If you are running a business, have you ever asked yourself, what do the customers feel about your brand? Sure, they might be satisfied with your customer service, or they might feel confident in their purchase, but what does your brand actually make your customer feel? Do they get a positive feeling when they think about your brand? If so then this can help them make a connection to that business, which means that they are more likely to purchase from that business again.

Customers want to know that a business cares about them. They want to feel as if the business listens to their opinions and understands them. These are all huge factors that help in building a strong and lasting connection between the customer and business. This connection will help bring the business revenue and potentially new customers. If a customer is happy with your business, then they will want to share this with others. This is how a brand community is formed. 

Use Feedback as an Opportunity for Conversation

The thing about feedback, good or bad, is that it is an essential tool that your customer service department can use to benefit your business. Feedback can help you handle any issues, and observe what customers want. This is a great starting point for creating an engaged community. It’s not just about getting a good star rating, it’s about letting customers share their opinion and concerns, which allows them to feel heard, and this is something which you should be aiming for. 

If you are unsure about how to gather feedback though, then thanks to an advancement in technology it is now a lot easier to do this. With the help of companies like Salesforce, you can create a customer centric business, that can help you improve on your customer relationships. This in turn, will help deliver customer data, so that your business can work on what a customer likes, and what they do not like. You can then use this data to act accordingly. 

Social Posts Encourage Engagement

All good businesses know that social media plays a huge part in building your brand community. Most people engage with brands through social media several times throughout the day, which is why it makes sense to make the most of this. The way you use social media is to share your branded content, and then get your audience, talking and engaging with it. You need to get your audience to engage with the things that you share though, otherwise you are wasting a useful opportunity. 

To help get your customers to engage with your branded content, you need to look at doing things like discounts, sharing special offers etc. Customers also like it when they can see how to use the product that they are interested in purchasing. Customers are more likely to engage with offers of sales and entertainment, rather then brand focused content though, so that is something which you should keep in mind. But as long as you pay attention to what gets the most engagement, then you can start to build on that.

Design Content Around the Customer Journey

You will probably find that the customer journey is not as linear as the marketing textbooks would have you believe. However, there are plenty of opportunities for businesses to engage with their customers, they just have to make sure they communicate in a way that suits the customer. This will change the longer a customer is with you. At the start, you will be trying to make them aware of your business, and then it will change to a call to action, before finally changing to advocacy. 

These stages are really important, so it’s a good idea to make separate communities for each stage. However, you might prefer to do it your own way. The main thing is though that you do what works best, just make sure you design the content around the customer journey as that is the important part. The customer is what will help your business succeed, so make sure you keep them happy. If you are worried that your business does not have enough customers, then maybe you should check out this article here about 3 easy ways you can reach out to new customers

By Eddy Z

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].