Connecting with your customers and getting them involved with your company is the best way to keep them interested and coming back to buy your products. Dave Kerpen’s Likeable explains why involving your customers is incredibly important to your business. In Chapter 11 Kerpen gives great reasons for why social media is a great place to start making conversation with customers. I think that Kerpen gives great examples and explains the importance of making your customers feel like they have a voice.
Like Kerpen explained, prompting a question on a post rather than a state instantly make the reader think of a responsible. In turn this makes them more likely to respond to whatever you are asking. It is a simple way to involve your customers with a limited space to say what you would like. Instagram stories, which Kerpen Suggests, are a great way to ask questions to your audience, because not only are they getting a question they might actually want to respond to, this gives them an easy way to give their opinion. Because of the convenience of it, your audience is more likely to respond which means you are more likely to get results and actually see what your customers think about something. The important part is that you are having a conversation with your customer. You have to make them feel important and heard.
Another way you can do this is through Facebook and Twitter polls. Like Instagram it makes an easy way for your customers to respond to what you are asking. The polls can stay up for however long you want them to and then results become finalized. This is a fast and easy way to see how the masses your company connects with are feeling.
Besides asking questions, crowdsourcing is another great way to get your customers directing involving in the decision-making process for different products. Many companies are doing crowdsourcing which is using their customers to help create products. This makes the customer feel like their opinion and ideas matter to your company.
When I think of crowdsourcing, I always think of Lay’s because of a campaign they do to find the best new potato chip flavor. Lay’s asked their customers what flavor they wanted to see Lay’s make into an actual product. Lay’s took the contest down to a few suggestions of flavors and then put them on the shelves for people to try. Once they tried the flavors, they went to the website to vote on which is their favorite. Many people were involved in the creation and decision process on which was the best new flavor. According to Huffington Post, in their 2013 campaign Lay’s received about 3.8 million submissions for ideas. This instantly gave Lay’s millions of excited customers that wanted to try their new products because they were a part of the decision-making process. According to Chief Marketer, Lay’s got more than 22.5 million visits on Facebook a week and sales rose by 12%.
I knew making your customers feel involved was important, but I didn’t realize how effective it can be. Kerpen showed me that it can be as simple as a question or it can be a whole campaign. The only disagreement I have with this chapter is that Kerpen does not tell us about any bad examples. Someone can read a million good examples of something, but still mess something up because they don’t know how it could go wrong.
I will definitely take with me a lot of what Likeable and Dave Kerpen have taught me. This particular chapter stuck with me, and I think many businesses big and small can improve their customer involvement in some way.
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