Develop Customer Loyalty Through Awards and Recognitions
Creating customer loyalty doesn’t have to cost a lot. Often it just takes a little investment of time.
One way to rack up customer loyalty is to spotlight your customers and bring them some recognition and free PR.
Just today I ran into a perfect example of this.
While I was over at the Elance site (where I posted a guest blog article), I noticed they announced the winners of a contest for best websites on Elance. The contest was designed to recognize small businesses that had gotten a website built using a service provider they found through Elance.
The awards offer multiple ways for the customer to get highlighted and recognized:
- The winners get profiled on the Elance website.
- The winners get a little winner’s ribbon/emblem they can display on their websites, in company newsletters, and in brochures.
- And of course, winning an award is a great trigger to send out a press release — not to mention a source of pride.
Imagine the waves of warmth that come from the customer due to the positive recognition.
This particular award program worked on several different levels. Not only did it recognize the customers, but it also recognized the Web developers. And because Elance brought the website owner and the developer together, I am sure it will bring positive payback for Elance, too.
It looks like all of the website owners who went to Elance for their sites are small businesses. The winner is a Hyundai dealership — Falcon Hyundai — from New York. As an interesting aside, some of the other website owners happen to be from around the world (commerce definitely has gotten global).
If you are looking for ways to develop customer loyalty, think about starting an award or “spotlight” program. Or look around you and see if you can enter one of your customers into a third-party award program like Elance’s.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Back in the 70’s, in ancient times, I developed award programs for airlines and car rentals to travel agents. They were designed in such a way that they doubled as advertising.
Doing this digitally is very inexpensive and is also good SEO. This will also benefit product based companies’ resellers. Reseller credibility builds confidence in customers and improves sales results.
Create a digital award that customers can add to their site and add them to a dedicated page for award winners on your own site with links back to the customer web page.
John at Duct Tape Marketing posted an interesting article on customer award programs today.
Everyone loves an award, especially when it’s public.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:20 am
I just completed my dissertation on how small businesses can create customer advocates and spread WOM
What I generally discovered was that introducing an element of competition amongst customers can prove really effective at creating a community of very receptive customers.
These communities seemed to evolve naturally and attract others with very little involvement of the company. Then community advocates, rather than customer advocates, emerged and drove further growth for the business.
It was quite fascinating, and I think awards is in fitting with the element of competition amongst customers.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Richard Millington,
I am interested in reading an excerpt / summary of your report. Word of Mouth marketing is an interesting field.
April 25th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Getting an award or recognition makes all your hard work seem worthwhile. It’s an exciting way to get new exposure and makes you feel good. As an example, while checking out the winners, I came across informe.com. I spent over an hour in there checking out the various forums. Very cool, guess that’s why they were runner up in two categories.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Very cool!
It’s really easy to reward customer loyalty. More people just have to do it!
-Shama
April 28th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Richard, I agree with Martin — it would be wonderful to see your paper sometime.
I think I speak for everyone when I say, we’d love to learn more about your findings. Sounds instructive.
Anita
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:48 pm
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