Customer Engagement by Walkers

There is nothing quite like getting customers engaged with your brand - they become advocates, champions and serial buyers of your product.

Walkers Crisps are doing a fantastic job of customer engagement and customer led marketing at the moment. They have spent the last six months encouraging crisp lovers to send in their flavours. All you had to do was take a photo of your suggested flavour and email Walkers. The incentive was a cash prize of £60, 000. I even thought of it myself!

Now the campaign has been taken from the web, to the TV and radio. It’s a consistent, multi-channelled marketing sensation.

Walkers have taken a basic concept - knowing what your customers want, finding out their preferences and buying patterns - and are applying it to their promotion. They have gone to their customers and asked for their help (in a clever way) to understand them better.

Not everyone has the budget of Walkers crisps but it gives a sense to all businesses - small and large - that customer led marketing, where the customer is priority not the company, is the way forward for businesses. It’s almost a new marketing revolution…..putting the customers first…for real rather than assumptions.

If you’re reading this, ask yourself a few questions honestly.

1. Are you really putting your customer’s needs first?

2. If so, how do you know?

3. What problem are you solving for your customers?

4. Are your customers champions of your brand?

If you can’t answer these questions truthfully, you’re not on your own. There are many businesses out there who can’t answer these questions. But take time before the second month of 2009 is out to find answers to those questions.