Like vs. Love – Are Your Customers That into You?

Love is in the air: Valentine’s Day is here. Today we’re surrounded by heart shaped candies, flowers and romantic gestures. With that in mind, relationships are crucial every day of the year, not just today. So how do you know if your customers just like you, or if they love you?

Fear not, there are a few ways to find out how deep your customer relationships really go, or if it’s time for a tune-up.

Are You Engaged?

Your customers like you, but do you have their love? This is where a brand’s engagement rate details whether your customers are merely passersby or engaged users and brand advocates. Engagement rate is a helpful measure to gauge if your audience is feeling the love you are putting out there – after all. there’s nothing worse than a one-sided relationship. Lucky for you, engagement rate is easily calculated by dividing your total impressions (people who saw your post) by total interactions (likes, comments & shares). Engagement rate is expressed as a percentage, so for ease of use, multiply the result by 100.

The benefit of analyzing engagement rate is that it is independent of page size. That means you can take a brand with 1 million fans and compare it to a brand with 200k fans, with unbiased results. Engagement rate can be calculated by post or by page to provide greater insight into the type of content that performs best.

Your Sentiment Score

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day normalcy of a relationship and assume your customers feel positively about you until they say otherwise. For our purposes, social sentiment is a quantitative score based on whether perception of your brand is positive or negative.  Unlike engagement rate, a sentiment score is dependent upon how well your social listening tools process and decipher nuances in language surrounding your brand.

Goodness knows relationships can be fickle and the last thing you want is a nasty break up, especially broadcasted on social media. Your customers’ feelings can constantly change, that’s why accurate insights are critical, because you can’t fix a problem you didn’t know existed.

Opposites Attract

When it comes to social media and email, no truer words were spoken. With the proliferation of social platforms, it can be tempting to forgo your email marketing. Contrary to popular belief, email marketing isn’t dying. In fact, when paired together, targeted social media and email campaigns are two forces that combine to create a powerful marketing mix.

Each platform adds unique value and there should be compromise between the two. For instance, analyze your customers’ social media preferences to influence and target future email messaging. While social media provides the opportunity to connect with potential customers and build an army of brand influencers and advocates.

Reward Your Customers’ Love

Research shows that when consumers who are introduced to a brand by a friend they are more likely to recommend the brand themselves. So now is the perfect time to show your loyal customers some love. Whether it’s a simple thank you, giveaway or creation of a referral program, your brand should always strive to recognize and reward loyal customers or positive reviews year-round.

For more inspiration for your content marketing, continue to read our blog or connect with us to put a little love into your marketing mix.

Updated: Apr 13, 2022