Choosing the right channels to engage customers

Choose the right channels to reach parents

To build an effective online presence, the very first step is to understand how your customers discover, consider, and purchase the products or services they need. It helps you pick the right channels to reach and engage them.

In this article, let’s assume you are operating a learning center, planning to promote your interest classes online.

Customer journey

In an old-fashioned way, you may post an Ad about your classes online, and hope parents do the following:

See your Ad about your interest classes

Call you to ask about a class

We all know the situation above is too ideal and barely happen. More realistic (still highly simplified though) scenarios of parents looking for interest classes for their kids can be like:

Research via Google, social media, forums, other parents, etc.

Browse your website for details

Ask about a class via your website’s eForm

Forget the class

See your social media post about the class benefits

Ask questions via live chat

Forget the class (again)

Receive your email about a special offer for new students

Digital channels

Having the scenarios above, we can identify what channels we need to develop, and define what they do in the customer journey:

Social media channels, like Facebook and Instagram, allow you to reach parents using their targeting functionality. You can target your social media ad by interest (e.g. parenting), age range (25-45), and other relevant criteria, and even target the ad at the parents who visited your website to reiterate the values of your services to arouse their interest.

Website

When parents visit your website, they probably already know what they need in their minds, so your website needs to provide them with concrete information for their decision making: the values of your services, what their children will experience, fees, etc., and a smooth user experience (UX) of registration and enquiry via e-forms or live chat.

Live Chat

Busy parents may not be patient enough to fill in an enquiry form and wait for your response. Live chat has become essential in modern websites. A prominent chat bubble can encourage parents to ask questions, giving you opportunities to understand and address their needs promptly with the human touch, which significantly increases the chance to turn them into your customers.

Email

Parents will feel privileged to receive an email with a special offer dedicated to them, and it can become the final touchpoint of customer conversation. But you need to have their email addresses and consent to send them promotional emails. Lead generation campaigns with gated content can capture parents’ contacts via your website or social media channels.

If you don’t have many resources to build all the channels, the top priority is to make your website content able to promote the value of your offers to customers, and streamline the buyers’ journey. We also provide one-stop services to get your digital channels ready, so that you can concentrate on your business operations. Find out more

A website visit is like a first date: you need to show your best, otherwise he or she will never come back.

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