Shop Local Engagement- the name itself shows promise for the growth of local shops and businesses. But what is it exactly?

Shop local engagement, put simply, refers to increasing engagement or participation from your local customers on your online platform. When more customers are engaged, it means they like your brand and trust you, and your sales reflect it. Customer engagement is important for all businesses- no matter their sizes, presence, or types.

While there are plenty of strategies you can follow, we’ve outlined a few of the best ways to create a quality engagement program for local businesses.

• Creating BuzzThe most important stage in creating customer engagement is to establish recognition among your customer base. Engagement programs can’t work if customers don’t know who you are and what your shop sells.Your customers need to know the benefits of shopping locally. Show them the multiple societal benefits like increase in employment, bringing in more local business, encouraging creativity and innovation, becoming environmentally friendly (low carbon footprint), and much more. Today, people are becoming more environmentally conscious and tend to move towards brands that help them stick to that environmentalism.Your customers need to know who you are and the benefits of buying from you. Once they get familiar with the benefits of your products, they will be more likely to buy from you.

  NextBee’s Shop Local Engagement programs are built for this kind of buzz creation. We help local businesses create a buzz around their business and gain more customers. We build curiosity and excitement among customers as they become more intrigued by your offerings.

• Building a CommunityCreating a community of supporters is essential. Establish a place online where they can talk to each other, help each other, get in touch with your business and convey what they expect from you as a brand. Community engagement is crucial to increasing engagement and brand awareness.Online communities are also an excellent way for customers to share how they like your product, how they use it, and how it has improved their lives. This provides a credible source of information for other community members in small, easy to read snippets from other members of the community.Having been pioneers of engagement and loyalty-based program development for over a decade, NextBee understands the importance of building communities for business. We have all the tools ready to go to create a self-sustaining online community to increase shop local engagement.
• Organizing Contests, Events, and Other ActivitiesFun giveaways, activities, contests, events on all platforms- online and offline, have always been popular. In our experience, we have seen contests and quizzes create success in the online space.So, how does that help? Well, contests and activities create brand awareness. If someone following your page online knows about your contest, they will share the information with their friends and family. Non-customers will join the event to have a chance of winning the rewards. This is an easy and effective method to acquire more followers.Using our 10+ years of knowledge and expertise in creating successful shop local engagement programs, we can help you start and run successful events and activities across all platforms. You can run multiple contests, quizzes, and sweepstakes simultaneously on NextBee’s platform.
• Reward and Point Schemes Rewards always work when it comes to increasing engagement. Follow it up with leaderboards and scorecards, and watch as the competition soars to achieve the highest points.By providing rewards that are valuable to users, you can encourage the behavior you want. For example, by providing a certain amount of points for every purchase made, you’re encouraging people to buy more of your products so that they can redeem those points to make another purchase.NextBee has a long list of reward ideas that can increase customers’ interests. Discounts, products, gift cards, movie tickets, and more, we have a vast number of reward options for your customers.

Affordable engagement programs are a necessity when it comes to SMEs and local businesses. This is whereNextBee comes in. NextBee prides itself on its affordable engagement program pricing that fits every SMEs expectations. Our budget-friendly prices help you increase engagement as well as profits.

If you’re still wondering and are unsure how all this fits in with your business, we’d love to chat with you and see if our program is right for you! Schedule a short 15-minute call with us, and we’ll take care of the rest.