In the “always on” world we live in today prospects and residents expect brands to anticipate and meet their needs in real time. Prospect and resident experience is much more than just a simple sales journey — it’s about engagement. Prospect and residents want the feeling of being heard, getting answers to questions, having issues corrected, and of course a connection to community and brand. As a brand you must give people something meaningful beyond a sales pitch; you must deliver a brilliant end-to-end customer experience, great content, as well as interactive, real-time support. Execution of a strong prospect and resident engagement strategy will foster a strong sense of community, loyalty and ultimately brand growth.

Brands that focus on prospect and resident engagement create value leading to increased revenue generation. Here are seven prospect and resident engagement strategies that can build a loyal customer following:

1.       Prospect and Resident Experience

It starts with your company culture. Ensuring your management team and customer facing frontline is empowered by and shares your focus on providing an amazing prospect and resident experience.  The experience you provide prospects and residents is important as it can increase satisfaction and loyalty creating advocates for your brand. Review your business model with a focus on how you can best serve and help your prospects and residents. When do your prospects and residents need you? What hours do you need to be available to them?

2.       Humanize your brand

At the heart of everything it’s important to understand that every prospect and resident wants to feel you understand their needs and be able to relate to your brand.  Add a face to your brand! Find a personality within in your organization who is passionate about your brand and a natural communicator. Grow that person into a thought leader and give them a voice to humanize your brand and engage your audience. Create opportunities for them to build their presence and promote your brand – they can regularly blog on your own site and guest blog on others, be used in video content, engage in speaking opportunities, present webinars and publish white papers – all ways to establish your brand’s voice with a trusted face.

3.       Let your Brand Speak

Social media is a great place to let your brand off the leash a little. Interesting personas are common on several social media platforms, and it’s a great way to create awareness, engage and even viral traction for your brand.

4.       Understand Where the Line Is

Sassy can be good, but offensive is very, very bad. I’m sure every social media manager has brand social media fails that haunt them in their dreams, from pre-scheduled posts that appear right after a tragedy, misjudged jokes, that accidental post that links to inappropriate material.

5.       Personalize Customer Communications

Personalization can take many forms from the auto-generated happy birthday email to a sophisticated algorithm that makes recommendations based on browsing history. Keep in mind personalization should be about making prospects and residents feel welcomed and known without feeling like you’re intruding by strip-mining their data.

6.       Create Useful Content

Using content to educate customers was a previously underused strategy but it’s now becoming increasingly common to enhance prospect and resident experiences and increases satisfaction. Useful, valuable content for your readers is a keystone of any content marketing strategy. Without content that has worth in your audience’s eyes, you’ll be publishing fluff that no one will care about, easily forgotten and never shared.

7.       Really Listen to What People Are Telling You

The flip side of using social media to differentiate your brand by using it to listen to prospect and resident complaints and thoughtfully respond.  Throughout the day you are responding to customer needs, giving stressed-out, short, quick responses to their concerns and complaints. Whether or not social listening supports your long-term goals, it helps people to feel heard by your brand.  While it can be hard to hear sometimes, honest negative feedback can be one of the most important drivers for a change in an organization.

Ultimately whatever experience strategies you employ, be consistent. Think about your brand messaging, your prospect and resident end-to-end experience from their very first interaction and the various people they will move through. Give them a consistent,  exceptional experience and you’ll be rewarded with their trust and loyalty.