Renowned marketing expert, Mari Smith once said “Content is king, but engagement is queen and she rules the house.” Put simply, the content will always be important to any marketing strategy, but without audience engagement, all that effort is for naught.
After all, what good is the best piece of content if people read it and in the end still don’t take any action? For this reason, audience engagement is one of the most important goals in digital marketing.
Remember, in today’s extra competitive marketplace, sales don’t just happen. Customers must be cultivated and genuinely engaged at every step of the buyer journey. So much so that marketers have even claimed that it generally takes around 6 to 8 engagements to convert a lead into a paying customer.
So how do you increase audience engagement? Let’s look at a few handy tips that we currently utilize here at Tulumi:
1. Know your audience
If you want to engage your audience, the very first step is to identify them. Where are they mostly located? What is their age range? What are their interests? Why will they be interested in your business?
Your answers to these questions will provide you with invaluable insight into your audience.
The more detailed you can get with your audience research, the better and more personalized your marketing will be.
2. Prioritize mobile-friendly web design
More and more people are accessing the web on their smartphones and tablets. All of them expect web pages that fit their device screens perfectly and provide all the functions that they would get with a desktop version.
This means easy navigation, no clunky paragraphs, easy-to-read fonts, and basically everything necessary for an optimized mobile user experience.
3. Crank up the website loading speed
Speaking of user experience, website loading speed is a key consideration. Not only is it critical to engagement, but it’s also one of the most important search engine ranking factors. If it takes too long to load content on your website or to respond to a given function (e,g add to cart, download, etc), people tend to lose interest quickly.
4. Respond to every comment
Audience engagement is simply a form of communication between prospects and your brand. And whenever prospects comment on your blog post, social media post, or any other published content piece, you should make sure to always respond, even if it’s negative feedback.
In most cases, these comments come in the form of questions and inquiries about your product or service. These people expect answers to these questions right away, so be sure to provide them to them promptly.
5. Don’t be afraid to experiment
Marketers do this all the time, especially when they run paid media ads. They split test their ad copies to see which ones brought in the higher engagement and conversions. It’s also a common occurrence in email marketing, where subject lines and calls-to-action (CTA) are varied and tested to see which ones returned the best results.
Experimenting with your content marketing can yield some extremely beneficial insight, which you can then use to further refine your approach.
6. Create and publish engaging content
Perhaps the most important tip on this list. Engaging content is simply the kind of content that delivers the value that your audience came for when they decided to visit your site or social media page. Too ambiguous? Let’s look at the basics of what makes engaging content:
- Compelling titles and headings — This should be concise, yet fully informative, as well as enticing enough to warrant a click.
- Speak directly to your audience — The tone of your content must be suited to your audience. In other words, address them directly and speak in their lingo.
- Nail the content flow — Every line should prompt the reader to want to read the next. Avoid making the same point twice.
- Utilize bite-sized paragraphs — Large blocks of text can quickly discourage one from reading the content further. Even more so on mobile device screens.
- Use clear, compelling CTAs — State categorically what you want your audience to do next after interacting with your content.
- Mix it up — Content also comes in the form of relevant images, infographics, and videos. In fact, video content currently has the highest engagement under content marketing. Don’t limit yourself to text-based content only. People’s attention spans these days are fickle and they’d rather watch a 30-second video than read a 300-word article.
Tulumi Can Help!
At Tulumi, we help brands dominate their digital marketing Orlando and maximize revenues. Let us work with you today to boost engagement and optimize conversions on your marketing efforts. Schedule your FREE consultation by calling (800) 481-1720!