Engagement Strategies for B2C Businesses

As a business owner, it’s important to utilize the tools and resources you have available for marketing and client engagement. When you’re a business to consumer organization, you have the freedom to engage with your consumers in a multitude of different ways. Here’s a list of strategies you may want to implement to engage with your existing client base and prospects (depending on your industry): 

• Generate Content: In the last ten years, there has been an explosion of content creation and avenues to express yourself through the use of technology. Creating content is a great way to engage with your audience and prospect base because it allows you to stay relevant and in front of your audience, even if they are not yet ready to become your clients. Content creation also gives you an easy method to stay in contact should you get into contact with someone who is not yet ready to move forward. “Even if you’re not ready to work with me yet, can I send you content so you can stay up to date on trends/offers?”  
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  • Newsletters: sending newsletters on a regular basis is useful as it forces you to stay informed regarding your industry so that you can provide enticing info to your book of business.  
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  • Videos: not much of a writer? Putting together videos to provide industry updates, or educate your potential prospects on different aspects of your industry can work just as well as sending text-based newsletters. Don’t focus too much on production value at the very beginning - just work on getting comfortable in front of the camera and providing useful information.  
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  • Podcasts: depending on your industry and network, you may find it easier to produce an episodic series speaking candidly regarding certain topics of interest in your industry. You may also decide to conduct interviews or bring on guests knowledgeable on certain topics. 

• Direct to Consumer Communications: As discussed in this previous article, there may be a time where you get to be too busy to respond in a timely fashion to every inquiry, email, phone call, text, etc.- [this may be a sign that it’s time to start your scaling process]. When you find yourself feeling too busy, or feeling breathless when you think of all the notifications that are piling up for you, it may be a sign to take advantage of direct to consumer communication technologies like these:   
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  • Email Auto-Responses: setting up a general time-based email response that acknowledges the email you’ve received and explains you will follow up as soon as you are available can buy you extra time to craft your response, and also allows the consumer to know they can expect to hear from you soon so they don’t feel they’re in the dark. 
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  • Chat functionality: depending on your business, you may have a website or professional business page on different social media sites. Recently, technology has advanced to the point where you can set up pre-programmed conversation trees that can simulate a conversation with your page visitors, fielding questions and sharing the information you configure into the chat. . 

• Cultivate your Presence Online: This topic is definitely a broad one, especially considering the fact that more and more business is conducted online. So, having a well-established online presence can definitely help your business - just keep in mind that it is incredibly easy to get distracted when spending time online, so stay focused! 
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  • A Well-Designed Site: Think of a well-designed website as the modern equivalent to your business card: its look and feel will convey to your prospects your brand, contact information, and an understanding of what you offer. Ultimately, you’ll want to have as many people visiting your site for that fact as well - if you get your site in front of the right people at the right time, you should be able to earn their business. This is a basic building block because your other online marketing strategies should rely on directing prospects to your site.      
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  • Digital Marketing: pay-per-click and search engine optimization (SEO) marketing allows you to get your site in front of people that you would otherwise not necessarily reach, with the goal to direct them to perform an action on your site. Learn more about digital marketing here.  
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  • Social Media Marketing: think of this in a similar vein to generating content - by presenting information that people can interact with and consume without interacting with you directly, you allow your name, brand, and product/service to reach a broader audience. Click here to gain more insight into social media marketing.

Being a business to consumer organization provides you certain freedoms to interact with your prospective clientele base because your potential customers are everywhere. So, by being everywhere, you’ll have the greatest chance to capture as many of your potential customers as possible.