign can provide value through its content. Many marketers have been using newsletters for years as a customer relationship tool. Content marketing can be used in a similar manner, but it can also intercept users when they are online and searching for information.
Social media activity is another way that companies can leverage their content marketing for customer engagement. Valuable content should regularly be distributed through a company's social media platforms, and for many customers it will provide reasons to engage. Content can also be targeted based on demographics very easily through social media; in fact, each social media platform offers access to a slightly different demographic. Users should also be encouraged to share content on their own, thereby increasing marketing reach.
Engaging your customers through targeting
Targeted content is always more effective. Narrowcasting, as discussed by Salesforce.com, describes a process by which you identify a specific market segment and then target content toward this demographic.3 Broad, general content is less likely to be successful. By describing a certain user and then targeting to that user, content is more likely to reach the right segment and aid in developing a relationship with your brand.
Companies looking to build positive customer relationships should always seek to re-engage customers whenever they can. A history with a customer is invaluable and this history should be applied to communications. Numerous studies have shown that customer retention is far more profitable than customer acquisition, though both techniques are important to a comprehensive marketing and customer life cycle campaign. To learn other techniques that drive revenue and customer value, sign up for Jacobs & Clevenger’s “5 new techniques every marketer should consider in 2015.”
Sources:
1. Marketo
2. i-scoop
3. Salesforce