Energising your advocates ...

Recently read Forrester's Groundswell book ... definitely worth a read: just opens up a different way of approaching marketing problems. We've been doing off-line versions of identifying advocates for ages ... the old Member-get-Member (MGM) programmes. But they always seem to be tactical "dip in and out" initiatives.

So when I came across the article about Lulu Community Centre on Forrester, it got me thinking a little bit more.

Now there are various initiatives that I've discussed with clients but that's a confidential, so I'll apply the same approach to a sector where we don't have a client ... petfood (this is a different slant to one of the case histories in Groundswell).

Identifying potential advocates is fairly simple ... via purchase data, on-pack promotions, buzz metrics, the aforesaid MGM technique (and preferably all four). So next step is getting them involved in how a brand and its products evolve ... ideas for new SKUs, new products, what others are doing that they think is worth knowing, testing new products (and the list goes on). So, why would pet owners want to do this:

Well, 'valuing my opinion' is one of my 6 key customer loyalty tenets: buy me a beer and you can have the other 5 ... yeah, I know I'm cheap. Anyway back to the blog ... so massaging ego is one reason (and watch those fingers type and tongues wag when these guys get going), tapping into a passion point like their dog or cat is another. But what else?

A more tangible 'reward' perhaps something different to the norm ... like a dedicated line of petfood for these customers. So a line/flavour (preferbaly an identified favourite of the advocates that is not available in retail outlets but just sold direct (yes, sold not given away) ... just wonder what that would do to word-of-mouth and see how those advocate numbers might grow as more want to be involved.

And could it be a different way to launch new lines: build customer demand through advocates by selling direct and then potentially switching to the retail channel. Being careful to replace that line with a new exclusive line for the advocates.

Might go and find out ... always liked dogs.