Customers, More Than Just The Money

     Marketing is an essential part of business.  It is the a way to get your brand,  product or service into the consciousness of the consumers. 

Marketing takes up a large share of the yearly budget of any enterprise.  It requires immense effort and enough money.  For start-ups,  spending so much on marketing would probably do the business more harm than good because  start-ups work with very limited capital and human resource,  and they cannot correctly predict the effect of their marketing strategy . 

There is however a cost effective ( by cost effective,  I mean free)  and more efficient way to do marketing.  They are called CUSTOMERS. 

Customers 

In 15 common sense tips for entrepreneurs there is a rule about treating customers right,  because they are your walking adverts,  keep that rule in mind because as we all know,  the success of any business depends on what is being said about the business, make sure your customers are saying the right things. 

We all believe in the importance of hard work and the dignity of labour but what we have failed to understand is the meaning of smart work and the application of it.  Let's face it, what's the use of spending long,  hard,  arduous, grueling hours and hard earned company profit trying to figure out the best marketing plans when you can just get someone else to do it for you,  free of charge.  It may sound like the lazy man's way out but it definitely guarantees more profit. 

There are proven customer marketing strategies that have worked and I will be sharing these strategies with you in this post. 

Create Catchy and Interactive Content 

Mid 2015, there was a hash tag that trended on Nigerian twitter #ThingsILongthroatFor.  "Long throat" is a Nigerian term that loosely translates to crave. So,  it actually meant things I crave for.  It encouraged twitter users to tweet their cravings ( bizzare,  funny, food etc.)  . This hash tag was a Pepsi sponsored campaign on twitter to get the Nigerian populace talking about " long throat" for quite a while.  To what end you might ask?  They planned to come up with a new, longer bottle of Pepsi which they named the Pepsi long throat bottle.  

My point is,  instead of TV adverts and billboards that would have cost an arm and two legs,  they got the country to talk about it for  almost nothing.  They harnessed the advertising power of their customers and sat back to watch their work being done for them. 

Think of something catchy,  encourage friends, family and coworkers to help you share it . If it's creative and captivating enough you will get more visibility  and you won't be paying for it. 

Loyalty Programs 

You may have come across online competitions on facebook that tell competitors to put up pictures or plans on the facebook pages of the competition organisers. The more likes on the picture or plan of a person,  the more likely the person is to win the competition.  This is a marketing strategy masqueraded as a competition. The competition organisers are getting people to view their page,  their page exhibits their brand,  their brand is visible to the people liking the pictures and the friends of the people liking the pictures.  

Loyalty programs reward users based on their interactions with your brand ( how long they are online,  how many times they log in,  how many comments they post etc.) . The aim here is to keep people talking about you,  and ultimately,  to keep them coming back. 

Encourage Product Or Service Reviews 

People tend to trust a brand if they see positive reviews on that brand.  I know someone who reads through online reviews of phones before deciding to purchase any.  Generally,  positive reviews equal more customers. Offer value and encourage customer review as subtly and friendly as possible.  Appreciate them for the good reviews and work on whatever flaw is stated in the bad review. Make sure to also inform customers and potential customers of fixes to the flaws in the bad reviews. 

Social Media 

Share buttons on blogs,  facebook,  twitter and websites are really important tools of advertising.  Encourage users to share their thoughts about your brand.  Twitter hash tags and retweets,  facebook share button, etc can be as useful as billboards. 

Truth be told,  it takes patience to build an online brand and it may not exactly grow as fast as you want it.  Be patient,  never compromise on quality , stay true to your brand and wealth will be within reach.