How to leverage your customers to increase brand awareness and grow your business

Content is king — we know this. We know it’s one of the key tools we have to grow brand awareness, to reach our ideal audience, and to establish ourselves as experts in our field.

Yet, many businesses get stuck in a content rut. They pick their preferred content form — often a blog — and run with it, hoping rather than knowing that it’s working for them.

However, if that sounds like the content strategy you’ve fallen into with your business, you might be missing a trick. Because, not only are there several other incredible content vehicles available to you, there is also a readily-available (but often untapped) source of incredible content inspiration, right at your fingertips:

Your customers.

If you’re worried your blog is getting stale, or you’re rapidly running out of content inspiration, your customers could offer the breath of fresh air you’re looking for.

Here are just a few ways your customers could inspire new content to help you increase your brand awareness and grow your business.

1. Reviews.

Glowing customer reviews and testimonials are incredibly powerful pieces of content and they can be repurposed in myriad ways, from quotes to add to your Instagram grid to videos you can highlight on your website.

In fact, even less-than-positive reviews can be a great marketing tool if you use them to show that you take criticism on board and use it to improve how you serve your customers.

If you don’t have enough reviews to work with currently, be sure to include testimonial requests as part of your offboarding process from now on. You’ll soon have some great material to work with as well as useful feedback that can help shape how you do business in the future.

2. Case studies.

The joy of testimonials is that — generally speaking — they’re concise and to-the-point; as such, they’re easy for your audience to read and digest.

However, sometimes you want longer-form content that takes a deeper dive into the value you provide.

Again, your customers are ideally placed to provide this, because they have experienced the problems your product or service solves and they’ve come out the other side, thanks to you and your business.

Case studies, whether in the form of a blog, a long-form article, or even a video, can be a great way to highlight the customer’s journey and detail the ways in which you’re able to help them overcome the obstacles they’re facing .

3. Brand ambassadors.

Nothing can sell your brand like a raving fan and using your social media channels to encourage previous clients to talk about your products on their own platforms is one way to turn happy customers into your very own business cheerleaders.

Not sure how to encourage customers to act as brand ambassadors? Consider offering an incentive, such as giving them juicy details of an upcoming launch, featuring them in a blog, or developing other forms of mutually beneficial content, from videos, to stories, to reels.

Blogs are still a valuable form of content…but they’re only one small part of a well-rounded content strategy. With a little help from your satisfied customers, you’ll find it easier to create new forms of engaging, relevant content that speaks to your ideal audience, grows your brand awareness, and pushes you firmly out of the content rut.

At Emerje, we’re experts at building well-rounded content strategies that feel fresh and innovative. Contact us today to find out how we could help you develop and build an effective content strategy for your business.