50+ Ways To Get Customers Involved In The Marketing Process
Marketing a business can often feel like a silo. Many marketers spend years behind a keyboard analyzing trends and trying to sell to as many people as possible. While a one-to-many approach works, sometimes you must make personal connections to create content for the masses. Customer marketing can help you build personal relationships with your best people while creating collateral to get you noticed.
While sales and customer success typically have a stronger relationship with customers, marketers can get a lot of value from connecting with end-users. Boosting customer retention is great for everyone. By reaching out to your company’s users, you can do your part to make them feel special and improve retention at your organization.
Today, let’s dive into 50+ customer marketing strategies your organization can use:
Send a survey to your customers to determine what content they need.
Interview your customers for a case study.
Invite customers to your podcast.
Add several customers to a webinar panel.
Invite one customer to co-host a webinar with you.
Let a customer/customers use your channels to host a webinar on their own.
Let a customer guest blog on your website.
Interview your customers as subject matter experts for a blog.
Get a quote from your customers for your latest eBook.
Highlight your customer’s work on social media.
Get your customers to record a video walking through how they use your software and add these to your demo pages.
Create a marketing panel for internal use and invite select customers to join it.
Build a referral program where customers can make money promoting your brand.
Ask a customer to write a cold outreach email your team can send prospects.
Spotlight customers who innovatively use your product.
Create a logo reel for your website, social media, and other marketing places.
Write a flipbook-style eBook with specific advice on one subject from a handful of your customers.
Feature videos/photos/words from customers in your social media advertising campaigns.
Hire customers as brand ambassadors to further your brand awareness.
Complete focus groups with customers to walk through new brand initiatives.
Build a Facebook/Slack/LinkedIn group to talk with customers, answer questions, and get content ideas.
Guest blog on a customer website.
Appear on a customer podcast.
Create a campaign to send merch and other goodies to your customers and encourage social media posting.
Analyze click data from emails to see what customers want more of.
Look at CRM data to see what content customers looked at before purchasing.
Let a customer do the voiceover for a commercial or video.
Host a customer contest that encourages social media sharing to win a prize.
Create short-form videos like TikToks with your customers.
Use a tool like Testimonial to create a wall of love for your brand.
Utilize customers as extras or stars in your company’s video ads or commercials.
Run quick polls to see how your customers feel about a particular topic and use those results in your content efforts.
Add social media share buttons to emails, blog posts, and other collateral to encourage customer sharing.
Create customer-only content to give your best people access to new and interesting information.
Ask for customer help in defining questions for new research reports you want to put out.
Give customers first dibs on new content, sales, and new products.
Celebrate customers as they join your company or on milestone anniversaries.
Utilize customer logos/faces/testimonials in your direct mail campaigns.
Run NPS® (Net Promoter Score®) campaigns to understand customer sentiment.
Invite customers to meet your marketing/sales team at trade shows and conferences.
Co-present with customers at conferences and trade shows.
Let your customers take over your social media accounts for a day, especially on accounts with a story feature.
Build a “friends of your brand” page with customer logos, websites, and discounts.
Host a company conference with your customers in attendance online or in person.
Encourage customers to become panelists at your company conference.
Do a social media live stream with your customers on sites like Facebook or Instagram.
Use beta launching to gather customer feedback and include their wins in the launch copy.
Sponsor programs and events that your customers are putting on.
Get customers to sponsor programs and events you are putting on.
Create a rewards program to encourage actions like following on social media, buying products, and subscribing to email newsletters.
Interact with user-generated content to encourage more of it.
