Whitepaper: How to Add Personality to your Customer Engagement Campaign

In 1985, after years of extensive research, Coca-Cola unveiled its newest flavour titled “New Coke“. Despite millions of marketing dollars thrown at the product, it was a resounding failure. Customers did not agree with the change in taste and wanted “Classic Coke” back. Less than 3 months later, Coke executives relented and the original flavour was re-instated.

This misadventure is a classic example of the importance of customer engagement. Despite a flawless mass-marketing campaign, Coke did not reach out to its customers on a personal basis and address their needs (most of whom simply wanted to stick with what they were familiar with).

To ensure you don’t make the same mistake, we’re going to teach you how to engage your customer on a personal basis.

Why Companies are Failing their Customers

Over a hundred years ago, advertising and sales pioneer E. St. Elmo Lewis came up with the four common events that take place when a customer engages with a marketing campaign:

• A – first, the customer is Aware of the existence of a product or service,
• I – then, the customer expresses an Interest,
• D – next, the customer Desires a particular brand or product, until finally
• A - the customer takes the next step and Acts on purchasing the product

Referred to as “AIDA”, Lewis’s model has evolved over the years into what is known today as the “marketing funnel“.

Unfortunately, in the 21st century, this funnel concept is highly flawed. The problem is that it forces marketers to focus on customers at each touchpoint (i.e. awareness, consideration, preference, purchase, and retention) rather than meeting the needs of the individual.

Think about it.

When was the last time you made a purchase decision in a “linear fashion”, going from touchpoint to touchpoint, all the while being bombarded with advertising?

In fact, before buying something you probably considered a whole host of factors, including the product website, reviews, social media channels, and even referrals from friends. It’s likely you jumped around the funnel.

The solution for businesses is to forgot about the product for a minute and start forming meaningful relationships that involve frequent interaction with their customers.

Customers will be more interested in a brand if they are targeted individually rather than as part of a larger group.

Towards a More Personal Form of Marketing

Although many companies have recognized the importance of personalized marketing, engaging customers on a targeted basis is not easy and there are a number of steps a company must take to ensure it gets it right.

Building empathy is tough, but possible.

First, a company must learn as much they can about the customer to ensure the information the have about them is accurate.

Second, they must maintain a variety of support channels to engage and interact with customers. The most popular channels today for engagement include:

1. E-service or self help (53%)
2. Social media (37%)
3. Live chat (36%)

Finally, companies must ensure that the information provided to customers is relevant, timely, and fits their needs.

Get the Whitepaper Free

This is just a taste of our research into customer engagement. If you’d like to learn more about:

• Building meaningful relationships with your customers,
• Creating personalized engagement campaigns to target customers individually, and
• Discovering the best channels for regular engagement

Download our whitepaper One to One Marketing – How to Add Personality to your Customer Engagement Campaign for free today:

Get the Whitepaper Free