Effective customer engagement (CE) is critical for B2B companies to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. It is how brands guide customers through their sales process and distinguish themselves from competitors.

Customer engagement strategies boost brand confidence and loyalty among target audiences. It is an intentional, ongoing process to create dialogue and cultivate positive B2B buyer relationships that extend far beyond a transaction.

Customer engagement helps meet buyers' expectations and increases close rates for suppliers. Improving customer engagement helps strengthen long-term client relationships, reduces churn and increases customer lifetime value.

However, with the rise of self-led customer journeys and no-touch sales, traditional engagement methods are falling short. B2B brands must now adopt a data-driven approach towards engagement to build strong relationships with customers in a digital-first world.

The Role of Customer Engagement in B2B Success

To understand Customer Experience strategy, it helps to separate it from the related concepts of customer experience and customer satisfaction.

• CX focuses on optimising systems, platforms, and channels to deliver an experience that meets customer needs.

• Customer satisfaction focuses on how well your business and products or services match customer expectations.

CX and customer success play a role in creating a healthy brand reputation. However, neither one automatically guarantees loyal customers.

For instance, you can build a customer experience which fails to create an ongoing relationship with your users. Buyers can come, use your streamlined ordering system, and leave. You might never hear from them again.

Likewise, satisfied customers are not always engaged customers. Someone could be a repeat buyer without joining a loyalty programme or recommending your business.

Customer engagement focuses on the relationships that can grow from good CX and consistent customer satisfaction. It explores how to encourage users to become active participants in your brand instead of remaining passive recipients of an experience. It understands how to leverage content, sales calls, customer service chats, and other brand-customer interactions to cultivate positive, ongoing relationships.

Changing technology and a rapidly shifting business climate mean brands have more engagement opportunities to leverage than ever before. However, to fully take advantage of these opportunities, sales and marketing teams need to adopt data-led engagement tactics and strategies.

Automating data collection and analysis with AI and machine learning can uncover valuable audience insights. A data-driven approach enables businesses to make more informed decisions about their engagement strategies, helping them to: 

Gain a competitive edge. By understanding clients' needs and expectations, businesses can maintain sales momentum, even in a period of inflation and a potential recession. For instance, in the 2023 Antavo Loyalty Report, 88% trusted customer loyalty initiatives to help them navigate the current economic climate. 

Enhance customer relationships. A recent study by Merkle found that incumbent B2B brands are in a weaker position than ever. For example, in 34% of sales included in the study, the current vend lost out (versus only 29% in 2022). By leveraging engagement data, brands can help B2B buyers feel safe about their decision, deepen relationships, and increase customer retention.

Maximise ROI on marketing and sales efforts. Analysing customer data helps businesses optimise their engagement strategies and drive increased sales and revenue. A BCG global survey shows that investing in data-based strategies can increase customer conversion rates by 10-12%. They also reported a 2-2.5x growth in customers with increased basket size.

To fully leverage CE strategies, businesses must rethink customer journey maps according to a holistic understanding of customer behaviour. This improved view of buying journeys helps teams identify the right touchpoints to boost engagement.

It plays a critical role in creating the omnichannel experiences modern B2B buyers demand. By understanding customers' preferences and problems, brands can select the best tactics and channels to engage their audience. And by focusing on empathy and sense-making, businesses can create more meaningful interactions throughout the entire customer journey. This approach allows for deeper connections and resonates with customers on a personal level.

Marketing Automation and Content Marketing for Engagement

Leading B2B marketers understand that personalisation is at the core of successful customer engagement. As such, they are investing in technology to better create, deliver, and measure tailored content across the customer cycle.

Content marketing supports relationship-building by offering helpful information during the buyer's journey. Content helps to create a strong connection with potential customers. It is how you address their specific business challenges and offer a unique perspective that fosters a positive brand perception.

However, content is just one aspect. Even the best information won't engage users if it's poorly presented.

That is why sales and marketing automation and analytics tools are necessary to bring customer engagement strategy to life. These systems are how B2B marketers can create continuous, omnichannel journeys that support engagement efforts.

Automation streamlines the purchase process, maintains high engagement quality, and supports large-scale operations. Such tools help sales and marketing teams provide the self-led experience many B2B buyers want. For instance, an AI chatbot can provide on-demand help for routine customer service queries and e-commerce upselling.

Automation also allows human representatives to be employed where their skills truly shine, namely engaging in complex, person-to-person interactions. Automating tasks, such as email marketing, frees up time for teams to engage with customers seeking a human touch.

Why You Need a Data-Driven Approach to Customer Engagement

As competition increases, price, product, and even experience no longer provide the same market advantage as they once did. Instead, brands must compete on the value of their customer relationships. As such, taking a strategic, data-driven approach to customer engagement has become increasingly important over the past few years.

A modern customer engagement strategy provides valuable feedback, data, and insights across the entire B2B customer lifecycle. It collects and aggregates data from multiple sources, including customer interactions with content, website analytics, social media, CRM systems, and surveys. This data can help you form a comprehensive understanding of your customers, their preferences, and their pain points. It creates a feedback loop, as engagement insights can be used to improve marketing decisions and sales processes.

A major advantage of a data-driven approach to customer engagement is the ability to segment audiences. Doing so enables you to tailor your engagement strategies to deliver targeted experiences for each customer group. For example, you can optimise communication and engagement tactics to reach users across different channels, platforms, and devices.

Data-driven customer engagement also helps align sales and marketing teams. A unified view of customers helps sales and marketing to understand each other's role in the buyer's journey. This alignment helps foster better communication and collaboration and leads to more effective and coordinated campaigns and interactions with customers. With shared goals and KPIs, both teams can work together to drive growth and revenue.

The data-driven insights from CE strategy also help sales and marketing teams develop more accurate lead scoring and qualification criteria. Instead of flooding the pipeline with every prospect that comes their way, marketing only passes high-quality leads to sales. This boosts conversion chances and saves sales reps' time on unqualified leads.

Customer engagement insights can also improve Account-Based Marketing (ABM). Teams can create distinct personas for those involved in purchase decisions. Doing so helps them to create hyper-personalised ABM strategies based on high-value customer expectations. This targeted approach saves time and resources by creating meaningful interactions with the purchase team members.

Finally, a data-driven approach allows businesses to measure and improve their efforts. This iterative process helps identify areas of improvement and drives continuous learning and growth. The result is more effective strategies over time. Businesses can ensure they stay ahead of trends and deliver the most impactful interactions with their customers.

Getting Customer Engagement Right with 1827 Marketing

Customer engagement plays a critical role in shaping winning B2B marketing strategies. The more you understand how customers feel when interacting with your brand, the more effectively you can reach them.

A data-driven approach to customer engagement helps create better purchase journeys and improves relationships. By focusing on relationship building, you encourage customers to form an emotional connection with your brand. The result is in deeper loyalty and increased sales and revenue.

Contact 1827 Marketing today to learn more about a data-led approach for your B2B marketing. Our experts will help develop tailored engagement strategies for your target audience, optimised for success.