Today’s brands are embracing customer engagement and it's paying off.

Did you know data management is now the top challenge for brands, outranking all other concerns? 

Marketers are obsessed with numbers and data, but are we even looking at the right numbers? Have you ever accumulated more Instagram followers, only to ask yourself the questions, “Why are we doing this?” or “What is the real intention here?” When most people say they want higher engagement, they mean that they want to see more “likes” or “comments” on the content they’ve posted to Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn. This is proof that we’ve fallen into the trap of letting our social media tools dictate what we should want, instead of utilizing them to meet our own goals. 

Who said abundant likes and comments were more significant than what the comments actually say? We are measuring quantity over quality. Technically, we’re measuring specific, limited actions, but we’re not measuring whether those actions are evidence of a meaningful connection with our message. When gathered in the traditional, social-media platform-driven way, these types of measurements result in empty, useless data. The problem is, we’re not evaluating how those tools can better serve us. We are not measuring personal connection—again, the thing we all crave. Instead, we’ve been stuck in a popularity contest of our own making. We need to take back control. We can’t keep letting the tools we use tell us how to define engagement. We need to redefine engagement to align with the meaningful human connection we want.

Online engagement is one way that can help us make informed decisions about our business. The data provided to us is not the end-all, be-all of engagement; it is one aspect of engagement. Even so, we so often forget that those numbers (likes, followers, shares) represent actual human beings! We need a new way to think about engagement that will withstand the test of time. The tools of engagement are rapidly changing, and so we need to ensure we aren’t letting these tools define our engagement success. 

As brands expand and evolve their digital strategies, they’re generating even more data as customers interact with new and varied touch points. While this data is integral to meeting customers’ wants and needs, it can sometimes be overwhelming for brands to manage and with third-party cookies on the decline, we’re entering the era of zero- and first-party data.

What's your go-to strategy for managing your customer journey and ensuring the interactions are meaningful vs. transactional?