The latest buzzword in online marketing is “engagement marketing.” Can it help your business?
Engagement marketing means bringing warm leads to your business via blogging and social media. It places the focus on drawing leads to you by engaging potential clients, rather than advertising at them or making cold calls. Existing customers can fan the flames of your marketing efforts when you inspire them to “share” your content, thus engaging their friends.
The best leads you can hope for are “warm leads.” Warm indicates that the prospect sought you out directly, or was referred to your company by a friend or colleague. These leads statistically have much higher conversion rates than any other kind of new lead. People trust their close acquaintances more than the faceless marketing machine employed by a company.
Traditionally, businesses apply a scatter shot approach to getting new leads. By sending mass paper mail a huge group of prospects, companies rely on low conversion percentages of large numbers to hit their income goals. This approach may work for the biggest companies with enormous followings, but any mass mailing marketer is burning time and money with this approach.
When an existing customer or “fan” clicks the “share” button for your company’s content on Facebook, you are suddenly in contact with many of their friends. The content may not be visible to every single friend because of “edgerank algorithms” and quick news feed turn over; however, cold calling does not guarantee connection either. In addition to this one-click mass visibility, you are actually being recommended by the sharer. A friend-endorsed introduction will almost always lead to more success.
Engagement marketing is possible in three easy steps.
- Gain permission to send content through an easy subscription process.
- Create compelling content subscribers will want to share.
- Make your content easy to share.
Ultimately, engagement marketing harnesses the virility of social media marketing.
