Why engagement-led marketing is the future of marketing for consumer businesses

The era of customization has passed. Brands now are switching to hyper personalized dialogue with the consumers. This kind of dialogue sets up the consumer journey wherever the consumer wants to lead it. With the growth in technology in marketing brands today can connect robustly with consumers across different communication channels in various ways. From promotion discounts to order confirmations to remarketing to customer reviews etc, brands interact with consumers constantly to improve customer experience.

Engagement led marketing is becoming an important part of every marketer’s arsenal. It brings you consumer to sit at the table, to become a part of the brand story.

The modern consumer,

Craves content. With so much content available online, consumers need easy to browse through, useful content that adds value to their lives. That is a large list of parameters for content to qualify, but then again the quantity of content competing for consumer attention is also huge.

Likes to have a dialogue. Millennials and GenZ are highly educated consumers who do their research on products and brands well in advance for buying anything. They like to keep their point forward and do not like to be forced into a brand conversation.

Brands need to make content that lets the consumers approach the brand themselves. The content brands make needs to be worth a reaction. Getting a reaction from a person on an email out of the 100 emails he swipes past each day is a mammoth task.

Demands Transparency. The new age consumer is hyper-connected to friends, family and even brands. This is not the age for big faceless corporations running the world. This is the age of consumers and brands forming impeccable journeys of growth.

Brands managers need to present their brand as an open book and answer this question on a regular basis, ‘Describe your brand as if it were a person’.

Brands with a purpose are sought after. Again, imagining a brand as a person, wouldn’t you want the brand you buy from, to have certain values it believes in? Millennials are highly value driven and want the brands they buy from align with their values.

A research done by Edelman in 2019 states 64% of people don’t buy from a brand due to its position on a social or political issue.

Indian brand campaigns that defined the term ‘engagement’ in the best way possible.

Saffola Beat the Crave WhatsApp campaign:

Saffola did this campaign to promote its new slimming nutri shake. The campaign concept was that we all have unhealthy food cravings at times. At that time if you have someone to distract your mind from those cravings until they pass, it would help you stay healthy.

Saffola sent users entertaining audio clips or motivational messages to distract them from that craving.

Once the user adds his number on the microsite, the Saffola #BeatTheCrave account sent the first message and user receives the first voice note. Then onwards whenever the user feels a craving he can text #BeatTheCrave account and the diet buddy will reply with a voice note or a motivational message.

The #BeatTheCrave WhatsApp campaign increased Saffola's Nutri-Shake product sales by 483% within the first month according to WATConsult.

Zomato, adding quirk to our inbox:

Zomato has been revolutionizing engagement led marketing, be it on social media or on mail.

Biryani was the highest selling dish on Zomato during lockdown with 44 lacs plus orders. Zomato sent a witty curriculum vitae of Biryani on mail to fill the role of ‘chief cravings officer in our hearts’.

Here is how it looks like,

Zomato has been using insights and humour to drive its email communication. It is a brand you would not want to unsubscribe.

BookMyShow hooks up with dream girl:

BookMyShow used their mobile push notifications in an ingenious way. They made their push notification look like a missed call from dream girl with an IVR number. The CTR on the push notification was 9X the benchmark CTR received by other BMS push notifications.

BookMyShow received quite a lot of user generated content in form of responses across social media for this brilliant push notification idea.

This is what happens when brands do something the audience has not expected them to do. They get the best kind of media, ie earned media.

Engagement-led marketing is the way to go for brands, even more so, as the world gets more hyper-connected by the second and the content quantity and quality both improves across all online channels.