In today’s time when the social media and mobile marketing is constantly evolving, the marketers have to be on their toes always and adapt themselves to the new trends. This is the key to staying competitive in the market; if you fail to adapt, it will not be long before that your business would face doomsday. Today, there is no single right or wrong approach or one correct answer to cater to the needs of the customers. 
With the drastic increase in the usage of mobile phone and social networking platforms for shopping and connecting with the brands, marketers around the globe are trying to available at the customer’s service right at their finger tip. Not to mention, the brands today are taking all the efforts to be available at their potential clients’ disposal at the customer’s own convenient time. The objective is to provide the customers with a seamless experience. For all the amateur marketers out there, the experts suggest that here is how they should look at customer engagement in the age of social, mobile and messaging.
Mobile is the big thing
Research conducted by comScore indicates that time spent by people across all digital platforms, the mobile usage accounts to 65% and major activities include checking e-mails, using social media platforms for connecting with friends, carrying out daily tasks and shopping. Marketers have realised the importance of engaging customers on their mobile phones and therefore are optimising their content for small screens. Research also indicates that by the end of 2018, online shoppers will place more orders on their phones than any other devices.
This opens up a huge avenue for marketers to engage with their customers. However, marketers must realise the fact that mobile marketing is all about timeliness and creating a sense of urgency. Based on the customer’s preferences, marketers can send push notifications through messages or apps to keep the customers updated about the status of the order or offer them an exclusive promotional offer.
Social media has become the cornerstone of brands
A popular headwear brand LIDS, over the years, one the back of its strong social media strategies developed a huge fan base. However, the company soon realised that to sustain for a long time, it had to make the social media marketing the centre of all their marketing efforts. Consequently, to (or “intending to”) get a better understanding of customer engagement on social media platforms what the company did was? They build a social media command centre that constantly keeps a tab on the traffic and study the behavioural pattern of the visitors.
The brand today is also keeping a close eye on what the people are talking about LIDS. The command centre also drives the communication of the marketing team in a way that it is easy to fathom for a layperson. The efforts of the command centre reaped huge rewards for LIDS; the brand’s fan following on Facebook skyrocketed from 450,000 followers to 800,000 followers.
Messaging is the future of customer engagement
The future of customer engagement on digital platforms greatly depends on how brands figure out how they find the right balance between public and private applications. It is highly unlikely that people would tweet their credit card number or post the same on Facebook to complete their online purchase with a particular retailer. At the same time, it is not very convenient for the brands to conduct business through e-mails or phone calls. In such a situation, the messaging apps provide a middle ground for both the customers and the marketers.
In recent times, brands across the globe are increasingly using messaging apps like Whatsapp for their business purposes. These apps do not allow marketers to serve customers automatically but also helps maintain a one-to-one experience for the customers.
