You’re probably reading this because you have a brand and you want to engage your customers so that they feel connected to your brand. You look at big brands like Nike, L.L. Bean, Sephora, and Home Depot who have huge followings and real brand connection with their customers. How do you get there when you have no control over which post, reel, video, or website page your customer will see when they start the interaction? The first thing to do is decide what conversations you want to have.

When you talk about everything, you say almost nothing

There are big box stores, like Walmart, that sell a little bit of everything. You can buy tires if you have a common size. You can buy vegetables if you don’t want anything exotic. You can buy sheets if you don’t want a lot of colors or patterns. This is actually a really hard strategy to make work. How do you advertise everything? How do you compete with everyone? They can’t effectively position themselves as the expert because they don’t carry expert-level merchandise in any category. It’s a real challenge. Big box stores typically have conversations about price and convenience because they know that they can’t have in-depth conversations in any category they sell. But they are one-stop shopping and they have great prices.

What conversations should you be having?

The ones that matter to your customers and you can support with your brand authority and key competitive advantages. To do that, you need to figure out what your customers care about. Start with what you sell. If you sell clothing and accessories online you can look at who your customer is: Age, income, gender, hobbies, and education level is a good start. Then think about how what you sell can help them, delight them, or educate them. What makes your company special? Why should they buy from you and not another company? What expertise can you offer them? Go where they’re hanging out online. Visit your competitors’ sites. Stay curious!

Does the conversation need to have a start and an end?

Yes and no. Yes, each conversation has to have a start, but none of them have to have an end. That’s the beauty of online conversations. You can add links to continue the conversation, ask for feedback, and invite the customer to return. Because the order of any conversation is random and uncontrollable you have to assume that you are always starting fresh. If you’re dropping knowledge on folks, you need to make it easy for them to self-select their level of expertise so they don’t feel stupid. A store that sells fishing gear will want to keep the conversation at a pretty high level so they don’t lose the serious fisherfolk, but the newbies will need links that make it easy to keep up. The newbies who fall in love with fishing are likely to upgrade gear faster than the folks who already have great gear they only replace when it breaks.

Do you need words to have conversations?

No, you don’t. Think of all your customer interactions as conversations. If you create a coupon for 10% off, don’t stop at 10% off. Have a conversation about why they should buy from you and what getting extra can do for them. You can do this with words or images of best sellers and customers enjoying your products. Think about the fishing store example. Offering a 10% off coupon is great, but adding a picture of a grandparent teaching their grandchild how to fish is even better. It turns the coupon into a visual conversation.

If you are a Shopify store and want to look at other ways to engage your customers visually, take a look at Stylaquin. Stylaquin delights and engages shoppers, so that they stay longer, view more items, come back more often, and buy more when they do!