How Do You Connect With Consumers Who Are Disconnected?

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Picture this: you have a few years in the business and have managed to create a rather impressive audience, be it a social following, website visitors, or even buyers. These are all, in a sense, consumers.

But many businesses may notice that a considerable portion of their consumers are disconnected from their brand. They don’t respond to posts anymore, they don’t read your articles, or they’ve stopped buying.

So, how can you reconnect with disconnected consumers?

1. Find Out Why They’ve Left

There has to be a reason users became disconnected from you, and finding it out is imperative to get them to come back. Essentially, you have to look at the way you are talking to them or interact with them to see if something may have put them off. This has a lot to do with consumer expectations. Ask yourself, are you meeting them? Because a lot of businesses don’t. One survey showed that 4 out of 5 consumers believe businesses provide a disconnected experience. This means that the businesses are lacking in something consumers want or expect to be offered.

To find out why they disconnected, you can even send out a short survey and ask. Not everyone will respond, but even if just a few do, you will get a better sense of why people stopped listening to you. It could be a confusing strategy, too many newsletters, or an unpopular campaign. Either way, these can be fixed.

2. Incentivize Them to Come Back

People can find anything they want online, and for them, not paying attention to your brand isn’t really affecting them in any way. It’s always a lot for the brand, not the consumer.

But when a business wants to convince a user to reconnect, they have to make it worth that user’s while and provide compelling reasons to do it. This can be a generous discount, access to something exclusive or even making them part of your future activities. These incentives show a user that you really care about them, and are going the extra mile to connect with them.

3. Leverage Technology to Stay Connected

If your communications process has any type of gap, you risk losing consumers. These days, people expect to receive what they want, when they want it, which is usually right now. This is almost impossible to achieve without staying logged in 24/7 unless you are using a chatbot.

Chatbots can pick up where human resources leave off, and communicate with users at any time of day to provide clarifications, answer questions, or even help with routine tasks. It’s an easy method to ensure a consumer can connect with you whenever they want.

Conclusion

In marketing, many focus on bringing in new people constantly, which is not a bad strategy, but it can make you forget to take care of the people who are already on your side. Reconnecting with users who’ve stopped engaging is essential because these people already know your brand and services.

IS INFLUENCER MARKETING ALL IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE?

In 2020, the influencer marketing industry is set to reach a whopping 10 billion dollars. A startling 99.3% of businesses who use influencer marketing use Instagram to build and launch their campaigns. But with the rise of major and micro-influencers proliferating on Instagram and elsewhere, is influencer marketing all it’s cracked up to be? For brand awareness, maybe. But when it comes to sales, we don’t think so.

Why has influencer marketing become so popular?

There isn’t a company or marketer alive who hasn’t struggled with creating awareness and driving sales. Often, marketers don’t have enough unique and original content to support all their channels and entertain and inform their audience members. It’s also challenging to foster trustworthiness and brand identity. And with so many brands using online and offline marketing and advertising, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for marketers to break through the noise and capture their ideal customer’s attention. Because of these marketing difficulties, influencer marketing quickly became the go-to solution for these problems. But the solutions influencer marketing brings to the table - trustworthiness and attention-grabbing - aren’t necessarily going to result in direct sales.

So, what’s the problem with influencer marketing?

When they first came on the scene, influencers may have been able to build the type of trust that brand’s want to foster with their target audience. But in today’s world where fake bots and large follower counts are often an illusion, influencers are more akin to reality stars than trusted authorities for most consumers. Having thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of followers might be what marketers want to see, but this doesn’t always translate into a sign of trustworthiness for consumers.

Studies and surveys on influencer marketing bear this out. Only 23% of surveyed consumers believe that content and recommendations from celebrities and micro-influencers are in fact, influential. Conversely, 60% of consumers are more apt to trust recommendations and content from their friends and family members. A social influencer, to most consumers, is just another marketer. They are inherently untrustworthy. Consumers are savvy and understand that content from influencers is simply the digital, modern equivalent of paid advertising.

The impact of social influencers is similar to the effects found with native advertising forms. It’s useful for steadily improving soft metrics like awareness and engagement. But when it comes to metrics like sales and conversions, influencer marketing falls short. Companies must understand that influencer marketing does have a place - to build awareness. But when it comes to direct sales? Not so much, and your efforts are more likely to pay off if you focus your marketing efforts elsewhere.

Who are your greatest influencers?

The effectiveness of influencer marketing will vary somewhat depending on your industry and your specific marketing goals. But the prevalence of bots and fake followers has seriously sullied the reputation and effectiveness of influencer marketing when it comes to sales. Your best bet? Get your real customers to recommend your products and services to their family and friends.

TOP 3 REASONS WHY CONSUMERS STILL SHOP RETAIL

Is Retail Still the Place to Be?

85% of purchases are still made at the retail level, in traditional brick-and-mortar stores. But why does this happen when most can agree that shopping online makes life so much easier? Is it because people are still yearning for human interaction? We’ll explore the top three reasons why consumers still choose to go to a brick-and-mortar retail store in 2019, and what this can mean for online businesses.

1. Humans are Tactile

Human beings are naturally tactile creatures, in that they like to be able to touch a product. Some people learn through touch, or bond through touch more so than others. But on the whole, the average consumer enjoys the ability to be able to pick up a product and get a hands-on feel for the texture, weight, and the dimensions of the item.

Women more so than men prefer the tactile shopping experience, while both young and old consumers equally enjoy the physical shopping experience they can get in traditional stores. While online shopping can make the purchasing process quicker, easier, and faster, it will never be able to replace the tactile needs and desires that people have.

2. The Need for Speed

In-store shoppers enjoy the ability to immediately purchase and take their items home with traditional shopping methods. Even super fast, two-day online shipping can’t fulfill this desire that consumers have. Younger consumers and men prefer the ability to take an item home with them from the store immediately. When you order online, you might be waiting for several weeks before you get your item. This desire is probably something that online shopping will never be able to meet.

3. Returns are Easier

In surveys on brick-and-mortar retail versus online shopping, the ability to easily return an item rounds out the top three reasons why consumers like the retail experience. Returns for in-store items are usually more straightforward and faster than a return for an online store. However, some online retailers do not offer a straightforward, quick, or easy way for shoppers to return an item. This is something that could be fixed and optimized for online companies.

Surveys conducted on online shopping versus retail shopping have found that human interaction is at the bottom of the list when it comes to why people may prefer the traditional retail experience. For the most part, consumers want speed and convenience. While on the surface it can seem like online shopping should have this in the bag compared to retail shopping, that’s not always the case.

Online retailers can’t magically make an item appear in a person’s lap as soon as they click the “buy” button on their laptop or mobile device. Likewise, online retailers can’t give consumers a tactile experience of the product. But they can improve the returns process to better compete with brick-and-mortar retailers. While physical stores are still the primary way that people shop, a full 7% of surveyed consumers said that they only shop online. And, that number is expected to continue to grow.

Do you primarily shop online or do you prefer the traditional retail experience? Why or why not? Please leave us a comment and let us know what you think.