We all want our customers to become our brand advocates. Ideally, we want them to do most of our promotions for one very good reason: regular people are seen as more credible than businesses. If a customer likes your business enough that they would voluntarily wear your promotional items and share your brand, you know you’re doing something right.
Here are some simple ways you can convince customers to become your walking billboards.
1. Hand out silicone rubber bracelets
Silicone rubber band bracelets are affordable, durable, and attractive. They match an extremely wide range of styles as well, which means people are usually going to wear them if you hand them out. If you’re not sure how to make rubber band bracelets, there are a few online sources that can make high-quality customized wristbands that can match any brand.
2. Invest in strong brand visuals
Without a strong visual aspect, your brand might not be seen as something that a customer would be proud to share. In fact, they might even be embarrassed to have your branding seen on them because they find it too ugly. This can be true even if they otherwise enjoy what your business has to offer.
Your brand’s logo and other visual elements should be bold, aesthetically-pleasing, and instantly recognizable. If your visual branding doesn’t tick those boxes, you should consider hiring a professional graphic designer with experience in your niche to help you create a logo.
You shouldn’t just concentrate on your logo either. Your visual branding extends into other parts of your business, most notably on your packaging and on your social media. Try to make sure anything related to your brand that a customer can see looks the part of something that they might be proud to be associated with.
3. Give away t-shirts, hoodies, and trucker caps
Shirts, jackets, and caps are much more expensive per piece than rubber bracelets and they also require more commitment from the customer. But when executed right, they have the potential to be iconic items in their own right. Some branded tees, hoodies, and caps are so iconic that they are no longer given away and are instead, sold.
John Deere trucker caps, for instance, were once just giveaway meant to promote John Deere agricultural machinery. Now, these iconic green caps are being sold and even counterfeited. There are even people out there who collect them, even if they don’t own a tractor themselves.
4. Keep building your brand’s reputation
You might have a great design, and awesome-looking promotional swag. But if your customers do not have a positive association with your business, you can hardly expect them to want to be publicly associated with your brand. In most cases, fixing an underlying issue with your reputation makes more sense than attempting to improve it with promotional items.
5. Treat each customer the way you want to be treated
Customers are more likely to “wear your brand” if they trust your business and are pleased with its service. To please most customers, you have to display transparency and go above and beyond what is expected in your industry.
Trust and delight are essentially the types of positive emotional responses that you want to elicit from your customers to turn them into brand advocates. And there is no better way to create a brand advocate than to give the type of service that you yourself would be delighted with.
Convincing customers to evangelize your business involves delivering great service — and providing them an attractive, low-commitment way to tell the world about it. Once you have both things in place, it’s only a matter of time before you have customers willing to go the extra mile to share your brand with others.
Tell us about how you created a loyal following for your business. We’d love to hear from you.
