Online consumer engagement is part of being a successful business in the 21st century. A customer will be gained or lost based on the experience they have on your site. In order to build trust between your brand and customers, the two will need to have a good relationship with each other.

A strong relationship with a customer is the result of a strong strategy. This plan includes understanding the customer’s journey to your brand and how they interact with it online and offline. The right strategy can help not only with consumer engagement, but also brand loyalty, overall revenue, and an edge over your competitors.

So whether you are going after a new target audience or strengthening your current customer base, here are a few ways of increasing your brand’s consumer engagement online.

Build a Community

The values and beliefs of your company are important for consumers to know. A study from LoyaltyLion reports 68% of customers are motivated to be loyal to a brand if they know it shares the same values as them. Shared values and beliefs create a shared sense of belonging, the cornerstone of a community.

You can share your beliefs in a variety of ways with customers, aside from just stating them on your website. Incorporate messaging around brand values that appear in welcome or post-purchase emails. Build beliefs and values into reward programs where people can earn points by following or acting upon them. Create social media campaigns to encourage a display of the values of your brand, which can encourage employees and consumers alike to participate in, thus supplying you with user generated content for your community.

Conversation is Key

One of the best ways to improve consumer engagement is by staying connected with your customers and prospective customers. Regular conversations through newsletters, feedback, and reward programs can build goodwill with individuals. In addition to these programs, you can also use live chat and chatbots on your site to assist customers.

Live chat is a popular engagement tool – it turns every interaction with customers into an opportunity to build on a relationship or create a satisfying experience. Live chat helps resolve customer problems rapidly and re-engage frustrated customers with the right messaging. More than half of consumers prefer live chat to calling into a company in today’s market.

The next step from live chat is chatbots. According to a report from Opus Research, 35% of customers want to see more companies using chatbots. Chatbots are available 24/7, can be personalized, and respond instantly to a customer’s question. They’re available on websites and social media so you don’t miss a customer query.

Technology Is Your Friend

Technology can be used as a new type of employee for your business by taking on smaller tasks to allow your team to attack bigger projects. In terms of improving online engagement, technology can provide your brand with useful insights.

These insights include measuring active users, or the percent of active users on your site during a designated time frame. This also allows you to measure your retention rate, which is the number of users who click on your site and then browse it. It can also calculate website visit length, how long an individual stayed on your site. This information is priceless for your brand, especially when determining how many new customers you gain each quarter.

All of this data collected can be reviewed using an enterprise resource planning tool. ERP systems can hold this information for comparison over time or to indicate product growth. It can also organize data for use by leadership within your organization, which can help pinpoint customers’ problems or create new strategies quickly.

Multiple Channels are Necessary for Success

Although it can be tempting to just use your website to communicate with your customers, there are multiple methods of staying connected online. Webinars are useful to bring people together in an interactive format for answering questions or presenting the information. They can also be a source of feedback and content ideas.

Social media platforms are a way to construct brand loyalty while talking to consumers in real time. Posts on these sites can share creative content, useful videos, new product announcements, and more. Content on these pages can humanize your brand to foster positive connotations with consumers. Customers can comment on the posts and give you real-time feedback on what they think. Many customers browse social media frequently during the day, so publishing content on a regular basis keeps your brand on their minds.

There are multiple ways to improve customer engagement on your site. Building a community, regular conversation, using technology, and socializing through multiple channels are all great methods of reaching current and potential consumers. Deploying just one of these tactics can help your brand expand over time.