Consumerism is booming. With more and more brands mushrooming across categories, companies will have to proactively think and bring innovation in engaging the consumer at the marketplace. Brands which aim to bring new ways to attract and engage consumers at the retail level will only be able to survive the stiff competition in the marketplace. Consumer engagement can be in different forms. The engagement model has to be unique and should have the power to capture the mind of the consumer when he goes shopping. With so many choices and ranges available to the consumer in various product segments, marketers need to have sharp and focused consumer engagement strategy to attract him.

After buzzwords like knowledge management, re-engineering, business processing, etc., it is now the turn of consumer engagement. Consumer engagement starts when all of us take our kids for nursery school admission. The school management in its interview grills the parents and kids but while the parents sit and reply to the questions the kids are actively engaged in the playroom with lots of toys to play. During this engagement, the parents comfortably fend the questions while the child is kept engaged. The engagement with the kids through those toys helps the school to understand the kid better while the parents are able to meet the interviewee panel with comfort and ease.

This is a very important marketing tool that most schools with reputation and name effectively used to attract the best talent to the school. The definition of consumer engagement is nothing but politely and meaningfully having a dialog with the prospect to get the customer closer to experience the brand. Of course, there will be several definitions in books one can look at, but at the end of the day consumer engagement has to lead to conversion across brands. Hence, it is of prime importance that consumer engagement is thoughtfully planned with a strategy, which has a killer instinct to win over the consumer.

You have active and passive engagements with the consumer. Active engagement is more of a two-way interaction where the consumer closely interacts to get to know more about the brand starting from its key attributes to the overall look and feel. In the case of passive engagement, it is other external props, frills and value-added offerings that entice the consumer to experience the brand.

Advertising Express Magazine, Consumer Engagement, Social networking Websites, Marketing Environment, World Federation of Advertisers, WFA, Marketing and Communication Strategies, Engagement Marketing, Brand Engagement, Call Consumer-Generated media, CCGM.