Your customers love you. They want you to win. They want you to thrive so they can keep buying your stuff.
But have you asked them for help? Given them an action step?
This is a secret of political organizing: Don’t ask for generic support. Ask for a single action. Just one. (Then another. Then another.)
Generic fandom is nice. But most people don’t know what you need, or how to start.
Try this: Ask your customers to write a review. Tell them it’s important before the holidays. Don’t give an incentive, just ask them to do it. They’ll do it!
Here is a simple postcard example from the folks at Bacon Salt (click for a close up):
{Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I Thought of That Email Newsletter.
This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just
received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the left.}
Nothing your marketing team writes is ever going to be as
effective as what your customers write for you.
1> Let them write your ads
2> Use best-seller lists
3> Collect customer ideas
4> Check it out: Win Seth Godin’s new book!
1> Let them write your ads
You have a ton of testimonials and positive reviews. But
they are probably sitting on a random page of your web site or filed away in a
drawer. If you put customer reviews in your ads you get a better response.
Office Depot tested putting customer’s favorites in their ads, and the response
was phenomenal. In one test, the results were: Increased Click-Through Rate:
78.5%, Increased Conversion: 23.8%, Increased Revenue: 196.6%, and Increased
New Buyers: 183.3%. Why does it work? Because people trust other people more
than your own marketing copy.
More info
2> Use best-seller lists
Best-seller lists are an interesting form of word of
mouth. They contain the implied recommendations of all your customers. Future
customers look at what is selling, and know that past customers endorsed them
by buying them. Show off those popular products. Sephora created a "Best
of Sephora" section on the web site and in the store that features
customer favorites. For "Best of Sephora" they use the slogan
"100,000 votes, 30 winners. You the beauty-full people have spoken." You
can do the same thing without much work. Create a popularity contest using
sales data, customer votes, or product reviews. Feature it prominently in your
store.
More info
3> Collect customer ideas
Your customers have more ideas than you do. Ask for their
ideas and publish them on your web site. At 1000uses.com, customers can suggest
ideas for how to use Glad plastic wrap. Thousands of great product ideas were
shared by customers eager to share household tips and for a chance to see their
names published. You could build a site like this with a simple blog that
accepts comments. The benefits are fantastic: You get thousands of new ideas
that encourage purchase. Those ideas build your web site (picture 1,000 new
pages of content, written for free by customers). That new content gives you
amazing search engine results, because there is so much more content to find.
More info
Toyota: Social media and crisis management
Clorox: Using gaming strategies to grow community
BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media
