Skip to main content

Engagement Framework Aligns with Buying


Marketers need an intuitive framework that allows them to move away from treating customers as generic segments to focusing on an individual's buying process, according to the latest market study by Forrester Research.

Forrester's assessment says that the framework must align with the multifaceted buying process of today, not the linear process of the past.

How can marketers evolve? The answer is engagement -- the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence that a person has with a brand over time. It's the new approach necessary for mapping intricate customer behaviors into an actionable strategy while aligning them with the buying process.

Engagement measurement encompasses the quantitative and qualitative metrics collected from both online and offline channels. It comprises the concrete individual metrics from store visits and online purchases, to the softer, aggregated insights from brand awareness studies, sentiment, loyalty, and advocacy.

Four components make up the engagement framework:

Involvement -- the presence of a person at the various brand touch-points. Metrics include Web site visitors, time spent per page, physical store visits, impressions from mass media advertising, etc. Data sources include Web Analytics, store traffic reports.

Interaction -- the actions people take while present at those touch-points. Metrics include click-throughs, online transactions, in-store purchases, uploaded photos or videos, etc. Data sources include eCommerce platforms, POS systems, social media platforms.

Intimacy -- the affection or aversion a person holds for a brand. Metrics include sentiment measurement in blog posts, blog comments, discussion forums, customer service call sentiment, etc. Data sources include brand monitoring services, survey responses, customer service call centers.

Influence -- the likelihood a person is to advocate on behalf of the brand. Metrics include brand awareness, loyalty, affinity, repurchases, Net Promoter, satisfaction ratings, forwarded content, etc. Data sources include market research services, brand monitoring, customer service call centers, surveys.

Popular posts from this blog

The $150B Race for AI Dominance

Two years after ChatGPT captured the world's imagination, there's a dichotomy in the enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) market. On one side, technology vendors are making unprecedented investments in AI infrastructure and new feature capabilities. On the other, there's measured adoption from customers who carefully weigh the AI costs and proven use case benefits. Artificial Intelligence Market Development The scale of new investment is significant. Cloud vendors alone were expected to invest over $150 billion in capital expenditures in 2024, with AI infrastructure being the primary driver. This massive bet on AI's future is reflected in the rapid growth of AI server revenue. Looking at just two major players - Dell Technologies and HPE - their combined AI server revenue surged from $1.2 billion in Q4 2023 to $4.4 billion in Q3 2024, highlighting the dramatic expansion. Yet despite these investments, the revenue returns remain relatively modest. The latest TBR resea...