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The way to increase engagement isn't shouting

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Danny Huang

Content Writer

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28 June 2022
5 min read

Why Whispiring gets attention in a noisy world

Colleagues whispering in a noisy office

How many ads do you see every day? Probably thousands. The number goes up to 10,000 ads each day for the average consumer. You're exposed to content at home, out of home, and in-between moments when scrolling through social media platforms. But how much of it do you remember? Probably none.

That's the problem with communications today, and seasoned marketers know it. When brands rush to post content, the result isn't always higher engagement. What happens instead is content overload. It's a turn-off, and people switch off. For marketers, this is proving to be a considerable challenge.

You see competitors marketing aggressively. You join in because you don't want to lose customers. But here’s the important question you should be asking: is there a more effective strategy in the marketing playbook? Companies that have embraced an alternative approach are seeing better performance on their engagement metrics. This strategy sounds counterintuitive at first, but the logic is simple: 

When the world zigs, zag. When competitors shout, whisper.

Why shouting is no longer effective in driving customer engagement

Out of home advertising along a busy road in Singapore

"Shouting" made sense during the golden age of splashy television commercials and extravagant out-of-home advertising campaigns. Shouting was a form of push marketing that captured mindshare and sold products. But the effects of shouting have worn off with the rise of digitalisation.

The digital world today is a noisy place. We're not just talking about the noise generated by advertising and content marketing from your competitors. Smartphone notifications have joined the cacophony, too –  a research study conducted by Duke University shows the average person gets between 65 and 80 phone notifications a day. Consider the proliferation of mobile apps and it's easy to see how app screens are distracting customers.

Why not shout louder? Bad news. Many companies are doing the same. Ironically, the collective desire to achieve cut-through in an increasingly noisy digital space has driven up marketing budgets, delivered less effective results, and proven unsustainable in the long run. More importantly, it lacks real-person understanding and ignores the fact that nobody likes to be shouted at.

Here's another engagement plan. The simplest, fastest and most effective way to have someone's ear isn't to shout. It's to whisper.

The psychology of whispering: 3 reasons why it’s so irresistible and impossible to ignore

In a noisy place, whispering succeeds because of its natural ability to generate:

  • Immediate attention

When you whisper into someone's ear, you have their full attention. Just the act of whispering alone draws the person you're speaking to closer to you. The fact that you're speaking at a lower volume also automatically motivates people to listen harder and focus on what you're saying.

  • Direct and personal impact

Whispering doesn't just enable you to establish a direct relationship with someone. It makes the communication experience feel more personal, adding to the impact and recall of your message.

  • Higher-value messaging

The effects of whispering extend beyond the intended listener as well.  Whispering, despite being a highly visible act, keeps your message concealed. So while you're making your listener feel important, you're also sparking curiosity among other people around you. This elevates the perceived value of your message and creates a pull-marketing effect that attracts people to want to "lean in" and learn what you have to share. 

These are just some focus areas that show the quiet power of whispering in a social setting. It gets even better when we scale that power up to accomplish more with digital communications.

From whisper to Whispir: elevating effective communication for the digital age

Boost engagement rates with Whispir

There's a reason why over 800 customers across different industries, including government, insurance, human resources, and telecommunications, trust us with their digital communications. We know whispering works, and we've embodied it in our name: Whispir. 

Leveraging our understanding of what truly engages the human psyche, we've built the Whispir effect into every aspect of our digital communications platform.

This means taking a customer-centric approach that:

  • Lets consumers decide the right place and right time to have a conversation

Customer journeys are no longer linear. They may start with social media on their Facebook feed but prefer to engage with email or your web page. So rather than relying solely on social media engagement tools, it makes more sense to cover the entire communications ecosystem. An omnichannel communications platform like Whispir empowers marketers with a wide variety of communication channels, including SMS, WhatsApp, email, video, voice, social platforms, and more. So no matter the medium, the customer experiences a seamless flow of interactions.

Two way messaging with Whispir

The best real-life conversations go both ways; why shouldn't it be the same for digital conversations? With Whispir, you can use two-way text messaging* to conduct mobile conversations where they can schedule appointments, ask questions, give feedback, and much more. *Currently available in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore

  • Uses the right tone of voice to capture the attention of your target audience

Achieve the right tone of voice with Whispir

Your message matters, but how you say it is also crucial. With the Whispir Tone of Voice tool, you can reach audiences on a grounded, more human level. Need help with crafting relatable communications? The engagement indicator provides an easy-to-follow framework to help you achieve the desired tone of voice (for example, not “too surprised”, but very “warm”) to ensure your message is perfectly tailored to convey the right emotion, inflection, and intent.

Whispir cuts through the noise with human-to-human communication

In today's media landscape, attention is a precious resource. That's why traditional approaches to increase customer engagement no longer work. Instead, marketers have to adjust to new consumer expectations by prioritising communication and putting humanity back into the way we connect and engage with each other. 

Today, we support the delivery of more than two billion interactions worldwide and play an instrumental role in helping organisations like AIA Insurance, M1, Itel International, and many more to achieve outstanding levels of engagement. Our promise is the world's highest engagement rates using the power of machine intelligence and carefully developed algorithms for effective human engagement at scale. 

Ready to tune out the noise and turn up engagement on your next campaign? We're all ears.

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We'll show you how it all works

If you’d like to see how easy Whispir makes message building, we’d be happy to walk you through a demonstration.