Customer Engagement Using Instagram

Customer engagement is greatly valued in Social Media Marketing. Let us not take rough turns with that. Engagement leads to conversions, but that is the later part. For most marketers, just getting customers to engage with the brand on social media platforms is a major stumbling block.

This is where marketers have started eyeing Instagram for a more personalized customer engagement solution. Courtesy Starbucks’ hugely popular Instagram campaign asking customers to send over clicks of their beverages, personalized customer engagement using visual social media platforms has caught on with marketers.

Devise a Strategy

Similarly, Spain based hotel chain NH Hotels too engaged in a similar campaign with its customers. It prompted customers to post morning snaps from their hotel windows with the hashtag #WakeUpPics. The thought process this campaign initiated in a traveller’s mind was “This could be my morning view. I would like to live here.” The underlying idea of this strategy to convey and display what experience your brand can give to the customer. To show a real customers and your product in use keeps it relevant because it connects at a far more personal level than normal marketing strategies.

A small-time restaurant in Vancouver asked customers to click pictures of their food and post it on Instagram using a specific hashtag. The best were selected and the restaurant started building an online menu for itself. Where this marketing strategy ticks all boxes is that customers know what and how they’ll be served when they drop into this restaurant for a meal.

How this strategy works is that instead of having planned advertised content, you are outsourcing consumer content which tends to establish better connect with prospective consumers. Instead of putting models with a cup of coffee in hand, Starbucks reached out to customers by keeping it real. To a prospective consumer, this initiates a thought process, “That is a real person buying their coffee, I should too.”

Personalize your Strategy

Consumers love personalized reach out. It has been always true, and never before the advent of social media was it so easy to get up, close and personal with your customers. It is a space where a one-to-one engagement is possible with consumers. Consumers value being attended to personally. Consumer content outsourcing thus, kills two birds with one stone. One, it engages currents customers and builds a loyalty circle. Secondly, it also attracts potential customers with a very real marketing campaign which contributes to your brand’s reputation.

Resourceful Strategy

Engaging customers through customer content is also a very resourceful strategy. This is the reason why small business and startups prefer to use this strategy flagrantly. Instead of spending big bucks on creating marketing content, it is more cost-effective to outsource content. Since it is a campaign that rewards them, customers are more than willing to share their snaps. With more and more devices coming with high-end cameras and photo-editing tools and filters, a customer click on a simple smartphone can sometimes rival the best of professional photographers out there. It just makes a lot of sense, quantity wise and quality wise.

There are various ways to get customers to engage with you on Instagram. Asking customers to share their content related to your product is easily one of the most personalized, resourceful, and so far successful formats!