create lifetime customers with content creators
When was the last time your advertising channel became a lifetime customer and referral for you?
One of the biggest advantages of working with local content creators is longevity. A billboard won’t continue raving about your margaritas. A print ad certainly won’t be a referral engine once it gets recycled. And that TV spot? Not ever going to become a customer.
When you bring relationship marketing into the fold, everything changes. You now have real humans that can experience your brand, share on social and continue doing so for life. Think about the best customers you have today. Why are they the best? Probably because they spend money with you repeatedly and tell all of their network about you, driving the bottom line of your company.
It’s time to get strategic about how you find these people, get them engaged in your company, and keep them coming back with all of their local friends and followers… for life. Let’s look at how to get started.
1. Determine what type of people you want to come experience your brand.
Before engaging local people, it’s key to understand who your target consumer is. Is it zip-code specific? Age? Are these individuals at a certain stage in their life like being a parent? Look at who your current customers are and who your ideal target audience is so you know the type of influencer or content creator you’re looking for.
2. Create a compelling offer.
Whether you host a boozy brunch at your retail shop, create a one-off brand experience that’s exclusive to your invite list, or you offer a complimentary experience, the key is understanding the people you want to experience your offer and ensure it excites them.
This takes knowing what motivates your customers to buy. Unsure what this would be? Poll your followers on Instagram, send a survey through your email list, or simply ask your customers when they visit what an exciting offer and/or experience would be for them.
When it comes to the Hummingbirds platform, creating a “campaign” in our software is one of the most essential parts of the process, and something we work closely with our customers on.
3. Launch your campaign and offer
It’s essential to think through the timing of your offer! If you created an experience for content creators that is next weekend, you likely didn’t give your offer ample time to be successful. Give the process enough time for people to see, opt into, and show up for it.
One of our customers created an opportunity for our hummingbirds to get complimentary permanent bracelets. To excite the hummingbirds, there were a handful of things that happened:
They thought through the campaign details for months to ensure it would be an exceptional experience for brand new shoppers. For them, they knew they wanted to give away a higher ticket item with the request for high quality content like Instagram Reels.
They created the campaign in our software weeks in advance so hummingbirds had time to review it and express interest.
They made it incredibly easy for hummingbirds to book their appointment once they were selected! No phone calls or emails, just a quick link to Calendly to book an appointment, indicate they were a hummingbird, and reschedule if something came up.
They knew exactly who was coming in at what time and made a very conscious effort to welcome the hummingbirds with complimentary beverages.
They followed up afterward with a handwritten notecard and a personal phone call!
The intention at every step of the journey made this campaign a huge success and led to add on purchases, referrals, and our favorite: longevity. Our software is designed to make this process simple and notify our hundreds of content creators moments after it’s approved.
4. Nurture beyond a one-time experience.
So you got the content creators you wanted to experience your brand to show up. Congratulations!
Now it’s time to keep them in your ecosystem so they can become the lifetime customer you worked so hard to acquire. This is where we see businesses miss the biggest opportunity… Brand is how people FEEL about you. It’s essential to reinforce the feeling you created by following up.
Ways to follow up:
Send thank you notes
Add individuals to your email list
Follow them on social
Engage with their social posts
Share the content they created
DM them and thank them for their visit
Respond to their reviews
Relationship marketing is all about the large and small touch points your brand creates with real people. The better you do at this, the more referrals and revenue you’ll see.
5. Reward behavior you love to see.
If existing customers or newer content creators are sending you new business (you’re asking people how they heard of you, right?) or coming in regularly, reward it!
This can look different for every business. For example, if you end up having a dozen customers who are always tagging you in their Instagram Stories when they come in, consider create an ambassador program. Send a personal DM or email asking them to be part of it and plan for them to come in, experience your brand more regularly, and create content that you know can drive the behavior you want of their followers.
Unsure what excites ambassadors? Don’t just guess, invest time in asking and understanding the motivations of your ambassadors.
Not ready for ambassadors? Consider activating hummingbirds so new local content creators try and share about your business to their network every month.
get started creating lifetime customers
Relationship marketing is key, especially for place-based brands that want to build a positive reputation quickly in a specific market.
Consumers are looking to other people when making decisions, especially in their very own community. The more you can empower local content creators to share about you, the more your community will experience your brand over and over again.
Book a call with our team today to see how leveraging local content creators can impact the bottom line of your business today and for years to come.
