Customers today are exposed to marketing messages virtually everywhere they go. With so many advertisements competing for your customer’s attention, how can you be sure they are even engaging with you message at all? There are several ways you can increase user engagement to be sure that your carefully-crafted message does not go unheard.

Invite Interaction

One of the most effective ways to increase user engagement in your marketing message is to craft an interactive marketing message. One of the best examples of how this can be done is seen in McDonalds’ annual Monopoly sweepstakes.

Here, McDonalds creates hype around their food, and invites the customer to play a game centered completely around their brand. The prizes range from free food all the way to the grand prize of $1,000,000. Each prize invites customers back to McDonalds to redeem their free prize, thereby soliciting continued interaction in this B2C relationship.

Because the game is actually fun and exciting for the customers, the customers are happy to engage with the marketing message. As a direct result of this promotion, McDonalds has recognized sales growth from 1-6%.

Online marketing messages can be equally interactive when they are designed to force the customer to click on a message and ensure that the message is actually noticed.

However, it is critical that the message be valuable to the customer in order to avoid having your message be seen as an annoying disruption. To increase engagement here, your message could be a popup window asking a customer if they would like to receive a coupon via email.

This is a win-win situation for the retailer and the consumer because the retailer is able to obtain email addresses to target additional marketing messages, while the customer receives a coupon that they will find useful.

If the customer then goes through with making a purchase the retailer gains an additional benefit of increased conversion rates from this pop-up ad.

Include your Target Customers in the Creation of an Ad

Customers who are already fans of your brand can participate in crafting an ideal message. Social media ads that utilize hashtags from customers are a simple, easy way to allow your customers to engage with your marketing message.

Aerie, a women’s clothing retailer recently launched a campaign revolving around having a positive self-image in order to allow their customers to not only share Aerie products, but also feel good about the overall message they are participating in sharing.

Mobile Marketer reported “With the love your selfie campaign, Aerie is encouraging women to celebrate the real version of themselves and post unedited pictures to social media with the hashtag #AerieREAL.”

Here, Aerie benefits from the increased incentive to share pictures of their clothing on social media, and from the increased presence of authentic social media advertising and engagement.

Each picture that is hashtagged represents a customer who engaged with the marketing message.

Make the Ad Easy to Share

By making your marketing message easy to share, you are increasing the likelihood that it will be communicated through your customers to other potential customers who you may not be in touch with.

Keep your message concise, and if possible, use a picture to help draw attention to it.

You can further increase the likelihood that the message will be shared if you incentivize sharing with a marketing promotion. In this case, the customer will share the message you want them to, and their friends and followers will then be exposed to that same message.

The coupon attached to the message serves as a means to entice existing and new customers to shop with your business. A message that is easy to share is a message that is easy to engage with.

Become mobile-centric

By nature, mobile phones are designed to capture a user’s attention. If a customer is unengaged with a marketing message on another channel, it is probably because they were too distracted by their phone to pay attention!

Mashable reports that “Mobile is a much more personal, interactive, engaged platform than desktop, and should be used as such.”

Your business needs to be leveraging the growing popularity of smartphones to make sure that you are reaching your customers on a channel they are inherently engaged with.

By prioritizing mobile marketing, you don’t have to worry about creating a reason for the customer’s to engage since it already exists. You only need to make sure that your message is optimized to reach mobile users.

You are going to want to have a mobile site that connects to your marketing message, and that loads quickly. If your message can be tailored to meet the expectations of mobile users, you greatly increase the odds of your customers engaging with your message.

Conclusion

Overall, marketing teams spend a lot of time and money creating messages that will appeal to their target market. However, if customers are not engaging with their message, the time and money was wasted.

To engage your customers you should be inviting interaction, including them in the message itself, and reaching them on channels they are already engaged with. By keeping these key ideas in mind, you can greatly increase user engagement in your marketing message.