Let consumers be the marketers of your brand

In today’s social-media driven world business fortunes can be made and broken based on your consumers’ shares, words, and reviews; one poor TripAdvisor review can travel the world through a series of clicks; a single Facebook check-in alongside shining comments about your business can act as essential word-of-mouth for business growth, and one status update from an unhappy customer can taint a brand’s reputation, given enough shares.

All of this goes to show that consumers are today more empowered than ever before to market, or conversely publicise their negative opinions, about the products and services that they consume.

So, just how can you help ensure that your consumers market your brand, rather than destroy it?

5 Top tips for consumers who market for you

With the right product or service, backed-up by a solid approach to customer service, you can look forward to consumers who will happily advocate for you (particularly when there’s ‘Something in it for them’). Here are five fresh ideas for helping them do just that, as well as tips on dealing with negative reviews and social media activity.

Provide your most valuable customers with exclusive (share-friendly) deals

Providing a select few customers with an exclusive deal is a great way to help them feel valued. These could be anything from access to exclusive content, discounts, product freebies or coupons. The key to successfully seeing these offers shared is to make the process as easy as possible. This includes a one-click social share button, as well as the option to email the offer onwards to their contacts.

Identify your best customers and ask them for a testimonial

Using testimonials on your website and in your marketing materials can really help your target customer to get a feel for the ways you help your existing clients.

The most effective way of doing this is through video testimonials, as this serves as tangible proof that your testimonials are real and consumers love interactive media.

Become an expert within your industry, and understand your customers' pain points

The success of content marketing relies on it being genuinely interesting to your target market. When you truly identify what it is that your customers want, and create engaging content such as blog posts, videos and webinars, then your customers will happily share it with others.

You can make this a whole lot easier by including social share buttons on all your on-site media (as well as a comment section – which is great for displaying positive interactions with your clients).

Encourage happy clients to leave a review of your business

Positive reviews on Facebook, TripAdvisor, TrustPilot and Google all go towards the most invaluable marketing tool of all: consumer to consumer advocacy. Quite simply, consumers trust the words and opinions of other consumers over and above a company’s, regardless as to whether they know that person or not.

So encourage your customers to leave a review of your business post purchase, and always respond to any reviews that have been left – either to thank them for their positive opinions, or to address any customer concerns (the latter of which is essential for limiting the damage done by a negative review).

This applies equally to any negative public status updates or posts that you’re tagged in – relying swiftly and professionally is key, and in some cases it can go further to strengthen your company’s reputation. After all, no company is run free from the odd problem, and most reasonable consumers will recognise this and place more importance on the way things are handled when things do go wrong from time to time.

Create a customer referral programme

Whilst social networks and online activities are indeed powerful stuff when it comes to marketing, you shouldn’t neglect looking outside these realms to truly make the most of consumer to consumer marketing. A key example of this could be a customer referral programme, where an incentive is provided for referring friends onwards who go on to become customers (such as a discount, cash payment or free product).

Want to get your customers talking? We can help! Contact the team at Formation.