If you want a marketing strategy to be effective, you need your messaging to truly connect with your audience. If your audience doesn’t engage with your marketing materials, they aren’t going to be effective in persuading them.
So how can you tell that your audience isn’t engaging and what can you do about it?
The Engagement Dilemma
Customer engagement is vitally important for your marketing strategy. When customers truly engage with your material, meaning they pay full attention to it and either mentally or physically interact with it, they become much more likely to think positively of your material and remember what they saw or experienced. In other words, when customers are engaged, your marketing becomes much more impactful and memorable.
On top of that, engaging with material often manifests in the form of interactions, which can enhance the visibility and effectiveness of your materials to other customers. For example, if a viewer leaves a comment on one of your videos praising your work, other customers will be likely to see it and absorb it as a form of social proof.
With the help of a fractional CMO, you can set engagement goals for your business and determine where engagement fits with the rest of your marketing strategy. Fractional CMOs excel in high-level strategic planning and consulting, and because they come from outside your organization, they can bring fresh perspective to your direction.
Signals of Disengagement
How can you tell if people aren’t engaging with your marketing materials?
- Low effectiveness. The first signal is a strong one, but it can be a bit ambiguous. If your marketing is overall ineffective, or if it’s not achieving the results you want, engagement could be the culprit. If people aren’t “hooked” by your marketing or if they don’t pay much attention to it, it isn’t going to achieve its full potential.
- Low memory. We see a lot of ads every day. It’s not surprising that we forget most of them immediately after seeing them. But if people consistently forget your advertising or aren’t able to associate it with your brand, it could be a sign that they’re actively disengaged with the content. You can use surveys and focus group interviews to determine how much people remember from your ads.
- Few interactions. Another more prominent signal is that people aren’t interacting with materials that give them the option. If you make a post on social media and almost no one “likes” or comments on it, that’s a bad sign. On certain platforms, you’ll have access to even deeper statistics, like how long people watch your videos before leaving.
Why Customers Aren’t Engaging
Why aren’t your customers engaging with your marketing materials?
- Lack of relevance. One of the most common reasons behind a lack of customer engagement is an overall lack of relevance. If your messaging doesn’t resonate with your target audience or doesn’t align with their needs, they’re not going to pay attention to it.
- Lack of originality. People also tend to disengage with things they’ve seen before. If you’re regurgitating common cliches or if you’re copying past examples of successful advertising, you’re doing your brand a disservice.
- Lack of authenticity/personality. Brand authenticity is more important than ever. If people believe that you’re merely making a cheap attempt to manipulate them into buying products, they probably won’t resonate with your advertising.
- Lack of substance/meaning. The same is true if you don’t have much substance or meaning behind your work. Your marketing doesn’t always have to be a work of art, but it should have a clear message, such as a compelling narrative or a valuable takeaway for your customers.
- Improper context. If you want your customers to engage with your ads, you need to place them in a proper context. Although guerilla advertising and other novel marketing methods can sometimes pay off, people are often turned off by ads they don’t expect.
- Overkill. Sometimes, the problem is too much of a good thing. Even if your marketing materials are otherwise engaging, they may become disengaging through excessive repetition or placement.
The Solutions
So what are the solutions? Unfortunately, the answer is going to entirely depend on the circumstances. There are many ways to make marketing materials more engaging, but nearly all of them are dependent on the circumstances. The nature of your brand, your target audience, your marketing goals, the type of marketing you engage in, and the problems you’ve experienced thus far should all factor into that equation.
One thing is certain, however; you’ll need to experiment if you want to find the right solutions for your brand. Don’t be afraid to try new things and commit several rounds of testing so you can find the ideal blend of solutions.
