Since I’ve been active on social media, I’ve seen the term customer engagement bandied about as the key to marketing, word of mouth, and good dental health. That wouldn’t bother me if there was some indication that the people using the phrase indicated they shared a common meaning for the term. I could overlook that as the usual buzz wordism of today’s world.
What bothers me is that customer engagement, particularly online is NOT the tool most people think it is. In fact, we know it isn’t. In fact, we know that customer engagement is a cost, in some cases, and not revenue producing.
Professionals who have been doing ecommerce on the web for over ten years know this. For example, did you know that the lowest click thrus for text ads occur on bulletin board systems, and forums? Did you know that one of the reasons YouTube has not been profitable (it probably will be this year), is because the videos are so engaging that people don’t go there to spend money, or notice the revenue producing ads?
Did you know that gaming sites are notorious for being difficult to monetize? No?
All of the talk about customer engagement being so important is a mystery. Yes, you need content. Yes, your websites, blogs, whatever features you have need to provide value and reasons for visitors to come. We’ve known all that for ten years. What you do not want is for the content to be so involving (as is the case for games, or social interaction sites) that visitors don’t see anything else on the pages.
That’s business. Pure and simple. Forget about the customer engagement fanatics, online. It may work in football to sell beer, but it won’t work with most online enterprises.
