If you’re a modern business you should have a digital marketing strategy. But even if you do, you might still struggle to come up with content ideas.
There are people that can help you with that. And we’re not talking about professional marketers (although of course, professional digital marketers can be a great asset to your business) – we’re talking about your customers.
Four ways your customers can help you create content
1. Use testimonials and case studies
In the old days (and even now a lot of the time) word of mouth referrals were worth their weight in gold. Testimonials and case studies are the digital equivalent of word of mouth marketing.
Testimonials are short and sweet ways for your customers to say how much they like you. Use them on your website – either on a dedicated page or spread on pages like the Home and About pages and on your social media platforms. Any testimonial is good but ones that cover specifics are better than ones that just say “Great job” or “Thanks for the work” because they are more useful to potential customers and seem more genuine.
Getting testimonials in the form of reviews on your Google Business Profile can also help to boost your visibility in search results and in map searches.
Case studies are more in-depth than testimonials and let you explore a problem a customer had and how you solved it in more detail. You can use them on your website or turn them into a blog post, or create a shorter, more visual summary for social media like a LinkedIn carousel post.
Don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials and case studies! Even if your customers love you they won’t always think to leave a review. So you might need to gently nudge them. Depending on how you interact you could send a follow up email, add a message to your receipts or ask face to face. Make the review process easy to encourage people to complete it.
2 .Use customers as brand advocates
Depending on your business you could take your testimonial strategy one step further and work with some customers as brand advocates.
If you can get a movie star or supermodel to endorse your brand in which case go for it, but working with more ordinary people who nevertheless can promote your brand can still have benefits. Working with micro-influencers who have a solid and engaged social media following particularly in niche areas can be a great way to start working with advocates. You can also choose other loyal customers to send products or offer discounted services to in return for some promotion or a review.
3. Get your customers involved in social media
Struggling to think of what to post on your social media platforms each week? Get your customers involved.
Ideas to try include:
- Running a poll with options for favourite products, new services or questions about your business, or a topical poll at certain times of year like Halloween or Christmas.
- Asking open ended questions the business like “what’s your favourite product we stock?” Or “what would you like to see on our list of services?”
- Asking more general open questions about their top issue that could be solved by a product or service you provide.
- Asking followers for their tips related to your products or services. For example if you run a clothing store you could ask them their tips for storing clothes, or if you run a cafe you could ask for people’s go-to breakfast ideas.
- Running contests for followers either giving away your products/services or with a relevant partner.
Posts that encourage follower action help to boost engagement and get people thinking about your business. Plus they can provide good information for future marketing. For example if customers answer the question about their top issue, you can follow up with some expert advice or by recommending a product or service.
4. Survey your existing customers
Regular surveys let you check in with customers to ensure the products/services you are offering are still relevant and that they are happy with the customer service they have received. You can also ask more general questions about related problems that you can solve which you can use to create content later on.
Adding in extra questions about demographics – gender, age, location etc – helps you target your marketing to the right customer groups. For example if your database is mainly young people you might think about marketing on TikTok rather than Facebook, or you may choose to run targeted ads in certain locations.
Once you start tracking your metrics, don’t forget to actually analyse them and act upon your findings. Otherwise you are just collecting a bunch of numbers for no reason. Use your findings to tweak your strategy or better allocate your marketing spend, and then review the metrics again after the changes have taken effect to see if you’ve improved things. Collecting the metrics into a regular report is also a good way to show other staff members or business owners the effect that the digital marketing strategy is having.
If you’d like to know more about crafting a winning digital marketing strategy, from planning to implementing and monitoring, dive into one of our short courses or enrol in our Diploma of Digital Marketing for more extensive training.
