With ever-changing business environments, marketing and outreach methods are constantly under re-calibration and to keep up with the shifting times, marketers are ensuring better capitalization for new market opportunities.  While marketers constantly seek better ways to be ahead in the game, customer engagement has been at the top of the list. According to Forrester, 56% of marketing leaders say that improving customer experience is a top priority for supporting their company’s business strategy.  Thus, customer engagement and showing customers how much they mean to them have become a top priority in the industry. By creating seamless experiences that build trust, brands are on their toes to get the desired experience. 

What does Customer Engagement mean?

As the name suggests, customer engagement is something that delivers connected experiences to your customers instead of single, one-off, or fleeting transactions. Customer engagement is an ongoing interaction between a company and a customer wherein the company provides customer service and satisfaction.  While customer engagement means different in different industries, in the B2B industry, it is a crucial business tool that generates new leads, helps reconnect with existing consumers, and increases profits. 

What makes B2B customer engagement different from others?

Sometimes, customer engagement is confused with customer satisfaction and experience, however, there is some overlap. With both having distinctive aspects, customer experience is the perception that consumers form based on everything they see, hear, or learn about your company. Whereas, customer satisfaction is how much your audience or consumer like or dislike your product, service, or experience. Although both are essential when interacting with consumers, customer engagement also involves paying attention to building a rapport and providing a tailored solution. Moreover, for B2B, the target audience is different from that of a B2C. In B2B, processes and operations are streamlined to cut down on costs and boost revenue and growth, making purchasing decisions more logically. 

A refreshing perspective on B2B Customer Engagement in 2022

Customer engagement has always been prevalent, be it providing hyper-personalization or developing the brand to its utmost best. However, with constant changes in marketing trends, customer engagement strategies too, are evolving, especially post the pandemic. With over two years of staying indoors and working remotely, digital selling is one of the major changes adopted by B2B companies.  According to experts, almost 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will likely occur in digital channels. The trend of focusing on human-centric communications within remote customer engagement is at its peak, but so are the hybrid interactions.

Customers, today, are preferring human-centric communications within remote customer engagement. This shift from physical to digital channels means that organisations need to amend their strategies to engage customers in the forthcoming times.

Benefits of Customer Engagement 

Every company needs increased sales and global brand recognition and customer engagement is one of the gateways to that. Traditionally speaking, customer engagement has been the backbone of building relationships and with the advent of digitalization, it has been easier to maintain that relationship.  With an effective engagement strategy, customer engagement boosts loyalty and customer retention. When genuine interest is shown in customers, they’ll be more likely to buy from you again. By becoming the holistic answer or solution to the customer’s problem, you can be their go-to solution provider. Furthermore, with consistent customer engagement and giving them what they seek, there will be a significant increase in users. Eventually, with the brand familiarity, they will fall back to you for the solutions, leaving you with a strong customer base. 

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Companies have been investing in top-notch marketing strategies in today’s digitally connected and always-on-the-go world. Be it hosting events, being active on social media to put out the best content, or having everything curated, they are giving their customers the best experience possible. 

As every company’s goal is to give a memorable and unforgettable experience, it is also necessary to have long-lasting customer engagement whilst creating seamless experiences that build trust. According to Forrester, 56% of marketing leaders say that improving customer experience is a top priority for supporting their company’s business strategy.

Customer engagement ideas and strategies are a key aspect of your business and thus strategizing this relationship for B2B will continue to evolve in the coming years. So, here are some strategies that you could use to help achieve that;

Understanding your Audience 

Making it obvious, knowing your audience in any spectrum gives you the first hand to attract them sooner than later. Knowing your target audience is a getaway to better customer engagement and retention. 

While there is no set standard template for a successful customer engagement strategy, you can always begin with an effective client engagement technique like mapping the customer journey. This way you can touch base on all the important touchpoints, bottlenecks, and challenges that your customers might encounter, thus identifying potential engagement opportunities. 

Account-Based Marketing Strategies

Every brand needs curation and with account-based marketing, you give you the best and biggest existing customers in an attempt to sell more. Account-based marketing strategies can help you increase the worth of your existing customers. With ABM’s personalised approach and attention to detail, customers are easily drawn toward your brand and likely to allow you to specifically nurture your primary decision maker, along with all relevant prospects. It also structures your marketing efforts on key accounts to drive the most revenue. 

Testimonials and brand promotion

Never underestimate the power of direct referrals and word-of-mouth endorsements as they are more critical when making B2B sales than ever before. Even though growing technological advancement can be confusing, B2B buyers, even today, rely on testimonials and referrals while making purchasing decisions. Using genuine testimonials in your marketing materials, thus, is an important aspect for any B2B company. You can also look for various other ways to encourage your existing customers to promote your brand. 

Automated user experience and its promptness 

Engaging B2B customers has now become a casual communication, thanks to the AI-powered Chabot that lets you connect with your customers in an instant, making customer engagement strategy immensely easier. It analyses your data and can talk to customers via texts, WhatsApp and social media.

The use of automated user experiences has accelerated even more with the advent of the pandemic, wherein this sort of conversational marketing moved from a quick fix for a temporary problem to a long-term solution. And the best part of automated user experience is that it always acts based on the customer’s needs. 

Interactive user groups, events, and activities

Speaking traditionally, groups and events have been able to build a true community and yield a brand. This, even today helps in promoting your brand. Not just that, it also reduces the likelihood of customer disloyalty. Webinars, special virtual events, or face-to-face meet-ups are a great way to relationships between businesses and have become one of the top B2B marketing strategies. Such events give a valuable opportunity to interact with the prospects directly, answer their questions and address specific pain points.

Presence on relevant social media channels

During the Covid-19 pandemic, online communities have seen a resurgence, as in-person conferences and peer-to-peer networking opportunities saw a decline. This is when you tap into the world of social media and make sure to be present on relevant social media channels. 

Social media platforms are an excellent tool for effective customer engagement strategy. For instance, for a B2B company, LinkedIn can prove to be a pertinent platform to present your products and services. Along with attracting a bunch of like-minded people, it also helps you to reach entirely new target groups. You can also create a customer-exclusive online community with a private Facebook or LinkedIn group, or on a messaging app like Slack, or build one from scratch on your web platform. 

Newsletters

One of the oldest forms of outreach is newsletters and interestingly, they continue to be a part of the customer engagement strategy. Newsletters are still very much a part of many B2B companies and are heavily used. A well-made newsletter is an excellent tool to keep mindshare among customers and leads.  Another interesting thing about having newsletters in today’s era is that they can be customised according to the target audience. With the help of automated marketing style systems, you can build personalised newsletters based on individual customer profiles. This aids in grabbing your customer’s attention at once and generates reading interest.  Visit Our SalesMarkBlog Section to Uncover the Sales Strategies That Ignite Your Sales Journey!