Customer Success

How to Boost Customer Engagement with Content Marketing

January 18, 2011

Remember when a company’s definition of corporate communications and customer engagement was a stock press release or web advertisement?

You know what that discourse sounded like: “Our 3.5 product release is a robust addition to our portfolio. It offers industry leading technology that assists with…” Blah, blah, blah. Those press releases are generally pretty boring and informal, and savvy segments of consumers and influencers have learned to tune them out.

Just ask Adam Singer at The Future Buzz, a media, marketing, and PR blog. He argues that while press releases still serve a very specific purpose (wire distribution), they are not an effective means of engagement.

Content marketing, on the other hand, is an excellent strategy for B2B companies (especially expansion stage software businesses) that are trying to improve customer engagement. It’s much more personal and it’s much less intrusive.

Content marketing can include blogging, case studies, social media, videos, or podcasting. It allows the company to publish and disseminate information and ideas on its own, creating relevant, valuable content that objectively and specifically answers customer questions. If those customers see value in that content and trust the source, they’re much more likely to respond and engage with its producer.

On the flip side, content marketing is not an opportunity for self-promotion. As content marketing expert Joe Pulizzi points out, your customers don’t care about you.

So what can you do to change that?

Speak to your customers and potential customers on their terms and in their language. Forget about marketing your company or product and start engaging with your target audience.

Here are some easy ways to improve customer engagement by incorporating a content marketing approach to your business:

Rules of Engagement

You may think that you’re content marketing, but take this test to confirm it: Lay out all of your “content” on a table and read through it. If it’s all about you and your brand, it’s probably received by the consumer as traditional intrusive marketing collateral. If it speaks to customer pain points, you’ve got the idea.

Content cannot be about you and how great you are at doing something. If a customer wants to know more about your company, they’ll visit your website. Content Marketing requires a company to focus on their customers’ pain points and create media and communications that will address them.

Keep Track of Your Reputation

Make it a habit to track what customers are saying about your company online by setting up Google alerts or conducting real-time searches on media sites like Twitter. If you’re noticing a trend of customer concerns, attempt to engage with that audience to find out why their experience wasn’t great.

According to PeopleMetrics, those disengaged or unhappy customers can be four times more likely to hit the web to write a negative review or blog post about your company. It’s crucial that you keep tabs on those unhappy customers and engage them in the right way. Monica Nolan at PeopleMetrics wrote a great blog post on the topic, suggesting the best methods for doing that. Some of her ideas:

  • Control your emotions through strategy: Don’t let a negative post cause you to lose your cool. Instead, take a breather and formulate a strategy for an intelligent response.
  • Respond and thank the blogger: Often times, negative reviews reveal your weaknesses to you, so those customer is doing you a favor. By engaging with them and thanking them for their thoughts, you may make your company stronger and regain a customer.
  • Offer additional resources: This is where you can use your content to boost customer engagement. If you have a case study, blog post, video, or podcast that speaks to the issue the customer experienced, share it and encourage them to vent any other frustrations to you.

If you notice a trend of customer successes, reach out to those happy customers, too. They may become some of your biggest beacons in the market. But remember to be real, honest, and — obviously — engaging. Include links to pieces of relevant content that address both concerns and successes.

Ask Relevant Questions

The whole point of having fans or followers on your social media sites is to constantly engage them. Ask relevant, timely questions on your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn pages. But don’t always ask questions about your particular company or product.

Instead, have fun with it. For example, my colleague, Corey O’Loughlin, recently asked our followers what their favorite Thanksgiving foods were and got a pretty decent response on our Facebook page. Sure, it doesn’t solve any specific company problem, but it’s a fun way to encourage your customers to engage and communicate with your company.

After all, the old days of outbound PR and customer interaction are fading fast. With the growth of web communities and social media, companies have to find more personal and valuable ways to communicate with their customers. In that way, content marketing isn’t just a hot buzzword. It’s a fantastic method for accomplishing that goal.

Content Marketing Director

<strong>Amanda Maksymiw</strong> worked at OpenView from 2008 until 2012, where she focused on developing marketing and PR strategies for both OpenView and its portfolio companies. Today she is the Content Marketing Director at <a href="https://www.fuze.com/">Fuze</a>.