New-ish rules of engagement
A springboard for engaging customers beyond the feed.
Hello there, and welcome to all newbies! I’m back from a longer break and consulting stint, and armed with a lot of perspectives on all the exciting things happening in the brand and marketing space. Cause, wow, what a season it’s been!
As we get back to our desks and re-focus for Q4, it’s worth taking a bird’s eye view of what is happening in marketing and, more specifically, consumer engagement. Let’s also remember that engagement is the little sister of experience. And both need our attention to nurture sustainable customer connections.
As always, I invite you to ponder, challenge and share your thoughts in the comments or by replying to this email.
There’s something interesting afoot in consumer behavior. Consumers are not engaging with brands the way they used to. And brands are grappling with it.
Content engagement is down versus pre-pandemic levels. But consumers are still engaging; just off-stage and out of the spotlight.
Engagement rates on Instagram have plummeted by 30% in 2023, and Accenture reports a nearly 15% cut in brand experience investments in 2023. I can confirm this shift from my own observations on LinkedIn, where more than a few people have shared, that likes are down but views are up. And those views have resulted in business.
What gives? As a strategist, I love a good conundrum.
What’s driving this?
This “covert consumption” reflects a larger trend where people are retreating from the noisy main feed of social media to quieter, more intimate spaces like private groups and messaging apps. This shift is driven by a desire for less pressure and more genuine connections, which is also in line with growing conversations about mental health and wellbeing.
But it’s not just a shift; it’s a rift. And it bleeds from b2c environments into b2b behaviours because professionals are people, too.
Brian Solis in The Worth describes an economic fragmentation in three core groups taking place. One of these groups he terms the “Introvert Economy.” While I might quibble with the term “introvert,” his observation mirrors my own behaviour of moving from public feeds to more private, personal interactions.
But where are these introvert spaces? In places like newsletters, which are thriving; blending the mass reach of traditional media with the exclusivity of private communities. Substack’s 90% growth in subscribers from 2020 to 2022 is a testament to this trend, highlighting how consumers are gravitating towards more personalized content, and enjoy the focus of having it right in their inbox.
I remember starting this newsletter in 2018, a time when the “Newsletters are dead” was the predominant opinion of marketing gurus. I was convinced otherwise, so glad I followed my professional instinct.
But let’s not jump the gun: sharing, commenting and creating are far from dead. They’re just taking place in different spaces. And it’s uncovering surprising opportunities for brands on how to lean into this.
Why does this matter?
Because brands need to stop dragging their feet. With some consumers moving away from public feeds, how do you capture their attention and engage them with your brand in private spaces? This is a real challenge that requires real brain work.
There are new rules of engagement, and brands will have to crack their customers’ needs even better to earn their consideration.
As brands evaluate their customer groups (segmentation) and personalize experiences (hopefully), a new challenge presents itself: How to engage these feed-shy groups? And how to know if engagement is working, when consumer interactions might well be taking place in private DMs or closed groups? The brand has no view and no control. Good-bye real-time audience feedback — and any kind of measurement, for that matter.
Don’t despair: Brands have options — and they’re totally manage-able. But they need to be done right.
Really KNOW your customers
Sure, every brand probably nails their demos and has anywhere between 4-12 personas all lined up, pretty and designed to a T.
But if you’re not digging deep beneath the surface to uncover a gem of an insight in how a behavior has changed, why it might have changed, and what motivations might be, then you and your competitor might as well be looking at the exact same persona. As a strategist who regularly works with personas, I can attest to the fact that, sadly, many clients or peers just don’t go deep enough.
Every brand needs to have a point of view on their customers that is distinctive. Which brings me to this:
Get really REALLY good at providing value
Through your product, its features, your service team, your brand extracurriculars (i.e. education, programs, contributions etc.).
Through every piece of content, every campaign, every channel, every interaction.
Be present where your customer is. Use data to understand what channels matter most, what behaviours are prevalent — and pour your resources into those.
If you’re delivering meaningful value, if you’re delivering a great experience — no matter how big or small — then your customer will buy from you. They will talk about you in those private spaces. They will recommend you. And, most importantly, they will buy from you again.
And that’s how you measure engagement in the long-term, in case you were wondering when that comes into play. I’ll leave short-term measurement for another article.
And lastly:
Write your own engagement playbook
Question your engagement goals. Ask yourself what you need to give in order to get your customer on board. Think about long-term strategies that drive loyalty and have customers coming back for more, instead of short-term gains.
And come up with programs that are helpful, fun, valuable; and messaging that is sincere. Ditch the click-bait, every consumer is part marketer by now. Your tactic is more transparent than you think.
Brands will have to work harder to gain their customers’ likes and spending.
The rules of engagement need a creative re-write. Reaching consumers that discuss your brand off-stage instead of out in the spotlight means creative new approaches are needed. Strategies need to be hyper-adaptive, hyper-personalised and truly customer-centric instead of brand- (ego) driven. Because, let’s be honest, the brand is still at the center of every strategy, am I right?
This is a chance to truly put customer connection and value at the center of your business. I don’t know about you, but that sounds thrillingly daunting. Are you up for it?
Side note: In the b2b space, covert consumption has been the reality for a while now. But many companies have been too tempted by flashy b2c strategies to focus on what happens outside of the brand’s direct control. High time to remedy that.