Engagement: Everybody Wants It, BUT Nobody Knows What It Really Means

If you work in sponsorship you know that engagement is something of a trigger word that tends to get marketers all worked up. According to a new study though...

- 88% of customers say they don’t want to engage with brands.

- 75% of CMO's interviewed said they don’t know how to engage with customers.

The good news, there does seem to be something of a formula for building it. According to the study's author Esteban Kolsky, trust x time = engagement.

"Engagement can only be measured as a function of value given and value received (value exchange) as it accumulates over time (which is the same as saying that there is no metric for engagement – another fuzzy metric… yay!) Trust, and how to create and maintain it, is the biggest barrier to engagement." Kolsky writes on his popular marketing blog.

Then again, barriers create opportunities. While it seems few may be able to actually agree on what it is or how to create it, compelling sponsorship opps and content owners who have already done the hard work of building trusted and time-tested relationships with their fans, are in a great position to help deliver it to engagement-hungry/confused marketers.