Building customer feedback systems into your marketing is essential. Building customer collaboration into your marketing process is the next natural step. Almost every serious marketer or business person acknowledges that customer feedback is important. They may also acknowledge that it is the best way to drive innovation, and to ensure that their business is at the forefront of change. However many businesses do it wrong, get it backward, or spend far too much resource on processes that are ineffectual or actually damage the processes.
Simple customer collaborative marketing is not hard to achieve if it is part of the process.
Sample collaborative marketing campaign;
- Get customers to create your next product or service on Facebook/Youtube/Google Apps
- $200 prize money to the most shared/voted for product
- Spend $200 total on Adwords/Facebook promoting the number one idea each day.
Feedback is the campaign
Instead of building a campaign that has one message, with a specific reach and one medium. Build your customers into the campaign and get them to build the message for you. There are plenty of ways you can build/receive feedback;
- Reviews
- Comments
- News Tips
- Photos
- Ideas
Customers are the medium
Whatever you are promoting, customers are the way your message is spread. Word of mouth is the most potent and trusted source of information about products. There are plenty of ways for your customers to spread the word;
- Forums
- Comments on your website
Control less spread more
Don’t worry about good and bad too much. Obviously if the campaign gets out of control in a negative sense, you might have to back track a little. Focus on getting the program to as many people as possible, rather than imposing strict rules on the community.
Add Fuel
Use normal marketing to increase the reach of the customer’s message. Adwords and Facebook advertising can be used instantly to promote the best, most viral messages. You can use Adwords remarketing to make sure you target the right people, or people who have already visited your site.
Customers will analyse the program for you
Make sure that natural ranking/analysis is built into the program. Using voting/sharing as a measurement method means that the most sticky/viral customer ideas will spread the most, and be the most valuable.