In many businesses, the most neglected marketing resource is their own loyal customers.
I’ve written recently about referrals and word-of-mouth. But there are many non-traditional ways to utilize your customer base to help spread the word.
Here’s one example. If you established a forum as part of your website, and let your customers as well as others post to it, you might:
1. Improve your search engine rankings because of the large quantity of content added to the site.
2. Your customers may evangelize about your products or customer service – building third party trust.
3. They may tell you about problems or desirable improvements.
4. Prospective customers might find answers to more of their questions, questions you may never have thought of or haven’t had time to address with your website.
All this without you having to lift a finger, if the system is well-designed.
There are other ways to utilize them too. Software companies and consultants often sponsor webinars run by their clients. It doesn’t get better than that.
This is worth thinking about. Not all ways to utilize a customer base, make sense for all businesses. But they do more often than you might think.
My recent post about social network marketing describes a useful way to think about this subject.
When this works, it can be huge.
Your Loyal Customers
