How To Engage Your Prospects

How To Engage Your Prospects
Author: Kim Sheehan
November 21st, 2009

You may have heard the word ‘engagement’ tossed around a lot lately. A small business…well, any business, actually….needs to ‘engage’ with customers. What exactly does that mean? And what does that mean for developing word of mouth for your small business.

Engagement is in some ways an extension of the idea of positioning: the perception that consumers have about your brand relative to the competition. Positioning, however, assumed that perceptions were developed primarily through traditional advertising.

Engagement is the idea that a brand connects with consumers in many different ways: through traditional advertising, online advertising, through retail experiences, and through word of mouth. Brands and store owners control some of these experiences, but other experiences (in particular word of mouth) cannot be completely controlled.
However, to have positive word of mouth between customers, there are two important steps to engagement. First, your business must do a good job of engaging consumers in all the ways that you can control.

Consistency is key: talking about the value you provide and then putting your money where your mouth is in the store is a great way to engage. If you can engage well with customers, they’ll provide the positive word of mouth for you.
Second, you must connect with customers where they are…not where you are. You have to find out where people are talking about you, what they’re saying, and if they have any problems with your business. If they do, you need to connect with them and solve their problems.

More and more these days, the Internet becomes the place where these customer conversations are happening. You need to monitor the social networking websites to find out specifically what the conversations are.

How do you do this? A great, easy way is through a site called www.socialmention.com. Social Mention, in its own words, is like Google Alerts except for Social Media networking websites like Twitter, Facebook, and more. While you can use the Social Mention home page to search for your business, we recommend that you set up an alert, just like a Google Alert.

On the Social Mention home page, click on the “Create An Alert” link. In the next box, enter the name of your business. 3. In the ‘type’ menu, select “All” so that the search engine searches all available social media. Finally, enter your email address…no account needed….so you’ll find out what people are saying about you.
Engagement, as any married person can tell you, is a two way street. Get engaged today!