Need Advertising? Turn Your Focus to Your VIP Customers
More and more, we’re seeing popular companies creating tiers of service offerings, from the most basic to all the bells and whistles. Often, companies get their feet wet introducing a strong product or service, and then either venture into a lower-tier offering to capture a larger audience with a lower barrier to entry option or they introduce a “VIP” option to engage higher paying customers. Either way, these can be a smart ways to increase profitability.
If you go the VIP route, providing an excellent customer experience is non-negotiable, and according to successful entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David, it can be a great way to attract more customers. One of the most overlooked benefits to creating these VIP customers is that they ultimately become some of your best advertisements.
Here’s why:
1. It’s free, technically
It doesn’t cost you $1 when a customer tells their network about how happy they are with the customer experience your brand provides. But, it may result in a $450 sale, per year, if you’re selling Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®.
VIP customers can become some of your best, free marketers by sharing their love for your brand and details of their exceptional experience.
2. They genuinely like your business, and it shows
Influencer marketing is a newer, popular way to increase awareness of your product or service. It involves an exchange between a business and an individual with “influence”, and the ultimate goal is that this individual shares positive (often scripted or controlled) information about your business.
“A decade ago, the influencer marketing arena was limited only to celebrities and a few dedicated bloggers,” according to Sprout Social. “Now, it seems like we’ve seen social media influencers rise, saturate the market and even get caught up in fraud.”
Word-of-mouth advertising from VIP customers is proving more effective because they genuinely enjoy your product or service.
Take McDonald’s J Balvin Meal as an example. In a panel discussion with BODEN Agency, which drives McDonald’s U.S. Hispanic Market social media efforts, team members were asked why they thought the campaign was such a success. Their response? He sincerely loves McDonald’s food.
Though yes, he was a paid influencer in this case, he exceeded the requirements of his contract by posting to social media at the drive-through and eating French fries various times. His love for the brand shined through, and millions of Hispanic Americans lined up for the J Balvin Meal–a Big Mac, medium fries with ketchup and an Oreo McFlurry.