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Enhancing customer lifecycle through engagement marketing 21 Sep 2016

Globalisation has created a market environment of fierce competition. Businesses that must succeed under the prevailing market dynamics must optimise their marketing campaigns and enhance utilisation of every content. This is why engagement marketing has become a useful marketing technique in sustaining and improving the value of brands.
    
Essentially, engagement marketing is a strategy for connecting with customers across multiple digital and offline channels and getting the customers to develop a form of relationship with the brand. In an era of digitisation, brand marketing via a single channel can be as ineffectual as one-way brand communication. More and more contents continue to compete for the limited attention of the market making it absolutely important for companies to connect with consumers on as many platforms as possible.

Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find digital advertising campaign messages in picture, video and text formats being shared, 'liked' and commented on by consumers on the internet and social media platforms. The dynamism of social media makes it possible for consumers themselves to become advocates of brands by sharing advertising campaign messages on their timelines for further exposure to other consumers who would eventually 'like', comment or share the same messages. Engagement marketing enhances the customer lifecycle. As brands acquire new customers and expand their customer base, the next objective is to gain the loyalty of those customers and grow the brand value. As a matter of fact, there are dozens of digital media companies who sell their expertise to brands by helping them garner 'likes' and social media 'followers' as a way of improving brand awareness.

The early adoption of engagement marketing tactics was through tell-a-friend schemes. Brand owners and internet marketers provided electronic forms that had a provision for customers to include the email addresses of their friends whom the product owners could reach out to in the future. Engagement marketing has blossomed ever since and received wide acceptability.

Not too long ago, two strong competitors, Coca Cola and Pepsi, deployed user engagement strategies that have since been instant hits. The concept to have names of people on the labels of coke bottles and photographs of Pepsi celebrity brand Ambassadors like Wizkid, Tiwa Savage and Seyi Shay on Pepsi cola bottles have significantly increased sales for the two soft drinks giants. But of course, the success of the campaigns themselves have been underpinned by massive multi-channel advertising campaigns by the companies.  

The growth of digital advertising, which is thriving on the back of technological advancements and social media revolution, has spurred a categorisation of internet and social media users giving rise to a better understanding of how effective engagement marketing can be deployed. The categorisation, known as Social Technographics Ladder, was developed by Forrester Research, a U.S. technology and market research company. It shows seven categories of internet/ social media users, namely; inactive, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, conservationist and creators. Each category depicts the level of consumer engagement with a brand across the social media.

Authors of the book, “E-marketing,” Judy Strauss and Frost Raymond D, have provided an almost similar classification of social media users. Strauss and Frost classified consumers into lower and higher level engagements with the lower level engagers involved in consuming, connecting and collecting, while the higher level engagers are involved in creating and collaborating.

A person that consumes content is the least engaged, using digital technology to source information he or she values. Many of us are connectors. We use social networking services to form connections, or we join or follow a brand to be up to speed with new product offerings. There are also connectors who are simply engaged in voyeurism. Those of us who are more engaged, who share our own content, tag and like contents shared by other users are collectors. At this level of engagement, we can start to influence others, because of the content we have shared or liked. For instance, collectors are those who frequently share every location they are, whether they are at a restaurant or aboard an airplane. These behaviours exemplify collectors.

Stepping up to a higher level of engagement, there are creators and collaborators. Creators publish blogs or post their own articles and stories. People in this category also upload original contents such as videos or the music they create. Collaborators represent the ultimate level of engagement. Have you worked with an organisation to improve a brand? Have you helped to 'write a script', or influenced a company's product range through your engagement with a company? Has your conversation with a brand impacted their decision-making or communication strategy? These are some attributes of collaborators.

What is clear from both the Forrester Research company's categorisation and the social media engagement profiling created by Strauss and Frost, is that digital technology has changed the role of marketing communication from interruptive persuasion to audience conversation. At the highest level in engagement are consumers that participate with an organisation in enhancing the brand awareness. Organisations need to provide consumers with interactive experiences that in turn, drive brand conversations.

Available data shows considerable engagement online between consumers and brands. The Always #LikeAGirl campaign video on YouTube posted in June 2014 now has over 62 million views as of last month. The LG Elevator Prank campaign posted in October 2012 has over 25 million views on YouTube. Red Bull's space jump video also posted in October 2012 has close to 41 million views on YouTube.  Several other brand campaigns have generated strong buzz, views and comments across social networks.

While technology is the purveyor of this interesting developments in marketing communication, brand owners are the custodians. As custodians, brand owners must ensure that these diversified channels of marketing and communication are effectively harnessed for top line growth.

Apart from videos and images that have become effective vehicles for creating brand awareness and customer engagement, incentives can also be used as tools to call consumers to action. Winning of prizes and all manner of freebees – such as free movies tickets, free data bundles, free airtime – also constitute a powerful engagement marketing strategy. Giveaways stimulate excitement and fun. As such, they have to be tangible and realistic enough to enable consumers talk about the company's fantastic offerings in their online and offline networks. Other incentives can be discounted products or services like discounted air tickets, discounted hotel accommodation, etc.

For new brands in the market, incentives could be a good strategy to build brand loyalty across the target market. Established brands could also use giveaways and incentives to attract new consumers and sustain loyalty with existent consumers.