Advocating for advocacy: Reevoo hosts panel event on customer-driven strategy

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In the age of the customer, speaking the language of the customer and making your brand work for them is accepted as crucial by most marketers. However, just as crucial is listening to them and proactively making changes based on their feedback. The importance of this, and how to do it, came under the spotlight at Reevoo’s panel discussion on the advocacy economy, at The Club at The Ivy.

Evan Kypreos, Editor-in-Chief of Trusted Reviews, Martin Moll, Campaign Magazine’s Power 100 Marketers 2016 and ex-Marketing Director of Nissan Europe and Honda, Matt Donegan, CEO of Social Circle and Michael Sherwood, Head of Customer Experience at Atom Bank were moderated by journalist, author and broadcaster Morag Cuddeford-Jones in a discussion about the most important part in any business – the customer.

Selling is no longer about the point of conversion. From awareness through to customer loyalty, brands are striving to improve metrics such as Customer Lifetime Value, repeat purchases, upselling and cross-selling in order to retain loyal and equally profitable customers. Today, 92% of consumers check out online reviews, compared to 88% in 2014. There is hardly a brand or retailer’s website that doesn’t display customer opinion in one form or another. We have entered the world of digital word-of-mouth. And mobile means that reviews and UGC are with us wherever we are – 24/7 – not just when we are with our friends chatting down the pub.

Discussing how brands can make the most of customer engagement, the experts gave these key takeaways:

  • Any business should not just be customer focused – they should be customer obsessed. This means speaking to anyone with a negative experience, identifying what went wrong, apologising and taking their feedback forwards into the product
  • Treat people like individuals and consider the context: there is huge power in listening to and engaging with your audience
  • Prioritising short term strategy to sell product at scale while ignoring people is a sure-fire way to make your brand replaceable
  • Experiences with brands are always emotive: think back to to your first bad experience with alcohol. Did you ever drink that particular drink again? We can apply this to every brand interaction we have.

Thanks to Matt, Martin, Evan, Michael and Morag for a fascinating panel.