Nearly four out of five marketers use ‘engagement’ as a metric to prove return on investment, new marketingweek.com research has found, but only a minority believe senior leaders take the term seriously.

So when and how should you be using it? When measuring the success of marketing activity, the term ‘engagement’ is often used as a metric. But what does it really mean? The word has become ubiquitous yet it represents many different things to different people depending on the circumstances and campaign objectives.

The word has become ubiquitous yet it represents many different things to different people depending on the circumstances and campaign objectives. For some, brand engagement can be as simple as a social media mention or an opened email, while others classify the act of buying a product or service as the only sign of engagement.

Engagement is poorly defined

The fact that there is no single definition of what engagement means for all marketing professionals raises concerns. An open-ended question in a survey initiated by marketingweek.com asking respondents to clarify the meaning of engagement revealed a varied and colorful mix of definitions showing there is no standard for describing what the widely used term means. There is no magic metric that defines engagement. Rather, a combination of behaviours helps determine whether consumers are responding well.

At Mission, when we advise marketers on brand engagement specifically, we ask them to establish in advance what they determine as an ‘engaged user.' It’s important to know what you think someone who is engaged should be doing, because these are the brand ambassadors we want to reach and engage, and in determining who they are, we’re able to focus on their specific needs. It’s much more important that we concentrate on having a core user base of customers who are genuinely engaged with what we do.

That way they will make a conscious decision to come to us on a regular basis and spend some time to consume what we do.

Turning engagement into value

If engagement is a measure of the length of time consumers spend interacting with a brand, last summer's mobile game Pokémon Go is a good example of a hyper-engaged audience. In the first few weeks, the augmented reality (AR) game racked up 21 million daily active users in the US, with the average iPhone user spending 33 minutes and 25 seconds a day playing it.

However, what we call 'brand love' does not necessarily turn into behaviour change. It’s not just about being measurable but creating something that is considered of value. You can measure many things that are interesting but don’t correlate with value – it depends on the situation or what the problem is. This is often true for consumer brands. An ad might be very entertaining, so people watch it, share it and talk about it, but that does not necessarily translate into more products being sold.

Create an emotional reaction

Social media has enabled brands to put a human face and voice to a brand, leading to an influx of communications that aim to evoke an emotional reaction or behaviour from audiences. But if you’re looking at it from a behaviour point of view, people reach out at moments when the brand is relevant – what is important then is that the brand says or does something suitable in that moment. If a consumer is confused about a product they are planning to buy or are perhaps nervous about spending money on a service, they might look to reviews for reassurance. In that instance, it’s rational content, and there is no reason that content needs to be presented in an emotive branded way to be part of the brand story.

Advertising and social media should be more about emotion. In the higher level of the funnel for brand engagement, the emotion is key, and information is less relevant. However, once you come to the website and product, it’s all about information and referrals.

Why should the customer engage?

n an ideal world, we want clients to engage in our product; we strive to create interest, a reaction which evidently will convince the customer to buy. If you're a marketing executive, asking the correct question, you should ask why our customers should engage in our products, service or company rather than how will we create engagement from our customers. Most businesses will ask how do we create engagement, but the key to success lies in asking why because a why drives insight and inspiration which will engage not only your clients but the whole of your sales organisation to take action. Get in touch with Mission if you want to learn more about brand engagement metrics for your brand.